Cat Deeley on the set of So You Think You Can Dance. Photo: @catdeeley/Instagram

Last week I had the great pleasure—superfan here!—of being able to attend a So You Think You Can Dance show in LA, actually walking around backstage, absorbing all of the Hollywood magic. Now in its twelfth season, SYTYCD is one of the few live shows on TV, and it’s a well-oiled machine. Or at least that’s how it looks to viewers at home. I wanted to meet the cogs in that machine—Cat Deeley, and the hair, makeup, and costume leads—to hear what they go through every week.



If you’ve been watching the show at all, you know that this season brought lots of shake ups: Judge Mary “Hot Tamale Train” Murphy didn’t get her contract renewed, Jason Derulo (and his many sparkly shoes) and Paula Abdul were brought on as judges, and the format of the competition completely changed. Now there are two teams, stage and street. These two teams dance in a variety of formats and combinations instead of the traditional duets, and there are also two small group numbers in addition to the big opener.

What this means is a lot more costumes, makeup, and hair looks to come up with and execute in the same amount of time. The staff generally gets an idea of the looks and themes for the following week’s show a week in advance. But over the course of the week, music and looks can change, and last-minute substitutions are the norm.

The hair, makeup, and costume teams wake up about 3:45am on show day and get to the studio by 5am to get the dancers ready for the pre-recorded group number. After the group number, the next five hours or so are spent getting them ready for a show run-through. Touch-ups happen at about 3:45, then the dancers hit the stage at 5:00 PST. “Then at 7:30pm, I get a glass of wine,” Sallie Nicole Ciganovich, the Emmy-nominated hair lead on the show, laughs.

For Ciganovich, extensions are the theme this season. “Almost every single one of the [female dancers] has extensions stuck in there,” she says. She has had to learn each dancer’s hair texture and personality very quickly in order to enhance, not change, their looks. (And i you’re looking for hot weather hair product recommendations, Ciganovich goes through tons of Klorane dry shampoo and Oribe and Unite texturizer spray over the course of the season.)

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The stress of being on the show can manifest itself in different ways. Cat Deeley tells me that the dancers go through a vetting process in the beginning. “There are psych tests and background checks. Because they’re put in this hothouse—it’s like a pressure cooker. You have to know that people can physically and mentally take it, and also for the safety of others around them as well, because they partner with other people,” she says. JaJa, a fan-favorite street dancer, is experiencing a bit of normal show-related pressure. “The stress levels can make you lose your hair. JaJa is going through this. By adding hair extensions, we’re able to curl and give her volume and give her bedroom sexy hair. She loves it. Tonight she was like, ‘I’m gonna bring it because of my hair!’” Ciganovich says.

Heather Cummings, the Emmy-nominated makeup lead, notes that while stage-trained male dancers are used to wearing makeup, this is not the case with some of the male street dancers. “For the most part they’re not used to makeup. You go to put eyeliner on them and they’re like, ‘WHAAAAAT,’” she says. Cummings says her most challenging number this season thus far was the Day of the Dead group number. She had to add glitter and rhinestones to the dancers’ faces at the last minute due to darker lighting; every dancer had a different look. The most-used product over the course of a season? Fake eye lashes. (Pro tip: Cummings swears by Duo adhesive to keep them on.)

Costumes pose a special challenge on SYTYCD, because they have to both look good on stage and on camera, but also function as dancewear. And with the new format, the costume team has to come up with 15 to 20 more costumes per show than in previous seasons. Costume designer Marina Toybina pays homage to fashion frequently, as she did to Alexander McQueen in last week’s punk-inflected group number. She hovers backstage making sure double stick tape is in place and sewing in last minute gussets to improve movement. So far there hasn’t been a major wardrobe malfunction this season.

The dancers get emotionally attached to their costumes, but most outfits end up in the show’s archives or repurposed on tour. “Every single week the kids want them,” Toybina says. But she has given costumes away on rare occasions. “I’ve had a few instances where a piece meant a great deal to a contestant,” she says.

All of the teams spend a lot of time, surprisingly, in hardware stores picking up non-traditional materials for stage looks. For example, Ciganovich sprayed white Christmas tree snow on the stage dancers’ hair for the ghost number last week. Toybina used stick-on LED lights in Hailee and Virgil’s robot number. She saw them in the checkout line at the hardware store when she was there buying something else and was inspired.

Speaking of hardware, Cat Deeley has a longstanding weekly appointment at XIV Karats, a jewelry store in Beverly Hills from which she borrows jewelry on the morning of the show every week. Deeley doesn’t use a stylist, and she prides herself on a high/low look, like last week’s Vince Camuto dress, vintage belt, and Gianvito Rossi shoes. Vertiginously high heels are something of a Deeley trademark, and during the show I got to see how she navigates around the set in them: She has the assistance of the strapping stage manager, who helps her up and down stairs off camera.

“He’s also doing a big job! It’s not just helping me up and down the stairs,” Deeley laughs. “He’s running the studio. I’m the clumsiest person on the planet. Half the time it’s in the dark and on stairs. If I’ve just been onstage and I’m walking offstage you can’t really see because the lights are so bright on you.” (Deeley’s high heel/short skirt beauty secret: Nuxe dry oil on her legs. And she rarely wears heels on her days off.)

I also learn that Deeley’s favorite on-set treat is Red Vines, which she had backstage during our interview. They sometimes get her into trouble on camera. “I’ll have red vines stuck in my teeth and [the camera] will be coming to me with two seconds to go,” she says. “This is the telling thing. If ever I’m talking to the camera and I turn my face one way or the other it’s because I’ve got red vines stuck in between my teeth. I can’t get in there with a finger in case they catch me because that’s very unladylike.”

Deeley’s job has changed a bit because of the new format and the new judging panel. “Paula [Abdul] is so mothering and maternal to the kids. We were actually having a nightmare with her during the auditions,” she says. “When the camera would stop it’s always that thing where she wants to impart more knowledge because of course she’s got so much. And Jason [Derulo] is my biggest, loveliest surprise. You can’t help but have preconceptions about people. I thought he’d play the super cool guy, but he loves musicals and tap dancing and he loves romantic comedies. He’s like a big kid.”

Deeley has also been tasked with keeping some contestants’ secrets this season. “Some of the [dancers’] stories are not necessarily for public consumption. You have to be delicate and you have to be empathetic. Not every story can be shared on national TV,” she says. “I know some of the stories, so that becomes very hard because you just want to go, ‘Oh this is amazing and incredible’ but you can’t.”

Finally, I had to ask Deeley about her now-famous catchphrase, “Please welcome your…judges!” (pronounced “jidges” in her Birmingham accent.) “I stopped saying it for a bit, because I never meant for it to be anything. I was like, ‘Do I really say it that differently?’” she says. “Then everybody started saying, ‘Why don’t you say it anymore?’ So now it’s come back. Don’t jidge me for it!”

Related: Cat Deeley on Being a ‘Rubbish’ Model, the Best High Street Stores to Shop in London, and Her Thoughts About Her Crooked Nose

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