Jeff Heller
Tom Broecker is an Emmy Award-winning Costume Designer who has worked on NBC’s Saturday Night Live for the last thirty years. Broecker, who got his start on Broadway, has worked on TV series such as Flesh and Bone and Happyish, as well as films such as 2022’s Bros and 2024’s Mean Girls.
We recently had the chance to speak with Broecker, and he broke down some notable sketches from this past season of Saturday Night Live.
Host: Kristen Wiig
Air Date: April 6, 2024
Sketch: La Maison Du Bang!
You’re given the task of creating wardrobe for a ‘70s French variety show. From where are drawing inspiration?
Well, you know, the beautiful part of being here this long is watching how the Internet has been able to influence all of us who work on the show. Back in the old days, we used to have to go to the library to quickly find inspiration. And now the computer can provide lots and lots and lots of information for us, as well as places like Instagram. So, we were looking at all of these French and Italian variety shows on Getty images and Google images, which provided a lot for us. Initially, we were looking at Serge Gainsbourg and all these beautiful, interesting French people from the ‘70s. Then we started looking at this thing called Disco Bambino, which provided us with a lot of beautiful inspiration. And so we settled on a color palette of lilac and rose and sparkle and that kind of ‘70s overtones.
And then with Kristen’s one-legged jumpsuit, my incredible assistant, Ashley, found this amazing bandex, which literally combined every color that we were using into the color palette. And I was just like, ‘Oh my God, how often does that work?’ There is some sort of perfect fabric that sort of speaks to the entire sketch. Kristen was so funny in that sketch. I adore Kristen. She can make so many things work.
Host: Kristen Wiig
Air Date: April 6, 2024
Sketch: Secretaries
Secretaries is a 1960s ‘Mad Men’-inspired sketch. Are you designing new costumes or are you able to utilize costumes from previous 60s-set sketches?
So, that’s a character that Heidi had done a couple of months before, so we had Heidi’s character’s look from before. But for Kristen, we had to come up with a whole new version, which was similar to Heidi’s. And there were tricks that had to be done. Her blouse had to fly off, her skirt had to fly off. So there were sort of tricks in the vernacular of the ‘60s that we had to do. We did have one or two of the suits, but then I had to go vintage.
Early Halloween is a really amazing vintage place I go to a lot. I ran there early Friday morning to borrow some of the suits from them. I think there was a little bit of a mishap in that with the hair and makeup. When Bowen got his wig on, there was some glue that had fallen onto his costumes. I don’t know if it was the dress or on the air show. But we were able to use some of the things we have here and find new things for inspiration.
Host: Kristen Wiig
Air Date: April 6, 2024
Sketch: Weekend Update: Earthquake and Eclipse
Walk me through the process of designing costumes for such abstract ideas.
Yeah, that was a fun. My assistant actually had a fun time on that one as well. We went through several iterations of the New York earthquake and how that was going to represent itself, as far as how we could get the buildings to shake on springs and how it had to fit on the head. They wanted to have this sort of Lego quality to it and also have kind of a high school science project graduation cap look to it. Using all the words that they were using to describe it to us. We started doing this really great stuff with 3D printing, so some of those buildings we were able to be 3D printed, like the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. And then at the last minute we sent one of our PAs out into Times Square at like nine o’clock at night to go find a little yellow cab at one of the tourist bodegas. So, she ran out very quickly and came back then just sort of quickly put that on a spring so that it could jumble around.
We were literally praying to God that nothing was going to come off because they were very delicately put on because they did need to move on springs, but at the same time, you didn’t want them to go flying off. So, it really needed to hold for 10 minutes, but also we didn’t know how hard Marcelo was going to move his head and do all that sort of stuff. So it’s very delicate balancing sometimes.
Host: Maya Rudolph
Air Date: May 11, 2024
Sketch: Mothers’ Day Opening Monologue
You went full diva for Maya’s monologue. What was your inspiration for her outfit and for the backup dancers?
Well, she came in and sort of was like, ‘Okay, I want to do this mashup between Madonna and Beyonce,’ and have her represent everything; every kind of mother as well as the television show ‘Legendary,’ which was on HBO and was basically a dance competition show based on the 1980s ballroom scene. So, there were a lot of visual referencing that we were doing in that. We just went full on Madonna and Beyonce. Maya was like, ‘I want to be in a structured one piece leotard that snatches my body and represents a mother.’ So, as you can see, we leaned in a lot to Beyonce on that.
And then for the backup dancers, there was an, the writer initially showed me a picture from the Beyonce Renaissance tour. And I was like, ‘I think we, I think we can do better, because I also hear overtones of Madonna and Vogue in that particular song,’ and Voguing is very big in the ballroom scene. So we really of pushed it. I showed the writer some visual imagery from Legendary, I said, ‘What if we mash up Vogue and all of this Legendary’s visual imagery, and I’ll give you some sort of more Madonna, Renaissance tour funneled through the 17th century, and I think you’ll be able to do boy, boy, girl, girl, boy, gender fluid.’
Host: Ryan Gosling
Air Date: April 13, 2024
Sketch: Beavis & Butthead
You used the t-shirts from the marketing of “Beavis & Butthead” and not the actual band shirts that they wear on the show. Was that a matter of clearances?
I think it was a matter of clearance. We tried the sketch like five or six years previous with a different host and the sketch didn’t make it. The sketch wasn’t funny for some reason. No one quite understands why, because it was, I would say, 70% still the same sketch. So, you know, different actors, different situations, they updated the context. Kenan wasn’t in it, Heidi wasn’t in it. So, I think having those two people as the straight people and having Ryan in it really changed the tone.
And I think it was a combination of Mikey Day and Streeter Seidell, who wrote the sketch. Those were the t-shirts they really wanted to do. So, that came from them, that didn’t come from us. I don’t know if they thought that we couldn’t get the clearance or not, but sometimes I just do what I’m told. And if I trust the writer and the actor, and if that’s what they want, and they feel like that’s going to make the sketch, I trust them enough to understand that they know what they’re doing.
You can watch our full interview with Tom Broecker, in which he talks about how he got started at “Saturday Night Live,” as well as his hectic show schedule, below.
“Saturday Night Live” is currently streaming on Peacock.
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