Spencer Williams: Well, friends, I am so excited to welcome back my friend, Saturday Night Live costume designer Tom Broecker. Good morning, Tom. 

Tom Broecker: Good morning. It’s really morning for you. It’s sort of mid-morning for me…

Spencer Williams: You’re a busy guy, so this is the only way  I can catch you before you start working again!

Tom Broecker: Exactly.

Spencer Williams: It had to be done. I am so excited to talk to you. I was doing the math this morning, which was also difficult. It appears you’ve now been nominated nine times for the Costume Designer Guild Award in “Excellence in Variety, Reality-Competition, or Live Television.” That’s a pretty good record there. How does it feel to be nominated once again, especially by your peers in the Costume Designer’s Guild?

Tom Broecker: It’s always an incredible honor. This award means a lot because it comes from costume designers, and it’s all about costume designers. It comes from us. It has a specialness. Don’t get me wrong, there are other awards, and all that sort of stuff is amazing. But there’s something about this being from the people who know what you do; it is really special.

Spencer Williams: You are being honored by the best of the best!

Tom Broecker: Exactly! Your peers understand and know what you do and how you do it. It’s very special.

Spencer Williams: Well, we are going all the way back for this episode to Season 48. Let’s get into episode ten, which was hosted by Aubrey Plaza featuring musical guest, Sam Smith. There were some really, really great skits in this one. But first, this was also the introduction of the George Santos character, which feels so hilarious now, because we’ve gone through this entire arc as a country. What was it like working with Bowen Yang on that initial costume?

Tom Broecker: George Santos has a very specific look, so it wasn’t too hard to kind of push into what that look was. This was also the episode where he wore the red sequin dress as the drag queen Kitara Ravache. We did the cutaway to him in that beautiful beaded red dress. Bowen is just such a great person to work with, and he’s so intuitive. It’s a great collaboration.

The glasses play a big role. The sweater with the jacket adds another layer of ridiculousness to George Santos’ attire. To come full circle, a couple of weeks ago, we did his big goodbye, which was wonderful and amazing. It was funny because everyone was surprised to see him wearing a cape. I had always thought, ‘George Santos, I guarantee you, is crazy and dresses theatrically, but he would not wear a cape.’ In our version, however, he did wear a cape.

Spencer Williams: That’s so funny. I love how Bowen will do anything. We just had Valerie Klarich on the podcast, who worked with him on Dicks: The Musical, and she had the same sentiment. He’s just willing to go there.

Tom Broecker: Yeah, if he trusts you, which we’ve never given him any reason not to *both laugh*, he’s willing to sort of do anything.

Spencer Williams: I love that! Getting into the Aubrey Plaza skits… One of the first ones was the Miss Universe pageant. There were lots of pageant gowns!

Tom Broecker: This episode, in particular, was variety-oriented. So, doing pageants is always fun, right? Depending on the theme, like this world pageant, we had to incorporate gowns reflective of the countries they represented. We drew inspiration from a real pageant that had recently happened, adding a touch of ‘based on true events’ to it. We played with colors and other elements.

Spencer Williams: The real pageant had just just happened, too. So this all came together very quickly.

Tom Broecker: It did! One great thing about working on Saturday Night Live is the ability to make last-minute changes right before it airs. Even during the show, we can make on-the-fly edits. It keeps things very of the minute. If something unexpected happens or we notice a need for an edit, we have the flexibility to do it—no need to wait for months for editing and putting it on air.

Spencer Williams: That sounds intense. Your blood pressure must be through the roof.

Tom Broecker: Surprisingly, I stay pretty mellow about it. Externally, I’m supposed to maintain a sense of calm. It’s a bit like working in an emergency room; doctors stay mellow because everyone around them is frantic. I have to bring a degree of complete calmness, especially when actors are freaking out. You don’t want to add to the chaos.

Spencer Williams: This brings me to another stressful environment—the Black Lotus Hotel, a recreation of our beloved White Lotus. It was a fun one, filled with vibrant and colorful costumes, which is what we love about The White Lotus. So, take us back to creating the Black Lotus, one of my favorite sketches in a while.

Tom Broecker: I thought the writers did a great job revisiting and shifting the perspective to make it Black-oriented. The film unit has around 24 hours to get their outfits together, while we on the live show team have between 36 and 40 hours. Sometimes, that extra 12 hours is much needed.

Spencer Williams: I would want to be on your team.

