Don't be precious
And other life lessons from Tom Broecker, the costume designer of '30 Rock,' 'SNL,' and the 'Mean Girls' reboot.
When I was a kid, my sister and I terrorized our older brother by singing showtunes every time we got in the car. Pipsqueaks on wheels, belting along to the original cast recordings of Wicked, Mamma Mia!, and Hairspray. I can now hold two ideas in my head: We had so much fun, and I feel so bad for our brother. Why did our parents let us do this? I think they thought it was cute.
Musicals haven’t been part of my Spotify life for a long time. But in the chilly early days of this year, I’ve found myself yearning for the wholesome mania that musical theater can incite in a person. On a New Year’s drive to CVS, my friend Rebecca and I put on Wicked — we had been talking about the movie adaptation that’s coming out in November — and I was amazed at how easily the words tumbled out. It’s nice to know that when my brain hits its storage limit, “Popular” will be accounted for.
Last week, I ran errands while listening to the Mean Girls musical, which debuted on Broadway in 2018. I was preparing for the release, this past Friday, of the movie adaptation of the stage adaptation of the now-classic 2004 movie. (Got that?) Not every song is great, but Regina George’s best number, “Someone Gets Hurt,” is the kind of showstopper that makes you want to cry and dry heave, then play it again. I kept trying to sing along, only to get choked up by the key change.
Musical theater is a safe place to put your biggest feelings, whether you’re 13 or 32.
Mean Girls (2024) is a difficult trick to pull off. For many millennials, the original movie is a foundational text; I was in seventh grade when it came out, and I could not tell you how many times I’ve seen it. Dozens? For a reboot to work, it would have to reference the 2004 movie, hitting familiar plot points and gags, while feeling like its own thing. A faithful recreation would be a losing project.
I’m pleased to say that I had a great time at Mean Girls last week. The best jokes were new ones — Tina Fey sings precisely one bar in the movie, and it made me COL (cackle out loud) — and the actors who gave the strongest performances were those whose characters felt truly distinct from their 2004 counterparts. Reneé Rapp, as Regina, oozes evil charisma and comes off as cool and scary, rather than fake-nice. Tasked with delivering Damian’s famous line “That’s why her hair is so big, it’s full of secrets,” Jaquel Spivey gave a reading that felt surprising and, to this millennial, rather inspired.
For costume designer Tom Broecker, Mean Girls (2024) involved a lot of conversations about when and how much to reference key looks from the original movie. Here’s the thing: Mean Girls is a fashion movie, with a lot of very iconic outfits and clothing-based plot points. You’ve got the Plastics’ fashion rules (pink on Wednesdays), the sexy Halloween costumes (sexy mouse, sexy cat, etc.), the sexy Santa outfits, Regina’s trendsetting nipple shirt, etc. When Broecker paid homage to the costumes in the original movie, he did so in a way that felt updated and current. The black off-the-shoulder sweater with visible blue bra straps that Regina wears while distributing the Burn Book became a more sculptural look (see above), paired with black leather pants rather than jeans.
(I specifically mention that outfit because it was very important to 13-year-old Eliza. At the time, all the coolest girls in my grade were wearing off-the-shoulder sweaters, which struck me as tremendously grown-up and put-together. Rachel McAdams’s Mean Girls look was the pinnacle of chic.)
Broecker has been a person of interest to me for a while; among other movies and TV shows, his credits include three decades on Saturday Night Live and nearly all of 30 Rock. Naturally, I seized this opportunity to ask him about Mean Girls, his longtime collaboration with Tina Fey, and the art of costuming under pressure. We spoke over Zoom on Thursday afternoon, at the only time of day when my desk gets good sunlight (1:30 to 2 p.m.). Broecker was calling from New York City, where he lives.
The costumes in the new Mean Girls often reference looks from the original movie. How did you approach the task of updating those very well-known outfits for Gen Z, while making the visuals feel fresh?
Well, first of all, I was really anxious for all of those reasons. This is an iconic movie, so why do it? Why update it? The looks were very 2004, Y2K, very specific and amazing. They became iconic. But you don’t start off making something iconic, right? When you’re writing, you don’t sit down at your computer and say, “This is going to win the Pulitzer Prize.”
