You may not know it, but if you’ve watched Saturday Night Live in recent years, you’ve likely seen the work of Monkey Boys Productions. From puppets to Pongo and Muppets to meatballs, the puppetry and practical effects company has lent a hand (yes, often literally) to a variety of SNL fan-favorites over the last decade. In fact, their puppeteering was on display just this last week in the Shane Gillis-led “Dad’s House.”
LateNighter recently caught up with Monkey Boys Productions co-founders Marc Petrosino and Michael Latini to learn what goes into a typical week working with SNL.
As it turns out, there’s no such thing as ‘typical’ when it comes to puppetry and SNL. Over the years, they’ve found themselves handling traditional puppets, creating a motorized podium for Melissa McCarthy’s Sean Spicer, and shaking Lisa from Temecula’s table.
Even Monkey Boys’ origin story is unexpected. The duo got into this line of work “the natural way,” Petrosino jokes. “I studied marine biology. Michael studied jewelry and metals and computer-aided design.”
They were living together in New York City with two other working puppeteers when the four decided to launch their own company in 2006. Some nineteen years later, the company is busy with countless projects across film, television, stage, and theme parks. (Their recent work includes puppet builds for off-Broadway’s Little Shop of Horrors, and former SNL writer Julio Torres’ television series Fantasmas.)
In fact, Little Shop of Horrors is what first connected them to SNL. Petrosino and Latini had been part of the 2004-06 touring production, and eventually made their own build of the Audrey II puppet to rent out. A Season 40 SNL sketch called for just that, prompting the show to reach out to Monkey Boys one Wednesday, asking if they could bring their Little Shop puppets to the studio that Friday.
“ We were so lucky,” Petrosino remarks. “They had literally come back from a rental on Monday. If they had done the sketch the week before, the puppets wouldn’t have been around. The door to work with [SNL] would have opened and closed.”
That Little Shop sketch didn’t survive, but Monkey Boys’ collaboration with SNL did. “ Up until that point, we had been primarily focused on puppets and puppetry. But we realized what a close analog props are. It’s a lot of the same materials and building techniques,” says Petrosino. “ Slowly over the next couple seasons, they started calling us for more and more stuff.”
Those calls will usually come in around 11 PM on Wednesday, after the SNL writers have done the read-through for that week’s show, and the various departments—wardrobe, special effects, props, etc.—are sourcing items. That means Monkey Boys has just two days to build what SNL needs for the live show—and only one day for pre-taped shorts, which film on Fridays. (Their pre-tape work includes the ‘Midnight Matinee’ sketch “My Best Friend’s House,” starring Ariana Grande. SNL’s in-house team sourced the furniture, and Monkey Boys built the rigs to turn them anthropomorphic.)
The Monkey Boys outfit includes six other members of the build team, with more brought on for particularly demanding weeks. Most of that build work happens at the company’s Pennsylvania headquarters over long Thursdays and Fridays, and is then trucked out to New York City. On occasion, Petrosino and Latini will do last-minute builds and modifications day-of-show in New York.
Some of their earliest high-profile work for the show were McCarthy-as-Spicer’s lecterns, which grew wilder in each installment of the sketch. The first was simple foam, allowing McCarthy to hit people with the podium. Then came a motorized one, which Monkey Boys rigged from an electric wheelchair.
“ They originally were thinking of a Segway, but… [Studio 8H] is crazy tiny,” Petrosino recalls. “ By the time you would get it going, you’d need to stop immediately or you’d crush people.”
In McCarthy’s last turn as Spicer, she took to the streets of New York City with the motorized lectern. That resulted in the Monkey Boys’ latest night on the show to date. McCarthy’s vehicle had to handle the potholed terrain of NYC streets, and an earlier draft of the sketch also called for it to pull Alec Baldwin as Trump. That meant rebuilding the podium atop a larger, bariatric electric wheelchair—in addition to fulfilling SNL’s other needs for that week’s show. The result was a mere several hours of sleep between Thursday morning and Saturday night.
