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NEW YORK — The first thing you are likely to wonder about Tom Broecker, who has spent more than 30 years as the costume designer at “Saturday Night Live,” is whether he ever sleeps. Indeed, he does — but not much. Broecker says he averages about five hours a night, and tends to get more shut-eye earlier in the week.
But from Wednesday night, when executive producer Lorne Michaels selects which sketches will be moving forward after the initial table read, until the cast waves goodnight on what is technically Sunday morning, it’s a mad, sleep-deprived dash. For each episode of “SNL,” Broecker oversees the team that creates costumes for 12 to 15 sketches, of which 10 to 12 ultimately make it to air.
He’s played an integral part in the visual language of “SNL,” shaping its funniest moments, from the ribbed V-neck sweater that clung to Will Ferrell’s midsection in the legendary “More Cowbell” sketch to the shiny rolls of simulated hippo flesh Bowen Yang wore to play Moo Deng on “Weekend Update” last fall.
The sketch comedy show is celebrating 50 seasons with two documentaries and an upcoming prime-time special that reflect on its standing as an American institution.
The job has brought him in close contact with legendary movie stars, musicians, athletes and politicians, and given him a front-row seat for iconic moments in pop culture history. Yet even as the show celebrates its 50th anniversary with a live, all-star special Sunday on NBC, Broecker is not one to spend a lot of time looking back.
“I’m not a nostalgic person. That doesn’t mean I don’t have feelings — although most people will tell you I don’t have feelings,” he says with a wry laugh. “The trap with nostalgia is that it keeps you in the past. It keeps you in a place of warmth and comfort and this show is not about that. This show is about constantly pushing forward to the next thing. You bring it up, you take it down, you bring it up, you take it down. That is what this show is: ever-evolving, ever moving forward.”
This philosophy extends to the hours of labor he puts into countless sketches that never get seen by anyone outside of Studio 8H. After decades at “SNL,” Broecker has mastered what he calls “the art of detachment.”
“The art of detachment doesn’t mean that you don’t do your job 1,000%,” he says. “It just means you have to learn how to invest without emotionally getting connected to the thing too much.”
‘Everything is changing all the time’
A few days after Timothée Chalamet’s double act as host and musical guest, Broecker is perched in his office at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. A few yards in one direction is Studio 8H; immediately around the corner is the control room. This geographically central location reflects Broecker’s importance at “SNL,” where he has also served as a producer since Season 43.
Broecker is “in all the meetings where decisions are being made,” Michaels says. “The writers just assume Tom and his team can do anything. They don’t know how all that works. They just know if your piece gets picked, go to Tom. He gives it both the visual unity and the brilliance. He’s very sympathetic to carrying out the vision of what a writer or a performer is really trying to do.”
He not only understands design, Michaels says, but how it can be used to elevate a sketch: “He’ll make sure the comedy has a friend that understands what they’re trying to.”
The show is dark this week, so the halls are deceptively empty. But Broecker’s workspace is brimming with signs of activity connected to the show’s 50th anniversary: shopping bags piled under his desk, fabric swatches splayed on a cork board, a rack heaving with garments including the velvet jackets reserved for members of the “Five-Timers Club.”
From an interior window in his office, Broecker’s desk overlooks the area known as “Main Street,” the central corridor connecting the studio to the backstage hive that thrums with controlled chaos every Saturday night. The hallway is lined with seemingly ordinary black cabinets that open to become booths where cast members scramble to get into (and out of) their costumes between sketches. (They each have an assigned dresser to help them.) Some cast members decorate their booths, which are lined with full-length mirrors, like high school lockers. (Yang’s booth features a photo of a French bulldog and stickers with line drawings of Patti Smith and John Lennon.)
“Most of us like routines. They are helpful to us especially when everything is changing all the time,” Broecker says of the booths.
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Broecker sheepishly admits he wasn’t always a huge fan of “SNL.” He vaguely remembers watching the episode hosted by Madonna in 1985, but otherwise, “I grew up on Carol Burnett,” he says.
He started on “SNL” as a production assistant in 1986, with a cast that included legends in the making such as Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman and Jan Hooks. After a few seasons, he left to study design at Yale, then returned to the show in 1994. He’s remained there since, with occasional side hustles on projects like “30 Rock” (where he also did some acting, playing a costume designer on “The Girlie Show”) and “House of Cards.”
Over the decades, technology has made some aspects of his job easier. When he first worked at “SNL,” one of his regular tasks was going to the New York Public Library on Thursday morning to conduct research for the costume designer. Now, he can pull up visual references with a quick Google search. Other technology, like 3D printers, have made it possible to re-create items like vintage belt buckles that prove impossible to find. There’s a centralized digital archive where, with a few clicks, he can look up any sketch performed in the live show or dress rehearsal since 1975.
But over the years, the show has also grown more ambitious and production values have soared. There is now a film division that creates cinematic pretaped segments in a matter of days. When he first worked at “SNL,” the costume department consisted of four people. Now there are more than a dozen people on the design team alone.
His work begins in earnest on Wednesday nights. The read-through ends around 8 p.m. Then, executive producer Michaels whittles a pile of 40 or so sketches down to about 15 — maybe 10 that everyone agrees on, plus another five outliers. Around 10 p.m., once the picks have been made, Broecker and his team will confer with the writers to come up with ideas for costumes. He often sketches directly on the script pages, which he prefers to print out even though they’re distributed on iPads.
“That’s when it all really begins to take shape,” Broecker says.
