Sarah Sherman revealed that one of Saturday Night Live’s notoriously fast costume changes became an actual workplace hazard. The 33-year-old comedian, who joined SNL in 2021, recalled a particularly rough wardrobe mishap while speaking at the NBC 100: Behind the Scenes of SNL panel at New York Comic Con.
The incident happened after Sherman appeared on Weekend Update dressed as Flaco the Owl’s widow.“I had to get out of an owl,” Sherman said, explaining that the costume team “ripped it off too fast.”
The result?
“My face is just bleeding because we ripped the owl costume off too hard,” she recalled. “Yeah, just workplace hazard!”
The sketch aired in March 2024 and played off the enormous amount of attention surrounding Flaco, the Eurasian eagle owl who escaped from the Central Park Zoo after his enclosure was vandalized. Flaco became a New York celebrity as sightings of the owl spread across Manhattan. He died in February 2024 at age 13 after apparently colliding with a building on the Upper West Side.
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Sherman’s owl mishap is hardly the first chaotic moment to come out of SNL’s rapid-fire production schedule, where cast members routinely have only minutes, and sometimes seconds, to move between elaborate costumes and sketches.
The comedian has also become known for her distinctive look offscreen, particularly her trademark mullet. Earlier this year, Sherman recalled an encounter with Paul McCartney in which the former Beatle apparently wanted to know whether the hairstyle was real.
“He pulled up my mullet, and he was like, ‘Is it real or is it a wig?’” Sherman said. “And I said, ‘It’s real, Paul.’”
Sherman then told McCartney how much she loved his work, including McCartney II and “Temporary Secretary,” before apologizing for piling on the compliments.
His response?
“I love adulation,” Sherman recalled him saying. “Adulate me. Adulate me!” Compared to getting bloodied while escaping an owl costume, that interaction sounds considerably safer.