Tom Broecker: Exactly. They do a fantastic job cranking out these outfits beautifully. The White Lotus was so well-designed that parodying it was relatively easy. The clothes were brilliant, and the ability to instantly recognize what we were parodying is a credit to that show and its designs.

Spencer Williams: Yes! Shout out to The White Lotus costume designer, Alex Bovaird. The pink scarf instantly took you there. You knew exactly when you saw it.

Tom Broecker: Exactly. It was so much fun, and it’s always great when you can kick it up a notch. Seeing a beautifully designed show like that, you think, “Okay, this is Black Lotus, so let’s put another spin on it and make it a bit more Afrocentric.”

Spencer Williams: It’s so good. I was laughing so much.

Tom Broecker: Well, and the host is brilliant. Half the people didn’t even recognize her, and her outfit was just amazing.

Spencer Williams: Very transformative. I think the most variety had to have come down to the Avatar skit, which I’m a big Avatar nerd. Throughout the sketch, I kept wondering how Aubrey Plaza got herself covered in all that blue paint. But then, when the lights kicked on, it all clicked for me. Oh, yeah!

Tom Broecker: That was an incredible feat. I was thinking, “How are we going to paint these people to achieve that Avatar look?” Because, as you know, in Avatar, they’re CGI, and there’s a seamless quality to them, devoid of human characteristics. Trying to translate that in 30 seconds, from getting the paint on to off, was a challenge. First and foremost, we had to figure out how that was going to happen. The sketch’s technical aspect didn’t come from a writing standpoint but rather from a real-life incident six months prior on a talk show, where someone accidentally turned the people on screen blue. We decided to replicate that technology for this sketch, which meant reverse engineering everything.

We had to sit with the color wheel and ensure everything was reversed. If a feather had to read red, we painted it green because everything had to be the opposite. It was a crazy, mind-bending process, including production design, as we recreated a specific Avatar scene. We studied pictures and focused on details like loincloths, feathers, and beads, which had about 15 colors. It was a nightmarish process, but once you got into the mindset and saw the sketch come together, it was mind-bending.

Spencer Williams: My mind was blown when the lights kicked on. I had just seen her as April Ludgate on Weekend Update seconds before, and I was like, “Maybe it’s not live.” It was kind of an upside-down moment.

Tom Broecker: It is live! We had to organize the show so she’d have time to change and get into the wigs. There’s no way you can spend three and a half hours painting someone. The most time a host usually has to change is two and a half minutes.

Spencer Williams: This skit is exciting because you’ve been doing this for a few years, and it’s exciting that you get to learn and try new things.

Tom Broecker: Exactly. This was a huge learning curve and a significant challenge to figure out the technology and work closely with the video team to understand how the lights, colors, and effects would work. Despite my years of experience, every show brings something new to learn. This was a big learning curve.

Spencer Williams: The final skit we’ll discuss also heavily involved color. It was the black and white film noir skit featuring Aubrey and Sharon Stone.

Tom Broecker: Sharon was amazing! She had come on to play the goddess in the Sam Smith song. When you have someone like Sharon Stone on the show, you want her in a sketch, and she was fantastic. It was my first time meeting her, and she’s amazing to work with. She knows how to make things work, posing effortlessly. We had about five dresses to try on, and she’s a true professional. Going from the Avatar skit to this was a lot.

Spencer Williams: Yeah. And she wasn’t blue in this one. Mission accomplished.

Tom Broecker: No, no one was blue. But working with black and white isn’t always straightforward. Sometimes a red dress on camera reads differently, so you have to work with the technology to get the colors and textures right for the black-and-white film noir effect. It may not necessarily translate the same way to the camera as it does to the audience.

Spencer Williams: This episode is truly well-packaged. It’s hilarious, and everyone should go back and rewatch it. 

Tom Broecker: I had to go back and rewatch it too. I forgot how good this episode is—the comedy, the design, the performances. It’s one of those standout episodes.

Spencer Williams: It is brilliant! But Saturday Night Live is not all you have going on. Any other projects the world needs to know about?

Tom Broecker: Currently, Mean Girls, the movie musical is in theaters. Off Broadway, there’s a production of Little Shop of Horrors, with Evan Rachel Wood. I’m off to discuss costumes at the Metropolitan Opera for a production in September. I like to keep busy.

Spencer Williams: Amazing! Costume designer Tom Broecker, thank you so much for joining the podcast again. It’s always a joy spending time with you.

Tom Broecker: Thank you!