From sketch to diner lobster
On a massive whiteboard in the wardrobe department is a grid listing the sketches for the week and who’s starring in them. If a cast member is slated to appear in a sketch, there’s an X under their name. Red ink indicates they’re playing a real person (e.g. Lionel Richie); blue signifies a recurring character.
On Thursday, he gets in around 7:30 or 8 a.m. and does a breakdown of the costumes for each sketch before a 9 a.m. meeting with his team. They spend most of the day assembling the looks for the week — shopping at stores like Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s, renting from high-quality vintage houses, creating looks from scratch, or pulling garments from the show’s vast costume closet.
Much of Broecker’s work involves figuring out how a costume can enhance a joke instead of overwhelming it. Sometimes inspiration comes from unexpected places. Back in 2018, Broecker was pulling together looks for a celebrated “Les Misérables” musical parody in which Kenan Thompson plays a lobster in a New York City diner who pleads to be spared from a customer who wants to eat him. Figuring out the head piece and the lobster hands was a particular challenge for Broecker. He was at Chelsea Market, the popular foodie destination, on Friday afternoon when it dawned on him: “Isn’t it easier just to see the actual thing in person?”
So he bought a steamed lobster, with a side of melted butter, and brought it back to the office. That way, he says, “Everyone could have a taste of lobster before we dissected it to see exactly what the color looked like, how the antennae go out and how the eyes interface.”
Friday brings additional rewrites and costume fittings that can end after midnight. Saturdays are predictably crazy. At 12:30 p.m., there’s a tech dress rehearsal, which is the first time the host gets to run through their sketches with wigs, costumes and specialty makeup. It goes until about 5:30 p.m., and is followed by more fine-tuning. “We usually work through dinner,” Broecker says. Then it’s time for dress rehearsal at 8 p.m. with a full audience in studio. After that, three more sketches usually get axed. During the live show, Broecker tends to hang out near the control room so he can track any additional changes and disperse the relevant information to the cast and their dressers. “Sometimes a cast member will be in either one sketch or another, so they’re not sure whether they should be in this outfit or that outfit,” he says.
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1. Tom Broecker’s preliminary drawing for the costume worn by Ariana Grande in the “Castrati” sketch. (Tom Broecker/NBC) 2. Ariana Grande, center, in the costume. (NBC/Will Heath/NBC)
The show wraps at 1 a.m. Then it’s back to work on Monday, with a new host, whose acting ability and artistic sensibility can have a huge impact on the episode.
Ariana Grande, who hosted “SNL” in October, was a standout, Broecker says. “She’s an amazing variety performer and she loves just doing all different kinds of things.” Broecker and his team created roughly 200 costumes for the episode, including a ruffled collar and breeches Grande wore to portray a traumatized castrato and a prosthetic bustline for her turn as Jennifer Coolidge. (Sadly, a Judy Garland homage and a 1910s-set sketch were cut.)
Because of the relentless pace of “SNL” and constant on-the-fly adjustment it requires, “I always feel secure if we have a host who’s done theater, even high school theater,” Broecker says.
Where the magic lives
On the ninth floor of 30 Rock is the costume storage room Broecker calls the “land of magic” — a vast space lined from floor to ceiling with racks of clothing and accessories, sorted by era and type (“period sleepwear,” “ ’80s/’90s long-sleeved shirts,” “rocker shorts”) “I tend to not let people up here,” he says. “This gives you a sense of the scope.”
Broecker regularly pulls items from the magic room, but leaned on this cache especially hard during the height of COVID-19, when many bricks-and-mortar stores in New York City were closed. “This became invaluable. This is how we were able to do the show,” he says. Broecker estimates that in any given week, about 60% of the costumes come from contemporary shopping.
Broecker believes in destiny when it comes to buying for the show, often scooping up items that will come in handy years later. “When I am out [shopping], if I see something, there’s a reason I’m seeing it,” he says. “At that particular moment, the universe is telling me, I need that. Buy it!”
Once a cast member leaves the show, their costumes are boxed up, logged in a database and sent to a warehouse in Brooklyn. “There are things we’re still uncovering,” Broecker says, pulling a red and black chevron-striped bathing suit from a rack. It was worn by Gilda Radner in a sketch with Carrie Fisher in 1978, but is in pristine condition. Karen Roston, one of the original costume designers on “SNL,” had it in storage at her home for decades. “I nerded out so badly because I didn’t know this was even around anymore,” he says.
By his own admission, Broecker is particularly fond of the women of “SNL.” He gets emotional as he talks about creating a beaded, asymmetrical bodysuit for Kristen Wiig in “La Maison Du Bang!” a spoof of kitschy European variety shows. “Kristen is a goddess,” he says. “I know people always talk about the boys of ‘SNL’ but if you look at the comedy of ‘SNL,’ it’s really [about] the women. They are so special. Not that the guys aren’t special. But the women, I think, are amazing.”
For Broecker, “SNL” is a collective effort. “The only reason we can do what we do in every department is we have the best people in New York City,” he says.
By way of example, he recalls how they were able to track down Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s original “Hamilton” costume for a recent cameo by the star. A costume supervisor at “SNL” had previously worked with “Hamilton” costume designer Paul Tazewell on “West Side Story” and gave him a call. Through Tazewell, they learned that the costume was in a warehouse upstate. Soon enough, an assistant was in a car to retrieve it just in time for broadcast.
“That’s the sort of seamless magic that this place does,” Broecker says. “And that’s why I say — I’m gonna tear up — there’s no place like it.”
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