Crazy Props, Googly Eyes, Better Fake Vomit: ‘SNL’ Star Sarah Sherman Works to Make Viewers Laugh ‘While They Are Screaming in Horror’

variety.com:

Brian Steinberg Senior TV Editor As the special-effects makeup chief for “Saturday Night Live,” Louie Zakarian often has interesting demands put on his time.

He once transformed Kate McKinnon into an offbeat mermaid. And he worked with Kyle Mooney to create the Baby Yoda character who made frequent appearances on “Weekend Update.” These days, Zakarian gets even more outlandish asks, thanks to Sarah Sherman, the “SNL” cast member who might, during one week, ask him to devise a fake seagull that can be impaled in her torso while moving its legs, and, in another, order up a costume so she can dress as the oddball Six Flags mascot, but still get back to normal for a subsequent sketch 10 minutes later. “I’ve been at the show for 29 years now,” says Zakarian. “I get some pretty crazy requests, but some of Sarah’s are really out there.” So too is Sherman herself, at least during the broadcasts of NBC’s Saturday night mainstay.

Regular viewers have seen her covered in talking meatballs, flailing about with new googly eyes, and tormenting “Update” co-anchor Colin Jost with a variety of characters.

Suddenly, “SNL” fans are talking about Sherman’s “body horror” comedy along with the various one-liners they may have heard from a new episode of the show. “To me, she’s like if Pee-wee Herman and Gilda Radner had a comedy baby,” says Nick Marx, an associate professor of film and media studies at Colorado State University, who is a co-editor of “Saturday Night Live and American TV,” a 2013 book of analytical essays about the show. “The dominant mode of comedy in the last 10 to 15 years is writerly — it’s talking and verbal jousting,” he says.