When Heidi Gardner broke character and busted out laughing in a “Saturday Night Live” sketch that became an instant classic, it was as much a triumph for the show’s makeup department as the writers and cast members.
Guest host Ryan Gosling and “SNL” cast member Mikey Day had Gardner laughing uncontrollably when they were clad in wigs and prosthetics to look like animated ’90s icons Beavis and Butt-Head in an episode on April 13, 2024. Day’s exposed gums as Butt-Head particularly had Gardner losing it.
That was the work of the 20 artists on the show’s Emmy-winning makeup team led by Louie Zakarian, who has been building elaborate prosthetics on the show for nearly 30 years.
Zakarian gave NBC’s Joe Fryer a look behind the curtain on TODAY in a segment that aired Feb. 7, just over a week ahead of the “SNL” 50th anniversary special.
The ace makeup team that creates the bald caps, facial hair and intricate prosthetics often doesn’t even start making them until Thursday and sometimes Friday each week.
They also only have a few minutes to either put them on or take them off the cast members once the live episode starts on Saturday.
“It’s choreographed mayhem,” Zakarian told Fryer. “It’s like a pit crew. Everybody knows what they have to do. Everybody knows where they have to be at any given moment, and we can get them in and out of that chair within minutes.”
In one recent episode, cast member Sarah Sherman went from having a prosthetic attached to her nose for a sketch about a dog park to transforming into a 92-year-old woman in a matter of minutes for another sketch.
“It’s happening to me, and I don’t even know how it’s happening,” Sherman said on TODAY about the rapid transformations.
A crucial part of the process is making “lifecasts” of every host and cast member. It’s what allows Zakarian and his staff to pull off transformations like putting dog noses on 10 cast members in 10 minutes for the dog park sketch during a live episode.
The “lifecasts” are now done with high-tech scanners that can map a person’s face in minutes. A 3D printer is then used to turn the scans into a mold of the person’s face.
Fryer demonstrated the process by having a scan and mold of his own face done in just minutes.
They all hang up in what is known as the “mold room” for NBC and “SNL.”
“There’s stuff here that’s older than I am,” Zakarian said.
Illustrating his point, Zakarian showed off the rudimentary mold of the bald heads for the classic “Coneheads” sketches that first appeared on the show in 1977, way before the days of high-tech scanners.
“Now to have them in my hands and be able to reproduce them, it’s one of those dream-come-true moments, you know what I mean?” Zakarian said.
Famous faces of every host from Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson to Eddie Murphy hang on the walls along with classic prosthetics like the one Zakarian made for the late Phil Hartman’s “Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer” sketches in the 1990s.
Last year, the makeup department returned to the ’90s for the “Beavis and Butt-Head” sketch that had Gardner hilariously breaking character.
“It went crazy,” Zakarian said.
The department is a favorite of Sherman, who believes their creations help her better get into character. Zakarian worked on the prosthetics during this current “SNL” season when Sherman played the vampire Nosferatu in reference to the recent movie of that title.
“Once I have really long vampire fingers, then and only then can I finally actually figure out what the voice is of the character,” Sherman said on TODAY.
Fryer said on TODAY that Zakarian told him that one crucial directive from legendary showrunner Lorne Michaels is that the cast member is still recognizable underneath the prosthetics.
It’s not only the “SNL” cast members who benefit from the creations of the makeup department. Zakarian and his team also are the ones who help make the costumes and prosthetics that are on display every year during TODAY’s show-stopping Halloween extravaganzas.
Their latest creations are sure to be a big part of “SNL’s” 50th anniversary celebration, which airs Feb. 16 on NBC and streams on Peacock.