One of the super, super hard things for us is that [Y2K fashion] is very popular right now. It was a weird thing at times going, “Wait, this skirt from the original is now this skirt, and it almost looks identical.” The snake is eating its tail. It’s all self-referencing in a weird way.
Part of it is also, who are these [characters]? They have the same name, but they are being played by different actors. Those actors are bringing their own sense of self and identity with each one of these characters.
The other important thing is to remember that the entire film is framed from the standpoint of Janis and Damian. [Ed note: The two act as narrators in the musical.] This film is being told as a cautionary tale, at this specific school in a suburb of Chicago. It’s not the Euphoria school, it’s not the Gossip Girl school. This is somewhere in the middle of America outside of Chicago. And the visual-ness of the school was super, super important in what the visual language and the students looked like. I know the directors spent a long time trying to find a school that they felt was reflective of the particular story that they were trying to tell. We really pushed into that, trying to make it a visual whole.
I did want to talk about Janis’s costuming because she felt very distinctive. In this version, she’s really into needlework and string art, and there’s a beautiful piece of embroidery on the back of one of her jackets.
So many people want to talk more about the Plastics. On some level, the Plastics are the least interesting people in the whole movie. Because of the framing device, Janis and Damian are so important to me, and then Regina is so important. Those three people carry the visual weight of what we were trying to do with the film.
[With Janis] you can see the influence of Willow Smith, Kristen Stewart, and a little Billie Eilish. The thing with Janis’s character is the importance of her needlework and her artwork and sort of theater geek-ness. It was really important to have her clothes have a lot of texture and a lot of yarn work. I think every one of her clothes, with the exception of the tuxedo she wears to prom, were all consignment, thrifted, or secondhand.
One afternoon [while working on Mean Girls], I was shopping in the city on the weekend. I live by NYU, and I saw this NYU student standing there with her headphones in. She had the most amazing jeans on. She’d printed the actual pi number all over her jeans, stenciled the number on the lower part of her jeans. I thought it was so amazing, the tactile-ness of them. I did ask her if I could buy them.
Did she sell them to you?
She did not. I said, “Well, will you make me a pair?” And she goes, “No.” I said, “Is it okay if I copy them?” And she goes, “Yeah, you can do whatever you want.” Those pants just spoke to me so much of [Janis] and how she works. We tried to include a lot of that kind of texture. You don’t see it a lot, but on her shoes, there's all of this drawing and artwork.
And then Tina's daughter — she’s an artist. She did those portraits [that appear in Janis’s string art].
[Ed note: For her art show — you know, the one Cady blows off to throw a house party — Janis creates a three-dimensional yarn portrait of them and Damian.]
Okay, I was going to ask who did the embroidery and string art!
A friend of mine is an artist who does ceramics, string art, and fabric art, all that sort of stuff. I had her take the painting and the army jacket, and she did all of this string stuff to make them look more three-dimensional. It was a real collaboration between Tina’s daughter and this friend of mine to get that string quality.
That’s so cool, and Janis did feel very art school. Going back to the NYU student with the pi pants, I know on your Instagram you often post pictures of people on the street in New York. Can you tell me about that?
I'm endlessly fascinated by people. I talk to actors all the time about this: However we leave the house, we are reflecting something about ourselves, whether we're conscious of it or not. A lot of people aren't conscious of that. But it's super interesting to me, from a standpoint of psychology and how we engage with the world.
And people are so creative. What they come up with and how they look, it blows my mind sometimes. I've worked with directors who, when you put something on [an actor], say, “No, I don’t believe that. That person would never wear that.” And then you show them a picture of the person who that costume was based on, and they’re like, “Oh, right.”
Ultimately, a lot of it is about the energy of whatever you see. It works for that person [on the street] because that person is whole psychologically. My job is to interpret that energy and put it on a different person, a different actor, and a different character, to give me the same idea without it being a copy.
That sounds really challenging, but like a fun challenge.