Puppetry has always been a part of the DNA of Saturday Night Live, whose first episodes touted the participation of Jim Henson’s Muppets in his Land of Gorch sketches. Henson, of course, revolutionized the craft and influenced generations of puppeteers—Petrosino and Latini included—making Monkey Boys’ work with SNL a consistently humbling experience.
“We’ve very much walking in footsteps that they tread, just trying to keep up,” Petrosino says. “ We’re very aware that Jim [Henson] was here and Frank [Oz] was here. For us to be in that same space just adds to… [how] this is something we dreamed of, on so many levels.”
“Every time we walk in that studio, it’s just surreal,” he adds.
Perhaps no moment was more surreal than when the Monkey Boys crew found themselves recreating the Muppets for a sketch in Studio 8H. The full-circle moment came in the Season 46 episode hosted by Keegan-Michael Key. In the sketch, Key and Kenan Thompson played bouncers who come to blows with Statler and Waldorf during an episode of The Muppet Show hosted by Kermit the Frog.
“[SNL] did reach out to the Muppets to see if they would do it,” Latini recalls. When the Muppets declined, the Monkey Boys were asked to recreate the characters. After some debate—and assurance from SNL that the show would handle any liability for the parody—they agreed.
“We made these characters in, like, 24-36 hours,” Latini recalls. The next day, media outlets were heralding the return of the Muppets to SNL, unaware it was the Monkey Boys who had been pulling the strings that night. “That was a huge ego boost, not only because we got to puppeteer them, but because we made them,” he admits.
Petrosino and Latini’s 25-year partnership also allows them to be in sync with each other. That’s a critical component in puppeteering, which Petrosino calls a “very intimate” art form—both figuratively and physically. In January, the duo found themselves crammed beneath the Weekend Update desk to operate Andrew Dismukes’ “Puppet Dad.”
“ We’re almost, like, spooning back there,” says Petrosino, who controlled the puppet’s mouth and left hand while Latini controlled its right side. That division of duties requires the two puppeteers to be on the same page to create realistic looking movement. “ That in and of itself is a special skill, right hand puppetry,” says Petrosino of Latini’s work. “It’s being able to feel and sense what the head puppeteer is doing and not accidentally duplicate what they’re doing.”
With Saturday Night Live’s famously condensed schedule, there’s not a ton of time to find a rhythm. Monkey Boys usually only gets three attempts: first at the mid-day run-through, then again at dress rehearsal, and finally the live show.
In the case of Dismukes’ piece, that meant only two chances before the live show for Petrosino and Latini to figure out how to best squeeze themselves beneath the Update desk, while also maintaining the leverage to control the puppet. It also meant just two chances to lock into a rapport with Dismukes, who would be voicing the puppet while Petrosino’s hand provided the lip-syncing. “That’s our first time running it with Andrew, that Saturday afternoon,” Petrosino notes. “Hearing his rhythm. Hearing the new lines and how they’ve changed and all that stuff.”
But beyond being in sync with each other, Petrosino and Latini attribute much of their success to the incredibly collaborative environment at SNL. A typical project can find them working with the show’s various departments: A recent dummy they made for the show included a face cast made by makeup department head Louie Zakarian, hair by the wig team, and clothes provided by wardrobe. There’s also the scenic design team and the props department. “People working fast and trying to create the best thing they can in a short amount of time,” as Petrosino says.
“It’s so wonderful to be a part of that team and be trusted—and also to have that trust, and to know you’re working with some of the best people in the industry,” he reflects. “These people could go anywhere and work, but they’re working in this crazy environment.”
While creating puppets involves extensive work, Monkey Boys Productions has also developed an alternative to make the craft more accessible. Since the COVID pandemic, they’ve been selling DIY puppet kits online, offering people both a way into the craft and a more affordable option. The kits, which range from beginner packages that don’t involve machine sewing to more extensive pro-level projects, are available via Monkey Boys’ online shop.
“They’re a way to grow the industry and educate people,” Latini says. “There are so many makers out there.”
“It’s a great chance for people to get their hands in puppetry that otherwise might not,” Petrosino adds.
As the Monkey Boys gang has proven, that craft can take you to some wild places.
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