The Hair and Makeup Secrets of 'SNL' — Heh-Heh, You Said Makeup
I chat with the show's BTS stars about their Season 49 viral hits. Plus: Smackdown! Last-minute Emmy entrants vs. vets
I have a fun interview further down with Jodi Mancuso and Louie Zakarian from SNL, but first . . .
It’s June 3: Do you know where your Emmy hopefuls are? The answer is actually pretty simple. They’re off the air.
It wasn’t so long ago that these early weeks of June would be carrying the tail end of the shows that wanted to be as visible as possible when Emmy ballots went out. Until a rule change last year, shows that had aired the majority of their episodes before the May 31 eligibility deadline could still qualify for that year’s awards.
That turned May into a free-for-all, the television equivalent of fall’s busy Oscar season. In spring 2022, for example, four limited series — HBO’s The Staircase (finale aired June 9), FX’s Under the Banner of Heaven (June 2), Showtime’s The First Lady (June 19) and Starz’s Gaslit (June 12) — were all stuck jockeying for the same prestige-leaning audience.
The result was that they more or less canceled each other out, with only The Staircase scoring major nominations from the bunch, and all getting their clocks cleaned by the likes of The Dropout and The White Lotus, which wrapped earlier.
Now the rules have changed and made it impossible for so many shows to premiere in May and wrap their seasons in time. But there are a few series that have been taking advantage of the final few weeks of the season, and at least a handful have really made the most of late-breaking momentum. Whether you’re Lady Gaga or Jean Smart, you know the calendar can be one of your most powerful awards season weapons.
Race to the Finish Line
The jury is still out on the very last shows to cross the finish line this year—Netflix’s Eric, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, launched all of its episodes on May 30, and the HBO movie The Great Lillian Hall, starring Jessica Lange, debuted on May 31. A handful of documentaries also debuted in a rush last week, including Disney+’s Jim Henson Idea Man, HBO’s MoviePass, Movie Crash and Prime Video’s For Love and Life: No Ordinary Campaign.
Of all the late-breaking contenders, I’d put my money on Gaga Chromatica Ball, which captures Lady Gaga’s performance at Dodgers Stadium during her 2022 Chromatica Ball Tour. It will contend in the category for pre-recorded variety specials, which does not sound like the most thrilling category, but hey, that’s how Adele earned an Emmy in 2022, not to mention Cher and Barbra Streisand in years past. What diva wouldn’t want to join that company?
In theory, Chromatica Ball could make Gaga a three-time Emmy winner in a single night — she’s also eligible as the special’s director and one of its editors. Take that, Cher.
Looking at the spring season more broadly, though, there are a handful of contenders that seem to be surging at the exact right moment. Chief among them is Max’s Hacks, which wrapped its third season last week after overcoming a whole lot of hurdles to get there. Though Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs, who co-created the show with Jen Statsky, told me they worried that being off the air for two years would make it hard to get their audience back, their timing seems to have worked out perfectly.
There are also two new comedies that made a splash in the spring and may be fresh enough in voters’ minds to go the distance. Netflix’s The Gentlemen was a ratings hit when it launched on the service on March 7, while Apple TV+’s Palm Royale wrapped its first season earlier this month and has garnered some attention for star Kristen Wiig and the inimitable legend Carol Burnett.
It’s in limited series, however, where momentum may wind up mattering most. With Shogun out of the way, all eyes are on Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, which launched on April 11 and, well, we all know what happened from there. Even people inside Netflix admit they didn’t really know what they had when Richard Gadd’s show premiered, but the spring release will turn out to be perfectly timed, overshadowing such splashier limited series as The Sympathizer and The Regime and reminding voters what real, organic buzz looks like.
Netflix is competing against itself in the category with Ripley, another spring show, and will be squaring off primarily against competition that premiered in January (HBO’s True Detective: Night Country, FX’s Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, Apple TV+’s Masters of the Air) or even earlier (fall premieres Fargo, Lessons in Chemistry and Fellow Travelers). Baby Reindeer might have won the attention battle in this competition regardless, but being fresh in voters’ minds sure can’t hurt.
Live From New York
You know what else demonstrated genuine buzz this spring? The April 13 episode of Saturday Night Live, and specifically the moment when host Ryan Gosling appeared wearing a giant blond pompadour.
The episode was officially the ratings hit of the season, as my colleague Sean McNulty pointed out in The Wakeup today, and the viral sensation of the Beavis and Butt-Head sketch was surely a major factor. Cast member Heidi Gardner has explained that it was the prosthetic teeth on Mikey Day that made her crack up — and for SNL’s longtime makeup designer Louie Zakarian and hairstylist Jodi Mancuso, stealing the show has just become part of the job.