To me, that's kind of the interesting part of my job. I think there are two kinds of people in the world: process-oriented people and results-oriented people. I am completely a process-oriented person. I love process: reading the script, talking with an actor, what the motivation is — all that stuff to get you to the final product.
Looking back at your body of work, what did you struggle with earlier in your career that you’ve now figured out?
One of the greatest things I have learned from SNL is that nothing is precious. Everything can be thrown out, and you have to start over. And that's just the way it is. [People sometimes say to me,] “You’re so calm about things.” I’m so calm because I can trust myself to know that this is what it is at this exact moment. In four hours, that moment may change. They may have cast someone completely different, and they’re not the same size, they don’t look the same, and everything about this character has to be changed and thrown out. You just have to go with it.
I have A and B, constantly, in my head. Knowing how to pivot at any given moment. It’s not that A is diminished in any way, but I trust myself. I guess that’s the biggest lesson: You have to learn to trust your instinct.
That ability to pivot makes a lot of sense with what you just said about being process-oriented. If you’re more results-oriented, it might feel a lot more brutal to throw out your work.
One time when I was on SNL, I was told: “In two weeks, we want to do this.” We hired extra people to get this big idea done. It was around Christmas time. All of a sudden, between dress and air, the whole thing was thrown out. In my mind, I’m going: Wait, you don’t understand! We’ve been working for two weeks! Then finally I was like, What do you care?
Right, like this is your job.
It’s my job. My job is to learn how to take that [work] and throw it all away. Do not attach. Because once you attach to something, it becomes too precious and doesn't allow you to move forward. You get stuck with attachment sometimes, I think. It's truly learning how to be in the moment and to not attach, but to do your job, which you've been hired to do.
I feel like I’m growing as a person as we’re talking about creative attachment.
It’s hard!
Across SNL, 30 Rock, and Mean Girls, how do you work with Tina Fey?
We grew up on SNL together, and we really developed this trust during 30 Rock. There were a lot of SNL-isms on 30 Rock in terms of: “I have this idea, can you execute it in an hour?” Part of comedy is living in the moment, and part of that moment is constantly turning itself and learning and learning and going forward and forward. The actor shows up and they have an idea, and all of a sudden, you have to make it happen.
I can sketch pretty quickly and just be like, “Okay, is this sort of what you're thinking?” And the phone has become an instrument of technology that we can't live without. You snap a photo, and three seconds later it’s on someone’s phone, and you can go, “Yes or no? Is this the idea? Is that good?”
When you’re working on SNL, is there, like, a giant warehouse of costumes? Where are you sourcing things?
We source everywhere, everything. Part of my job is to have memorized every store in New York City. I always go, “If I close my eyes and I’m walking on the fifth floor of Saks, starting on the lefthand side, three boutiques in is Alice + Olivia, and there you’ll see…”
During COVID, we began to really have to rely heavily on our stock of clothes. We do have a giant warehouse in 30 Rock itself of random things, I call them.
And then you alter those costumes that you have in the stockpile to suit the sketch?
Yeah. Part of the job, too, is seeing the garment and realizing what it does in every form possible. Without its sleeves, with its sleeves, worn backwards, worn frontwards. Are you just using the fabric and taking that apart? Are you turning it upside down? A garment is a thing, but it’s also something that becomes something else if you need it to.
What are your touchstones as a costume designer? I’m thinking about people whose work you really admire, or movies you really love, that for you feel like costume design at its very best.
I would follow David Fincher to the end of the world. [Ed note: The two worked on House of Cards.] He taught me so much about visual language. Those things I won’t ever forget and will carry with me to every job I ever do. That was a collaborative relationship that just really changed my existence.
Two movies — I mean, they're so super, super, super clichéd. Cabaret. You can’t go wrong. And also Singin’ in the Rain. Also, any Hitchcock, those Edith Head movies, any gown by Adrian.
I'm sort of always obsessed to see what my friend [the costume designer] Ellen Mirojnick does. Come on, Basic Instinct and Fatal Attraction? And then she does Oppenheimer. Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct are two of the greatest movies visually, and in every way possible.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Love ya!
Eliza