When the “Saturday Night Live” hair and makeup departments are brought a skit for that upcoming weekend, they usually have around two days to form an idea of what they want to do with the actors involved, make it into something tangible and execute it.
And then, it needs to all come off and be swapped out, just minutes before the next sketch.
Hair department head Jodi Mancuso and makeup department head Louie Zakarian work in tandem to ensure guests and cast members on the show are prepped and ready to go for the night.
“It’s very trusting,” Mancuso says of their work together. “If [the team] says Louie needs to paint the wig, I’m like, ‘Go ahead.’ I have full trust. That normally doesn’t happen everywhere…what we do, most people don’t understand it. Our stuff only has to last three minutes, and then it can completely fall apart.”
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Zakarian says once they’re brought scripts and do a table read Wednesday night, they immediately start to craft the looks for the weekend. For pre-taped sketches, they have just one day to get everything together before they film Friday.
And for the “Weekend Update,” Zakarian says, they sometimes only get from Friday night until Saturday morning to prep.
When Chloe Fineman appeared as JoJo Siwa in her new look on a “Weekend Update” in May, Zakarian says he and his team had to figure out how to come up with the glittery black makeup in just under one day.
He says he and Jason Milani, one of the makeup artists on his team, tested plenty of makeup looks the night before on each other. Since Fineman had to go out five minutes after the segment for another sketch, Zakarian says they had to find a way to wipe all the dark, intense makeup off in just two minutes.
“I was able to find this palette that had this great glittery makeup in it,” Zakarian says. “once we painted the black lines, we were just able to stick that glitter onto that makeup and it stayed beautifully. And then with just a hot towel, it all came right off.”
And sometimes, tweaks to the actor’s hair and makeup are done up until minutes before they hit the stage.
When Emma Stone hosted in December 2023, she played Mitch Lester, a sleazy record producer for singer Cass Elliot (played by cast member Chloe Troast) in “Make Your Own Kind of Music.” The character boasted a fluffed-up salt and pepper wig, complete with a sparse mini-mustache and cigarette everlastingly in hand.
Mancuso says originally, she had a darker wig for the scene. But after one rehearsal, they wanted to age the character up, so she added more gray to the front of the hair piece.
Although Stone originally wanted to be balding and have more facial hair, Zakarian says, it wasn’t feasible given the quick changes. They tried out three different types of facial hair before falling upon that pencil-thin mustache.
“It looks simple to the audience, but it sometimes can be a challenge,” Mancuso says. “Something about that character, [Stone] really loved. It was actually quite a few conversations and changes, it wasn’t as simple as it seems. They added the cigarette last minute, she almost wore glasses. It was played with quite a bit.”
And despite the rapid turnaround for their work, Mancuso and Zakarian say the adrenaline rush keeps them going.
“When you’re in it, you’re up against that time,” Mancuso says. “You want to make everybody happy and you’re a part of it. And now, it’s in our blood. When it’s an easy show, you’re almost whistling Dixie and bored.”
