Louie Zakarian sculpts the faces of comedy. As the makeup department head at “Saturday Night Live,” Zakarian spends long hours and nearly sleepless nights in the hallowed halls of 30 Rock and the show’s West Side studio.
This year, he and his team earned nods for Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup (for the Timothée Chalamet-hosted episode) and Outstanding Makeup for a Variety, Nonfiction or Reality Program (for “SNL50: The Anniversary Special“). Prosthetic dog noses, superfluous AI appendages, a mimicry of Donald Trump’s neck, numerous callback characters from “SNL” history and makeup for dozens of anniversary-related guests helped bring Zakarian’s crew the cross-category recognition.
In the prosthetics realm, his team is competing against effects-heavy contenders like “The Last of Us” and “The Penguin.” This is the first time in eight years that “SNL” has muscled its way in alongside the kind of large-scale dramas that almost always dominate the category.
It’s hardly new territory for Zakarian, though. Over roughly three decades, the makeup artist scored 10 Emmy wins from 18 total nominations. He noted that his workload ebbs and flows through the years, especially when it comes to prosthetics. While some seasons end up being lighter on makeup, others push his department to find new and creative ways to turn the actors into zany characters while following Lorne Michaels’ request to keep them recognizable.
Zakarian called this happy medium one of the toughest parts of his job, adding that, without this rule, he would have the actors “covered in so much rubber and silicone that you couldn’t see who they are.” The steady turnover in writers and cast members can significantly affect the outlandish designs the makeup team must create. “A cast member like [body-horror fanatic] Sarah Sherman comes in and she’s just like, ‘Whatever we can do, we want more,’” Zakarian explained.
Through concepts like the return of Will Ferrell’s Robert Goulet and a sketch based on “if a bunch of dumb little dogs talked and acted like people,” these makeup artists help make “SNL’s” comedy a reality.
Once scripts are selected after Wednesday’s table read, Zakarian and his team must bring their makeup to life in a matter of days. “Trying to build all that in the two days that we have is always kind of daunting,” he said. “We had to do the dogs, but then we also had to do Sarah as an old lady that gets resuscitated in an interesting kind of way.” Altogether, they made dog prosthetics for 10 cast members, all of whom required speedy costume changes between sketches.
“Every one is sculpted or molded to fit them,” Zakarian added. “That same episode had the AI sketch, where Bowen [Yang] and Timothée Chalamet had extra digits on their hands that we had to make as well. A lot of people didn’t even realize that they had extra digits, but sometimes it’s that little extra thing to help sell the sketch.”
Fan-favorite “SNL” characters can also make frequent appearances on the show. The team has begun naming iterations of James Austin Johnson’s Donald Trump makeup as if they were Iron Man suits (the current iteration of his presidential look is Mark VI). The anniversary special, for instance, had stars from the past return to characters they hadn’t played in years.
Recent highlights for Zakarian were Kristen Wiig’s big-foreheaded, tiny-handed Dooneese Maharelle (who, for one brief shot, has a third hand that inexplicably but deliberately pops into the frame) and Will Ferrell’s Robert Goulet. “Will Ferrell as Goulet again was really great,” he shared. “When he’s in the chair, as soon as that mustache goes on him, he’s Goulet. It’s kind of amazing.”
For the “SNL50” special, the makeup crew needed to prepare a lengthy list of celebrities for their various appearances. In the “New York 50th Musical” production number alone, more than two dozen actors shared the stage. Zakarian said the three-hour episode “was like doing two ‘SNLs’ in one week, and we did the Friday concert series as well that same week, so it was just nonstop back-to-back-to-back-to-back excitement, from one adrenaline rush to another.”
Even in a normal week, Zakarian’s team — and other “SNL” crews — must operate as a well-oiled machine to get the cast members ready for each sketch. “I have friends that come from L.A. that are makeup artists that work on huge-budget movies,” he said. “They want to come backstage and just watch the pit crew in action, try to see how it all happens.”
This story first ran in the Comedy issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the Down to the Wire Comedy issue here.
