All products are independently selected by our editors. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission.
In The Scenario, reporter Kirbie Johnson takes readers behind the scenes of the buzziest movies and TV shows to reveal how the best wigs, special effects makeup, and more are created. For this edition, Johnson spoke with Saturday Night’s hair department head, Janine Thompson, and makeup department head, Tricia Sawyer, about the tensions and triumphs of transforming a motley crew of actors into a ferocious troupe of late-night comedy legends.
Saturday Night Live celebrates 50 years on the air this year. Saturday Night, the film by director Jason Reitman, explores the catastrophes, hijinks, and corporate politics that could have kept the show from ever airing. The movie, which came out on October 11 (the show’s anniversary), follows the show’s original cast and its creator, Lorne Michaels, in a reimagined version of the 90 minutes leading up to its first live broadcast in 1975.
Of course, SNL has been around for five decades now, all along plucking no-name comedians (Adam Sandler, Amy Poehler, and Bowen Yang, just to name my three personal favorites) from obscurity and developing them into A-list stars. The original cast included young, unmanicured versions of comedy legends like Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, and Jane Curtain, who are depicted in the film by an ensemble of established actors (Dylan O’Brien, Rachel Sennott, Lamorne Morris) and up-and-comers (Cory Michael Smith, Gabriel Labelle, Matt Wood) alike.
The film’s Emmy-winning hair department head Janine Thompson (The Morning Show, Avengers: End Game and Infinity War, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) and Emmy-nominated makeup department head Tricia Sawyer (Palm Royale, Love & Death, Wandavision) spoke with Allure about the challenges they faced transforming one pretty beloved cast into another beloved cast from comedy history. “There were obvious things you're not going to be able to match [exactly],” Thompson says, given that many of the actors only bear a vague resemblance to their character counterparts. “They don't look the same. And [Reitman] was good with that. He said to get them as close to the ‘feel and the vibe’ as you can.”
That meant the hair and makeup departments were tasked not with creating exact replicas of the original cast but instead playing subtle tricks on the eyes and mind. “When doing a likeness makeup, I think it is the total sum of the smallest details that can alter your perception of the actor in front of the camera,” Sawyer says.
The hair and makeup teams often had to work on five to six actors each morning, but ultimately were able to get everyone on set within two to three hours—a huge feat given the main cast included upwards of a dozen people. The transformations in the film are uncanny, but surprisingly, their looks weren’t executed with (too many) prosthetics. Rather, Thompson and Sawyer leaned into traditional movie magic devices like clever wig application, contouring, and old-age makeup. Keep reading to learn who shaved their eyebrows, who spent hours getting their hair curled, and who sported prosthetic moles.
Dylan O’Brien as Dan Aykroyd
Thompson says the most difficult character for her to create was Dan Aykroyd, played by O’Brien, given the differences in their respective builds and appearances. “[Aykroyd] had a head that was massive,” Thompson says. “He was a huge, lumbering person, and Dylan is not.” While Aykroyd was 22 when SNL premiered, O’Brien was 32 while filming, which helped create the illusion of O’Brien appearing more overpowering in stature.
Thompson also notes that Aykroyd had naturally unruly hair that “appeared like a wig”— a stark contrast to O’Brien’s wavy but controlled coif—so her other primary challenge was to make O’Brien’s wig look unkempt with Aykroyd’s signature cowlicks without it distracting the audience. And it couldn’t minimize the surface area of O’Brien’s head in any way; again, that head needed to look as big as possible. Thompson also concealed O’Brien’s natural hairline to trick the eye into thinking he had a larger forehead.
Luckily, that’s where the challenges ended with O’Brien. “Dylan's a character… He's so much fun but incredibly professional at the same time,” Thompson says. “He walks in and seems like he's just the cool kid on the street, but you get down to brass tacks and that kid knows exactly what he's doing and super smart; it's kind of no bullshit.”
Cory Michael Smith as Chevy Chase
Cory Michael Smith plays Chase’s trademark arrogance with so much flair, it’s hard not to root for him on screen (even if you don’t want to). Because Smith already looked rather similar to a young Chase, the hair department was able to recreate the latter’s distinct rectangular hairline and floppy comb-over style by zhuzhing Smith’s natural hair. “That was the main goal every morning: to get that [rectangular] shape. We had to really finesse it,” Thompson says. “And the poor guy; we had to cut his hair shorter on the top, and he had to wear [it like] that for two months, but he still managed to make it look really cute when he wasn't shooting.”
Nicholas Braun as Jim Henson and Andy Kaufman
Braun is the only actor to portray two iconic figures, Andy Kaufman and Jim Henson (yes, the Muppets legend), in the film, which meant he spent a lot of time in the hair and makeup trailer and that his filming schedule ensured he only shot one character a day. “[Braun] is so game for all of it, and he's very meticulous and into all the details,” Sawyer says. “So he was a lot of fun to find the character with.”
For his transformation into Henson, a custom mustache and beard were created to reflect Henson’s signature, hippie-like facial hair. These hairpieces were separated to allow for facial movement and so the mustache could be easily removed with alcohol for meals. Sawyer says she cleaned, groomed, and conditioned the mustache by using Davines OI All in One Leave In Hair Milk Spray, which she thinned out with water, and leaving it to dry overnight.