“We get a lot of attention because a lot of our work is front and center most of the time,” Zakarian said on a Zoom call shortly after the current SNL season wrapped. “But that sketch in particular really took hold.”
I talked to Zakarian and Mancuso, who have 16 Emmys between them, about the years-long gestation process of the Beavis and Butt-Head sketch, the guest host from this season who came in with a true vision for a wig design — and what might be in store for SNL’s upcoming landmark 50th season.
Katey Rich: My understanding is that the Beavis and Butt-Head sketch had been close to making it to the air several times before it actually made it.
Jodi Mancuso: Yeah, I think the first time was 2018.
Louie Zakarian: With Jonah Hill
JM: Even at that time it was late coming into the show, so there wasn't a lot of prep time and I wasn't fully happy with the wigs. Then I think we tried it again, and again I wasn't happy with it.
So we fully gave up on it, this is not going to happen. Then they pitched it again and I was like, well, we're going to make this right. I spoke to Streeter (the sketch’s writer Streeter Seidell) and Mikey and they wanted the same exact wigs as the first time. I disagreed with them and told them that I'm not doing it like that. We need to make them a little more human. Streeter was against it the whole time and I said, too bad, I'm going to trust myself on this one.
Louie, this time you had the braces and stuff and it wasn't like that the first time, right?
LZ: Well, we had them, but I changed them a little bit. I made this crazy little bridge that goes into his mouth and the first time it didn't lift his lip up enough. This time I went in and redid it and made it a little more prominent and made it pop a little more. Just having his lip have those braces and those teeth exposed, it really did help.
KR: Heidi Gardner had said that she felt really bad about breaking. Do you guys have a particular feeling when your work makes people laugh on the air?
JM: Well, listen. People love when the [cast] breaks because it's funny, right? You don't want to do it every time because it's live, and you can kind of ruin someone's sketch if it goes too long. But when you have a moment like Heidi did, I mean, come on. It was funny, and it made everybody else enjoy that moment even more.
LZ: You always want it to be a genuine break. They genuinely just lost it. There was no controlling it.
JM: In her defense, she really didn't get to fully see this. She says she did, but we do a rehearsal, and for rehearsal, they weren't in full costume. Mikey didn't really have the bald cap on. She saw it, she kind of had an idea, but it wasn't full.
LZ: Even at dress rehearsal, I think he was only like 85 percent there. I tweaked the makeup a little bit, I think Jodi moved the wig back a little bit on him. For air, it was dead on.
JM: It was golden.
Penciling in Emma Stone
KR: One other look from this season I wanted to ask about was Emma Stone as the record producer. Her wig is really sculptural and strange, and a whole character emerges from it. How did that specific look take shape?
JM: Emma is so great with wigs, and we know her so well. We’ve known her so long that she's very trusting, which I love. You have to remember, for a host I have to consider 12 different looks for one person in a show, and you're trying to make everything different.
LZ: She loves character stuff, that's the thing. And she was like, oh, I want a mustache. I gave her two different choices and she loved that little pencil thing.
KR: When you guys have hosts come in for the first time, do you watch them on the learning curve of just how many wigs and prosthetics are required?
JM: Almost every week. Even when they know, they still can't get over it. Ryan said to me when he hosted, he's like, ‘This has destroyed my life [for future projects], I'm always being like, well, SNL can do it. What do you mean you can't do it?’
There's a reason why we can do it — it's how the show is set up. But it is rewarding to see people notice your hard work and how much we are a team is nice. I mean, the whole crew, everybody is helping everybody.
LZ: Sometimes a host comes in, and they have a set plan in their head, and by Thursday or Friday they're like, Okay, my plans are never going to work. I'm going to let you guys do what you’ve got to do.
Even somebody who's older and has been in the business forever, they're like, Oh shit, this is not what I expected. It's a time to have fun and trust everybody around you. You're asking them to give up a lot of control.
KR: Next season is SNL’s 50th. It’s going to be huge. Are you just bracing for impact?
JM: I am so scared. I am going to sleep from now until February. I'm actually fully panicked about it. It's been a lot of talk, but no real ideas. At least I'm sure they have ideas, but it's like everybody's going to work it out over the summer, I'm sure. And I'm anticipating, oh my God, not sleeping for sure and excited, but scary.
LZ: I can see every show next season leading up to the 50th anniversary, everybody wanting to be on the 50th just to be on an episode of the 50th. So I could see special guests every week and people wanting to be in sketches just to be able to be there.
KR: Or a lot of vintage sketches— like a lot of wigs from the 80s reappearing.
JM: We have a lot of the original stuff, and I've already started looking for them. If they're in good condition, putting them to the side or fixing them. It's pretty exciting, scary, so proud to be part of it.
LZ: It's going to be epic.
