Today, AD is welcomed by Heidi Gardner, Chloe Fineman, and Ego Nwodim to tour the 'Saturday Night Live' set. 'SNL' has been broadcasting live from studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller since the show premiered in 1975. Over these impressive 50 years, the set has taken on many iterations, from a basement comedy club to the Brooklyn Bridge–always an ode to New York City. Join the ‘SNL’ cast to tour the studio’s current Grand Central set and see how the magic is made each Saturday night.
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00:00Hi A.D.! I'm Heidi Gardner. I'm Meg O'Wooden. And I'm Chloe Feinman. And this is Studio 8H, home of Saturday Night Live!
00:30So, this right here is Studio 8H, and I am standing on Home Base. You will recognize
00:42it because this is where the host comes out and does the monologue. It's also personal
00:47to me because this is where I did my audition for SNL. Home Base has actually changed a
00:52lot over 50 years, of course. Behind me is kind of an ode to Grand Central. It was designed
01:00by Joe DiTullio. I'm Joe DiTullio. I'm currently one of the production designers for Saturday
01:05Night Live, and I've been with the show for 30 seasons now. My name is Leo Yoshimura,
01:11and my Japanese name is Akira Yoshimura, which you'll see on the credits of Saturday Night
01:16Live. I've been here since 1975, so I've been here for 50 years. I've done every show
01:24except one when I went to see my son graduate from Pitzer. Home Base has always been what
01:30we call where the host comes out and a lot of stuff happens there because it's straight
01:34in front of the audience. That's got the tongue, which is a retractable stage. I believe the
01:39very first Home Base that we did in 75 was to represent a comedy club in New York in
01:46the basement of a West Village brownstone. The important thing is it's about New York.
01:53The Home Base evolved a bit. They always had a texture of New York, a brownstone. I recall
01:58the Brooklyn Bridge was a wonderful one. But I think the Grand Central set, this Home Base
02:03actually nails it pretty clearly, what we're talking about. I always felt like it was this
02:08arrival point for tourists and people that come to New York. I thought it was a nice comparison
02:13for Saturday Night Live in New York City. There was a clock that we actually had and we found in
02:191975. It started then and we kept hanging it in the sets. Now it's become such a part of our
02:27history that there is a stagehand, an old stagehand, Joe Riley, who goes and makes sure every
02:33Saturday that the clock is telling the exact right time and also that the clock is wound.
02:39It was a challenge to fit it into Grand Central because I thought, where are we going to put this
02:43clock? I ended up making a little storefront. It's a very special clock that's been here since
02:49the beginning, 50 years ago. This is what's keeping us on time. If we have a sketch that's
02:54cut for time, it's because we're watching this clock. I think Lauren is always referring to
02:58this clock and then says we don't have time for that one. The way the studio itself is laid out
03:05is we kind of call it stage 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, like a clock right around. So 1 and 2 is the music set
03:14and the home base. Stage 3 is 3A and 3B is broken into two pieces. That big stage can be split up
03:21into two. To my right is where the musical guest performs. We have a musical guest every week and
03:27they perform on this stage. Something that's pretty cool about this is before this studio
03:33housed SNL, the NBC orchestra would perform here. So we've been rocking for a long time.
03:43So when you guys are watching from home, you're seeing the angle that you're seeing right now.
03:48But what I'm seeing is not only the audience, but you know, say if you're doing weekend update,
03:53this is actually where they do the weekend update desk. There's camera straight down the center,
03:59two on each side. And then you've got cue cards, probably three sets of cards that they're pulling
04:05to each camera that you're supposed to be looking at. You're completely covered cards wise. Typically
04:10there's more sketches than there are stages. So sketches have to share stages. And sometimes
04:17after dress rehearsal, when it's decided what's going to go into the live show,
04:21they'll like figure out with the breakdown, like, oh, wait, actually, we can't do those two sketches
04:27back to back because they take place on the same stage or even, you know, one sketch in between
04:32them. It's like too quick of a turnover. The cold open typically happens here during the break
04:37between the cold open and the monologue. They're rolling up carpets. They're taking down walls.
04:42This whole thing just becomes what you're looking at now. But it might have been the Oval Office or
04:47a political rally, but they have to make that happen in, like,
04:50two and a half minutes tops. It's a real machine here.
05:00Observing the movement of the sets is part of our show, and it's always been part of our show.
05:05And that's part of the excitement. In other experiences, they'll treat it like a theater.
05:11They'll hide those moments from you. We like showing you what we do, and that's part of our
05:17show. There are 540 members on our crew, give or take. There's so many different departments that
05:25actually work on Studio 8H, from props to set design to cue cards. And the host actually walks
05:32through all of that to get here to the stage. So I'm going to kind of walk you through and show you
05:37some of our different departments. So while you're watching the cold open, I'm going to
05:44take you down the route that the host takes to get behind the stage before they pop out
05:48for their monologue. So back here, we're talking lighting. This studio is like the mecca of light.
05:56There's like a thousand lights making us look good. Right through here is our cue card department.
06:03So these are like changes on the fly. These are writing up cue cards right here. This is
06:09happening during the show because there's always changes for time. There's like a thousand to a
06:15thousand five hundred cue cards for every show. So the cue cards are a big deal here. They're
06:21our oxygen. They're our lifeline. Thank you, Wally and everyone who works in cue cards.
06:27We could not do this without you. The hosts, they're reading the cue cards. They're always
06:32in black. And then as a cast member, you just know your color. I usually get red or green. I
06:37get Christmas colors. I'm typically never blue, but you will see me in green. So the host is
06:42making their way, sneaking backstage, getting nervous for their monologue. And this area right
06:48here, this is called paint can alley. So this is where the paint is stored for sets. But also,
06:54this is where us is cast. And sometimes the host, if we have a quick change and can't get back to
06:59our dressing booths, we're fully peeling off our clothes back here and changing in a row. It gets a
07:05little crazy back here in paint can alley. Okay. So as we make our way up here and watch your head,
07:10as you can see, there's a sign, watch your head Farley. Cause Chris Farley used to run right into
07:16that. So one of the crew guys wrote Farley. So he'd watch his head. And now all of us do too.
07:21I've never ran into it. Okay. And this is the last leg of the host marathon journey to home base.
07:27They come behind stage three, a and three B and they sneak around and they make their way
07:34behind that door. And then they open it. And then history is made every Saturday.
07:47Okay. So this is the makeup lab here at SNL, which isn't what you normally think makeup is
07:54lip gloss F that no, no here we do molds, lots of molds. This is actually the mold room here
08:03and it's not creepy or weird at all. Oh my God. It's myself. This is me. Um, I had this cast done
08:11when I first started at the show. This I've been told is Eddie Murphy, which is crazy. So I'm going
08:16to touch it for good luck. When I started on the show day one, you get a cast made of your head,
08:23where sort of this, you can kind of see it here. This like blue goopy stuff is poured over you.
08:29Then this green stuff and then plaster. And it basically turns into a plaster mold of your face
08:34so that they can then use it to make mustaches, pimples, eyebrows. I don't know boobs on your head
08:40without you having to sit there and take a bunch of hours. We do facial hair. We do prosthetics.
08:46We do gizzards. We do rabbit noses. We're doing alien eyebrows. We're doing like weird growths
08:54on the back. It's my twin. She's the fun one, but it's not something that we're doing at a movie
09:00pace. No, we're doing it in like five hours or less, oftentimes less the wild wizard responsible
09:07for all of these amazing molds is Louie, our head of makeup. So we're going to go talk to him.
09:17Hey Louie. Hey Chloe. How you doing? What's she doing over here? Just pulling a print off of a
09:22printer. What in the heck? Yeah. One of the 3d printed faces. This is one of our former hosts.
09:29It's Jason Momoa.
09:30We do the head cast differently than when I started. When you started, we did a silicone
09:37cast with plastic bandages on it. You sat down and took about 20 minutes, 25 minutes.
09:41It felt like four hours. All this stuff goopy all over the place. Now they come in, you come in,
09:46we do a 3d scan. It takes about five minutes. Then we put it on these printers. Then we 3d
09:52print your face right on the printer comes out of the liquid, like the Terminator. And
09:56we have a live cast. No more muss, no more fuss. Wait, this is the little face I was talking about.
10:02That was the very first 3d print, 3d scan that we had ever done. Yeah. I had to have like a
10:07conjoined twin on Chloe's face. My sister. This is before we had any fancy scanners. I did this
10:13with a scan with my phone and 3d sculpted it really fast. What is the advantage of having
10:18these casts? Well, we never know what somebody's going to need on any given day. Last show,
10:23Sarah was going to be Matt Gaetz. Yeah. We didn't find out till Saturday at two o'clock.
10:28If we had to have her come in, do a live cast, make a print, it would take forever. We'd never
10:33have enough time. Well, thank you. I'm glad you came for a visit. I'm going to cook up some weird
10:38prosthetics this week. This is the wardrobe department at Saturday Night Live. They help
10:51bring our sketches to life. Like we can have an idea and we can talk about all the dialogue as
10:57much as we want. But until we see these characters embodied, it's not really a sketch. It's an idea.
11:02So they make it happen in here. It's really, really special. So I think it's best we talk
11:07to Tom Broker, who is the head costumer and producer of Saturday Night Live. Tom,
11:13your favorite is coming. Are you decent? So this is Tom Broker. We are in the closet in the wardrobe
11:20department. Tom, do you want to tell us what happens back here? What's the very first thing
11:24that happens? The very first thing in this magic closet is I tell an actor when they step in here
11:29to take their clothes off. Scandalous. But these closets back here, the senior members get closets
11:35back here. And basically each closet is supposed to be their normal clothes when they play themselves.
11:43And then also you'll see everyone has a box of characters that they do on the show often.
11:50Let's see what's perhaps in Ego's. I've never noticed this box down here. Oh,
11:55this was one of my favorites, actually. This is this lady. We love this lady. Veronda,
12:00the rich auntie with no kids. She was amazing. I am too blessed to be stressed.
12:06This is how we work here at Saturday Night Live, which is Ego had this really great character she
12:11wanted to do. And she showed this really amazing piece of research, this particular pajama outfit.
12:18And it was Dolce & Gabbana, I think. We found one pair in China and our turnaround is a little
12:26faster than China can send it to us. I think we sent that picture to you on Friday for a Saturday
12:29show, meaning the following day. Yes. We work with a fabric printer here in town. We send her a
12:35picture and he prints the whole thing on fabric like this. And then we made this overnight.
12:40Sometimes it is a little like, do you actually know it's Friday afternoon or it's Saturday
12:46morning? I know how it is to get that little rack wheeled in here with all those costumes on it,
12:50depending on how many sketches I'm in. And that's just for me. And when I see that rack, oftentimes
12:54I'm like, that's a lot of costumes. How many costumes are there in an episode? There's usually
12:59about 100 to 150 costumes per episode. It just depends on who the host is and how elaborate all
13:06those sketches are. We have a board that we map out each show. The script supervisor Wednesday
13:12night puts it together. We can see then what each actor is and what sketches and how they intersect.
13:18I often will come into wardrobe to go, what's on the board? What kind of week am I actually having?
13:23Because how I feel is different from what is reality sometimes. And I go, oh, OK, it's not so
13:27better. It's just such a cool visual representation of what's happening. It is true that that board,
13:33I think, as the seasons have progressed, has become a real big touchstone with most of the
13:38actors on the show, because it is easy to sort of get lost in rehearsals and doing taped pieces
13:45and all that sort of stuff. And so when they come in and they can actually see that, oh,
13:50I have one, I'm only in one or maybe I'm in eight or maybe I'm only an update or something. But
13:56everyone can kind of see what the situation is with the board.
14:01Tom, you know, I absolutely adore you. Everything this department does is incredible. It's magic.
14:05I love coming back here. I don't know what I would do if this space didn't exist. I don't know
14:09what the show would be if the space didn't exist. So thank you. Thank you. This is incredible.
14:20OK, now we are heading to arguably my favorite room in all of 8-H, the wig room.
14:30And I'm here with Jodi, the legend, the head of Arsenal Hair.
14:34Yes, ma'am.
14:35How's it going?
14:36Oh, here we go.
14:38Well, it's my favorite room for a lot of reasons. One is I'm right next to it
14:43and I come over and if you can't tell from Jodi's voice, she's the original suedeweda.
14:48Yes, I am.
14:49Oh, suedeweda.
14:50Suedeweda.
14:50Suedeweda.
14:51And so, you know, we'll talk shit and, you know, get through everything.
14:55We get through stuff.
14:56Yes.
14:57It's more counseling than wig designing.
15:00Yes. Tell us about these heads that are like almost conehead, but not quite.
15:05No. So these originally start out as canvas head blocks. If you remember when you first started,
15:12we do a wig bubble on you where the process is you sit down, we put plastic over your head and tape
15:18and you think we're going to kill you, but we don't.
15:21Yeah, it was a really torturous first day.
15:23It was scary, right?
15:25It's an old way of doing it in the original. We take head measurements and tape and hairline
15:31and we transfer that onto a canvas block and pad it out to the measurements that we took.
15:39Draw your hairline on there. We do a wig on these. We build on these.
15:44Then we put it on your head for the show on Saturday.
15:46Now, can we just show my favorite thing? Here are these bags that you have the wigs in.
15:52This is like the sisterhood of the travel wigs. No, literally. Let's take this wig.
15:57I wore it, but then it's like Aubrey Plaza wore it.
16:00How long does a wig like this take?
16:03For us, it takes about 50 hours or less.
16:09Most wig makers need 80 to more hours, but we don't have the time.
16:15If you show the inside, it's all lace and each hair is ventilated in one by one.
16:22Someone threads these by hand?
16:24It's almost like hooking a rug. It's real hair. It's human hair that's all mixed for these colors
16:30or we dye them and each hair is hooked in to the lace one hair at a time.
16:36How many wigs do we use in a show?
16:38On average, the least amount is usually about 80. It's 80 and up.
16:45That's not including just using your own hair. That's just wigs.
16:51This is our board and it shows you all the wigs that we used.
16:55The O on there means own hair. I think in this one, we had over 100 wigs.
17:02When we build a wig, we number it.
17:05Here's this wig and this is CF3. This is her third wig.
17:11We build the wig. Every time she wears it, we document the show,
17:17what the character was, and the sketch.
17:19Because if we need to bring that character back, I need to know which wig it is.
17:25We also have bibles. Everybody's called bibles, wig bibles.
17:30Look how big Kenan's is.
17:31Because he's been here forever.
17:33Forever.
17:34This is Chloe's.
17:36A nice size. Not too crazy.
17:39If you say to me, I'm going to play that OO girl on NFL Fox,
17:44and it comes back, because I'm not going to remember.
17:47You're not going to remember.
17:48Yeah, you just go to number three.
17:49We go to number three. This is every way that that wig has been styled.
17:54Well, I'm sorry that the wicked pre-tape was last minute and had a bunch of new impressions.
17:59We made it work.
18:00We made it work.
18:01Well, thank you so much.
18:02Thank you. Always.
18:04So, guys, this is the page desk.
18:17What is the page desk?
18:19It's the gathering place of the cast right before good night.
18:22Jenna Rossitano, our stage manager, will call on the intercom,
18:26cast get ready for good nights.
18:27And we all kind of gather here right before we step out
18:29to do that like big hugging scene at the end of the show.
18:32Also, this is where our pages sit.
18:34Some incredible people have been part of the page program,
18:38including Aubrey Plaza, who for her monologue came out here and was at the page desk.
18:44I was what they called a bad page.
18:47Some of them are executives at NBC.
18:49They get their start here at this desk.
18:52We're so grateful to them.
18:53And they are a big part of making Saturday Night Live run smoothly.
19:03So when we're coming into work, we walk down this hallway right here.
19:08And as you can see, there is so much history on the walls.
19:12SNL 50th is coming up.
19:13It's so exciting.
19:14And when I walk past these photographs, I'm like, whoa,
19:18I have the same job as Eddie Murphy.
19:20Heidi said that to me one time.
19:21And I'm like, you're right.
19:22I can't believe Eddie and I have shared the same stages.
19:25Eddie and I have walked down the same hall.
19:28It's so amazing to see the cast that came before us,
19:31the cast that have inspired us, and to know that eventually,
19:34one day, maybe our cast's photo will be on this wall.
19:45OK, so we're here at my home, my home away from home.
19:49And this is my dressing room now.
19:51The first time I saw Maynham in the store, it was obviously very surreal.
19:57It's hard to believe that you're on SNL,
19:59like an institution that's been around for 50 years.
20:01But welcome home.
20:06So since I spend a lot of time here,
20:10I wanted it to be a place that felt really good,
20:14felt really magical, inspiring to me.
20:18So my dressing room is basically my 16-year-old bedroom.
20:24Back home in Kansas City,
20:25these chili lights are inspired by my mom.
20:29She used to decorate her balcony with chili lights.
20:31And then there's all sorts of personal things, like my cat Tweaky.
20:35Louie from the makeup department made these Beavis and Butthead dolls
20:40of Mikey and Ryan Gosling from their Beavis and Butthead sketch.
20:45You put them right next to each other.
20:48This has become a new tradition that I've had recently,
20:51is whenever I have guests come to see the show,
20:54they get a little badge that gets them in.
20:56And I've been decorating the room with all the people who have been here.
20:59My childhood best friend, Michelle, she was here.
21:03Still a best friend.
21:04Recently, a friend got me all of these old SNL tapes.
21:07Best of Dana Carvey.
21:09Best of 96, 97.
21:11I think that was Will Ferrell and Molly Shannon
21:14and Sherry Oteri's first year, first or second year.
21:18Got a Mike Myers one down there.
21:20Mint Condition still in the package.
21:22So I know this room is a lot, but it actually brings me a lot of peace.
21:27Everything on every inch of this wall means something to me.
21:31It's something that either inspired me or continues to inspire me.
21:35There's pictures of my mom, my dad, two of my favorite pictures of them.
21:39It just feels like a home away from home.
21:42And I think you need that to work here at SNL.
21:45You need like a peace and a grounding.
21:48And it just so happens, you know,
21:50that my peace and grounding is around all this beautiful chaos, which is SNL.
22:06Well, we've shown you everything.
22:09I showed you the studio.
22:10I showed you the wardrobe department.
22:12I showed you some makeup and some hair.
22:15And now we actually have to go to work.
22:17Yeah, so bye, A.D.
22:19Bye, A.D.