Sawyer also used the stretch and stipple method, a subtle aging technique used for on-camera work that utilizes bouncing a sponge covered with liquid latex—a product that, when dried, adds texture and wrinkles—to the skin to age him. To accentuate the wrinkles, Sawyer painted on fine lines and age spots.
For Kaufman, who in real life had no facial hair except for a prominent, expressive unibrow, Braun wore three prosthetic moles to mirror Kaufman’s plus an eyebrow appliance, while his natural brows were glued down to keep them in place. “Sasha Camacho Van Dyke at Vincent Van Dyke Effects made me a very small hand-tied lace hair piece that I could apply each day between [Braun’s] brows,” Sawyer says. “Andy’s sparse unibrow was one detail I felt we could add in aiding [Braun’s] transformation.”
Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner
Turning Hunt into Radner was an undertaking for the team; while most of the other actors could be transformed by simply changing their hair or adding a mustache, Radner required the addition of distinct eye bags and a “unique nose.” This had Sawyer considering facial prosthetics, but ultimately she realized they only needed to use painting powder (a type of traditional face paint used in television and film) and some rather specific contouring to get Hunt into Radner territory. She also shaved Hunt’s brows into a similar shape as Radner’s to achieve the transformation. “[Hunt] was a trooper,” she says. “She had beautiful, bushy eyebrows, and I knew that was going to be a fight, but she was all about it.”
Rachel Sennott as Rosie Shuster
Rachel Sennott’s hair is long and straight with some texture—drastically different compared to her on-screen counterpart, Rosie Shuster’s. Surprisingly, she isn’t sporting a wig; a T3 Interchangeable Styling Wand was used to create those corkscrew curls, which was not as simple a task as it sounds. “That was an hour in the hair chair, putting those curls in—beating the curls into that poor girl's hair every single morning,” Thompson says.
Matt Wood as John Belushi
John Belushi, played by Matt Wood, seemed to be a difficult transformation for both Thompson and Sawyer, thanks to some hiccups with his facial hair and wig. “We went through a lot of different things with [Wood’s] beard,” Sawyer says. The production schedule changed (as one does), which meant the beard Wood initially grew out had to be shaved off to shoot other scenes in the film in which he is beardless. As a result, the makeup department was tasked with doing more work on Wood than originally planned. “We had to then lay that [facial] hair in every time,” Sawyer says. “That was thrown in at the last minute.”
Belushi’s thinning hair also provided a unique challenge for the hair department. “The Belushi wig was difficult, but once we got it, we got it,” Thompson says. “Belushi was thinning [on the top of his head], but he had big hair, and so we wanted specifically to be able to see down into the wig.” They toyed with the idea of applying a bald cap underneath the wig but ultimately opted to place a piece of skin-colored silk lining under the wig to create the illusion of less full hair. “[The filmmakers] did a shot where [Wood] started with the camera on the top of his head, because he was laying on a couch, and we were like, ‘Thank God today we got it perfect!’”
Gabriel LaBelle as Lorne Michaels
Gabriel LaBelle has naturally curly hair, whereas Michaels does not. Instead of putting a wig on LaBelle, Thompson instead had her key hairstylist straighten his hair each morning because LaBelle wasn’t accustomed to wearing wigs. “I thought the last thing he needed was to be stuck in a wig all day long if he hadn't worn one really before,” Thompson says. They styled LaBelle’s hair forward to bring his hairline down while also creating the illusion of recession on the corners similar to Michaels’s.
Lamorne Morris as Garrett Morris
Lamorne Morris’s character, Garrett Morris (no relation), was Juilliard-trained and the oldest member of the troupe; he was one of the few original SNL players who already had an established career before joining the show, which played a big part in how Lamorne carried himself in the role. “[Garrett] was educated. He was an opera singer. He'd worked forever. Lamorne just killed it,” Thompson says. “I thought it came from the way he moved his body.”
Lamorne wore a hand-tied wig, in which the hair was rounded to emulate Garrett’s head shape; the wig faded into his natural hairline—no reshaping needed. His lace sideburns were made of finely-chopped hair and were applied after his wig was secured with Baldiez adhesive. He sported his own home-grown mustache, which Thompson says initially he wasn’t supposed to have, as Garrett didn’t have one for the first episode. Lamorne, however, was “mortified” to shoot without it. Ultimately Reitman allowed him to keep his mustache because Garrett did eventually grow a mustache during later episodes of SNL. But halfway through filming, Lamorne changed his mind. “He decided not to wear his mustache,” Sawyer says, “So we ended up hand-laying [a fake one].”
I’ve barely scratched the surface of Saturday Night’s hair and makeup magic. There’s so much more, including but not limited to the use of bald caps, 27 wigs in total across the principal cast (plus shelves-worth of wigs for background actors), and a prosthetic penis for J.K. Simmon that, quite frankly, deserved more screen time. Besides designing each character’s look, Sawyer and Thompson also had to keep their teams (and actors) on schedule—no small feat to be proud of.
“Janine and I have been friends for 30 years, and we hadn't done a film together in a really long time,” Sawyer says. “So for me, it was really special to be able to work with her again and to do it together.”
More from The Scenario:
- Catherine O'Hara Wore a "Bus Load of Red Wigs" for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
- Nicola Coughlin Wears More Than $55,000 Worth of Wigs in Bridgerton Season 3
- Zendaya Ages 15 Years Without a Stitch of CGI or Prosthetic Makeup in Challengers
Now, see our latest cover shoot with Alia Bhatt:
