Ready, Set, Go: ‘Saturday Night’ Production Designer Jess Gonchor on How He Recreated the Iconic 1975 ‘SNL’ Stage

Back to the ’70s

In the far corner, we can see the elevator shaft shown in the film, right next to the stage on which Billy Preston and his band perform. The massive lighting grids were used to create a ceiling of the two-story studio that was built. The vintage lights, called Mole-Richardson, are no longer in use because they’re not LED, and had to be sourced from all over the country.

Ticking Clock

In the film, Lorne Michaels (played by Gabriel LaBelle) has the idea to use real bricks on the stage, laid with real concrete, to give the set that classic New York street-corner feel. One catch: He makes that decision 90 minutes before the show goes live. This becomes a storytelling device: As the bricks multiply, the time to air shrinks. The brick incident (which may or may not have happened) also highlights the cast’s bond: When it becomes clear that the bricks won’t be laid in time, all the stars help. “It motivated everybody to get on the same page,” says Gonchor.

“It’s So Archaic, But So Amazing”

In the main photo, we can see a close-up of the red Mole-Richardson light that Gonchor describes. There is a camera and a camera crane. Fun fact: There are only two of these Chapman cranes, developed between 1953 and 1954, that exist today, and the Saturday Night team found one of the two still available in the U.S. The tech is so analog, lead weights are needed to balance out the cranes. “These are so old, you really only use them now for period movies like this. But they still work!” says Gonchor. For the camera that’s on it, they reworked the housing “to throw it back in time.” In this still, Ella Hunt (who plays Gilda Radner in the film) takes a ride on the archaic crane.

Re-creating the Magic

Another fun fact: Designers of the 1975 set borrowed their seats from Yankee Stadium, which was being renovated at the time. Gonchor sourced similar seats for this iteration. And “underneath the scaffolding, we created a world: You had a prop department, quick-change department, paint department, sound department.” The primary set that has become synonymous with SNL, and the photo below shows the set from the famous inaugural “Wolverines” sketch.

Bird’s-eye View

Gonchor started out with an architectural blueprint of the stage before he and his son, the model maker on the job, constructed a white cardboard cutout model to scale. The model was made on a 3D program and printed with a 3D printer, and its construction took about three weeks. The full set was taped out on the soundstage before construction began. It took 12 weeks from the moment the idea was conceptualized to the actual build — an “accelerated” build.

This story first appeared in a November stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.