How Conan’s Costume Designer Made the Oscars Sandworm — in His Garage Using Zip Ties for Teeth
A “Dune” joke so nice they played it twice, Scott Cronick’s musical sandworm stole the show at the 2025 Oscars. The wacky mascot appeared on stage at the Dolby Theater on Sunday — first playing the piano and then plucking at the harp — in a visual gag that recalled decades of jokes from the night’s host Conan O’Brien. The delightful monstrosity also marked a career-high for costume designer Cronick, O’Brien’s personal stylist and collaborator of more than 15 years.
“People are just plotzing over the sandworm,” Cronick told IndieWire. “It was seriously the most stressful job I’ve ever had in my life, but it was all worthwhile. Conan looked awesome.”
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When O’Brien accepted the Oscars hosting gig, he brought his staff with him and, in the lead-up to the ceremony, Cronick was responsible for the comedian’s nearly 30 different looks. He took on the additional task of creating a “puppet-like” sandworm — played by creature actor Alan Maxson during the show — when the writers’ bizarre request seemed to “stump” the Academy.
“They are so swamped with so much,” said Cronick, noting the decade-plus of experience he has responding to Conan’s writers room. “So they asked me to do it and I ended up making the sandworm out of my garage with the help of some great craftspeople. It was a real labor of love.”
Credited to IndieWire as Cronick’s “worm builders,” Linda Ciarimboli, Elizabeth Payne, Christy Tobin, and Clare Kapusta helped their leader bring the Oscars sandworm to life in just one week. The core of the wearable work of art (best described as Denis Villeneuve meets Jim Henson) was constructed from L200 foam, Cronick said, ideal “for movement and lightness.”
“Then, for the skin, I took what’s called sheet batting, which is like what’s inside of a quilt, and I spray mounted it all over the foam base,” he said. “We peeled it away little by little to create that texture, and then over that, we went in with all these layers of paint and latex. That’s what gave it that real wormy skin vibe.”
Cronick hand-carved the face (“which isn’t really a face”) himself, and lined the mouth with so many zip ties he lost count. “We melted them over a metal tube and heated them up so they would retain that curvature,” he said. “I bought 500 and then we needed more.”
Less than a week before the show, Cronick unveiled the sandworm during Oscars rehearsals. The tubular A-lister was so well received that his one-off part became a recurring role.
“It was only written to play with the harp at first, so I designed it to scale with the harp,” Cronick said. “On Tuesday or Wednesday or something — it’s all a blur to me right now — they loved it so much that they put it at the top of the show as well. It was never actually meant to be seen head to toe [seated] that way, but it worked. I was so glad I made it bendable.”
Cronick estimates he’s designed “hundreds upon hundreds” of costumes for O’Brien over the years with many of his wildest creations coming out of an old segment called Mascots Who Shouldn’t Dunk. From a Big Bird with Post-It notes instead of feathers to a mutant hybrid of “a bear, a tarantula, and a Luden’s lozenge,” Cronick’s portfolio includes projects that are significantly stranger than a popular sci-fi creature wearing a bow tie. Still, he describes the sandworm experience at the Oscars as particularly “magical.” The assignment not only gave Cronick an opportunity to dive head-first into researching the “Dune” duology (a world he said he was “missing out on” previously), but it also motivated him to represent “Dune: Part Two” and its honorees well.
“I don’t usually get ’emotionally’ involved, but I did feel this was a good representation of my work,” said Cronick. “There was a built-in sense of pressure but also pride because I knew [the nominees] were going to be there and the world they’ve created is just so fascinating.”
Paul Lambert, Stephen James, Rhys Salcombe, and Gerd Nefzer accepted the Oscar for Best Visual Effects for “Dune: Part Two.” The blockbuster also won Best Sound and was nominated for Best Picture, Best Production Design, and Best Cinematography.
“[‘Dune’] could feel one-note being set in the desert, but they have these shapes that are so amazingly interesting in that realm,” Cronick continued. “And here I am, replicating something that was digital in their movie and making a kind of puppet-y version of it in real life. But I do feel that it was close enough to the original that it truly evoked their work, which is so, so cool.”
Cronick got his start at “Conan” as a summer intern when he was still a sophomore attending college in New York. After several years as a routine day player in the costuming department, Cronick moved with O’Brien and his talk show to LA in 2009. There, he clinched the top job as costume designer and began fine-tuning the skills he’d need to inject the spirit of Arrakis into the biggest night of awards season.
Praising O’Brien as “loyal,” “generous,” and unendingly funny, Cronick also described working with the energetic comedian as a “double-edged sword.” On the one hand, Cronick believes O’Brien’s “rare” trust in him as a stylist has helped him mature as a visual artist — ultimately becoming the kind of storyteller who can land punchlines without saying a word. But on the other hand, he said, “The one thing about Conan is that what you see is what you get.”
“He is like that all the time,” Cronick said. “Picture him in a fitting, jumping up and down. You can’t ever tell where his pants are landing because he won’t stand still! But the thing about that is you, as a designer, then have to say, ‘OK, well, he likes to be free. He likes to be able to move and dance and be a silly fool. He doesn’t want to feel restricted.’ That’s the challenge.”
O’Brien isn’t not like a sandworm in some ways, and Cronick’s account of taming the mega-watt personality’s myriad looks for the Oscars sounds like an adventure. For years, Cronick has known to put his red-haired muse in a color they call “electric blueberry.”
“He’s got these incredible blue eyes and it always just pulls them right out of his head,” Cronick said.
The shade was enough to convince O’Brien to make a costume change during the ceremony — a theatricality he insisted male hosts “never” did at first. In the end, he switched from a black tux to blue after the opening monologue. The two looks gave Cronick the chance to design something special for O’Brien honoring the city that made their enduring partnership official.
“I designed this tux that was electric blueberry, and when Conan saw the sketch, he just went crazy,” Cronick said. “So what I decided to do on this, with everything that’s been going on, was have the tuxes made locally at a company called High Society.”
“They’ve made clothes — tuxedos and suits and anything tailored for TV and film — since the 1960s,” he said. “I had them make everything here in Los Angeles so I got to actually design them and then have them crafted by people in the industry who aren’t working so much right now.”
As thick with meaning as a real “Dune” book has pages, Cronick’s crowning Oscars achievement reflects his own epic journey to the Dolby Theater stage. Tunneling into some of the night’s most memorable moments, the costume designer described his impromptu ridealong with “Dune: Part Two” — and the biggest names in Hollywood willing to sit through a sandworm musical — as “unforgettable.”
“We’ve worked on creating this partnership where costumes don’t just not distract from the joke, but they can accentuate the entire show,” Cronick said. “Be it with a sandworm, be it with the color of a tuxedo, whatever it might be. I’m just always trying to help the comedy along and give Conan the freedom to be himself” — zip-tie teeth and all.
Watch O’Brien’s opening monologue and sandworm musical number below:
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