“Wicked” (Part One) has been a massive success for Universal Pictures at the box office, with audiences and now with the Academy, receiving 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. We have already interviewed many of the Oscar-nominated crew members here, but one member we had previously missed was Oscar-winning Hair and Makeup Designer Frances Hannon (“The Grand Budapest Hotel“). Daniel Howat was lucky to get some time with Frances to speak with her about her work on the film, which you can read below. Please be sure to check out the film, which is now available to purchase or rent on VOD or on 4k UHD/Blu-Ray from Universal Pictures and is up for your consideration at this year’s Academy Awards in all of its 10 nominated categories, including Best Makeup & Hairstyling. Thank you, and enjoy!
Hello Frances!
Hi Daniel. How are you?
I am doing well. It’s so good to chat with you. I appreciate you taking the time to tell me more about “Wicked’s” makeup and hairstyling.
Oh, thank you for having me.
First and foremost, congratulations on your Oscar nomination. So well deserved. You’re already an Oscar winner. So, were you trying to take it easy this time, or were you up early watching the livestream?
Oh, well, don’t forget the live stream at home in London was about 1:30 pm midday. I wasn’t watching it but delighted to hear how lucky we were to have gotten through.
Absolutely. Again, so well deserved. Let’s talk about your work on “Wicked.” The imagery of these two leading ladies is already so iconic from the stage. When doing the film’s overall hair and makeup looks, did you start with a blank slate? Or did you start with the general looks from the stage and then adapt them?
No, we didn’t adapt from there. But, of course, we never started with a blank slate because we already had Ariana and Cynthia, the only two cast on board. So, I already had some of my slate in front of me. But we didn’t use the stage production. But we did have the alphabet to follow within the story, and we did lots of nods to the stage production and the Wizard of Oz film production, so it was great. It was lovely to see it. I knew the play very well. I’d been to see it many times. So, I’m obviously influenced, but not in the way that it has to be very different from what you see on stage. Because, of course, Jon M. Chu likes the cameras to go right in on the artist’s face. So, you have to think about how to make it look believable, which one doesn’t have to consider from the stage.
Yeah, I really want to hear about how you developed the right shade of green for Elphaba. It’s obviously the most significant makeup moment in the film. But, like you said, the camera gets up close to her. It must last for long shooting days and in different lighting environments. How many rounds of camera tests and shades of green did it take to land the right look?
We started by using models because Cynthia was so busy she wasn’t in the country at all. So, I used models with the correct skin tone to try and work out the proper shade of green, which worked with all the products we had on the market and everything I could obtain on the skin tone. So, we initially did it all by photography rather than camera tests. And we would shoot every model in four different lighting setups and ensure the green looked perfect. And it just didn’t. There’d always be shade or the sunlight, or some light would destroy the green. The hardest thing was making the green look like real skin rather than face paint, but not changing its color in different lighting setups. And it was, as you probably know, discovered that somebody called David Stone who makes up our products for us. You know, once I got the correct shade, he would make up the correct shade in large quantities for me. He was trying my green in lots of different bases or mediums, which we call them. But we could never get it quite right until I found a fluorescent neon-based product. And that was what cracked, not that product. We couldn’t use it. It was the recognition that there was something within there. I could find a base that would work on Cynthia’s skin and look real, and that was the start of our getting the Elphaba makeup perfected. It’s a lot more involved than just the green.
Of course. The eyebrows. Yeah, and the freckles are such a beautiful touch as well. If I’m not mistaken, that’s not traditionally in the stage production. How did that idea of adding freckles to Elphaba come about?
Well, it’s something that I’ve used a lot in my working life. When you’re trying to give a lovely story to your actors, you start in the middle or wherever your story begins. Then you go younger for the university, giving you a bigger space to show a transition through your storyline. And so I’ve used freckles quite a lot to make artists look younger in the past, you know, in many different films. And so I did that, but with Elphaba’s skin tone in mind. So, we contour the face. I used tattoo transfers for her eyebrows because Cynthia doesn’t have any. And I use freckles for her younger look, amongst many other tricks we do. But Cynthia loved them so much that she kept them; we just faded them off for her older self, as she isn’t old for her transition looks. But it’s a lovely touch that makes the green look real. You work on the surface to embed the base, which is how I describe it.
You’re right; it adds this depth of realism that sells the green, so it doesn’t just look like somebody’s face painted. It’s really effective. Glinda isn’t exactly painted green, but she also has her own distinctive look. Ariana is naturally brunette but has to play this iconic blonde character here. Tell me about finding the right hair and makeup look for Glinda.
Well, it was wonderful working with Ariana as well as with Cynthia because Ariana came like an open book. She was open because all of her time in the business was in this film. She hadn’t been in much else before. She was really open to any ideas we could bring to her based on what we knew from our experience. So, the thought process with Jon M. Chu and Marc Platt was to have quite an ethereal look for Ariana, which would remove her from Galinda’s ethereal look, which would remove her from the Ariana Grande look. So, we dyed her own blonde hair, but then we used blonde wigs of various shades and lengths on top, and by having her own hair blonde underneath, it just gave another dimension that made it look so real. We lifted her eyebrows, but we kept her skin reflective as well, but more in that lovely look so that when she was with Elphaba, that reflective quality that both of them had balanced it out on the camera, and that worked in every light. I think lots of people subconsciously absorbed that. It all looks real, but we often don’t recognize how much work is to put into making it look like that.
Absolutely. Well, you hinted earlier about the way that these characters age, both throughout this film and, of course, the film to come, but we primarily see the younger adult versions of these characters for most of this film, as it opens with a somewhat older Glinda recounting this story. How did you have that opening look evolve a little bit or grow a little bit to open this film?
In practical terms, once you see the shoes, you can make the comparison, but we change her hair, which is much longer, much paler gold than originally, and much more cared for than originally. At the university, her hair is a much simpler style. It’s not complicated. It’s very accessible. I mean, Jon M. Chu requested that it be extravagant but timeless. So it’s “Wicked,” and it will be “Wicked” in 50 years and be accessible to everybody, you know, we didn’t go for a very fancy look that would undo that. Young people wouldn’t watch it. We wanted to make people recognize themselves within the characters. So, we kept it relatively simple, but I think the main difference is the crown and the dress and the very dewy skin look, that very ethereal sort of princess quality she had. And then, when she’s younger, she’s got a slightly warmer skin tone. She’s got shorter, much warmer golden hair. All little things that add to her youth.
Of course, I knew Cynthia and Ariana wore wigs and hairpieces in the film, but I hadn’t realized that Jonathan Bailey also wore a hairpiece. Is that right?
Yes, he did. Jonathan was involved in three projects at the time. He had “Bridgerton” to finish. He was justfinishing on another project, and he had us. So, there were many things we wanted to give Fiyero, but we had to take in, as one always does, there’s background stuff that nobody’s aware of. You know, Jonathan, we couldn’t go, you know, much shorter, or we couldn’t ask Jonathan to grow his hair because in between us, he’d be going to the other project, and his hair was already committed to look in a certain way. So, we achieved our Fiero, which Jonathan loved, by adding extra length and giving it quite a grandeur but prince-like quality. At the beginning, of course, he’s quite a vain man, right? And he says he’s an ignorant man, which, of course, he never is. But, it’s all in part keeping with that look. And then, of course, we put big areas of gold through his hair that complimented his costumes, and it also guided our storyline for later on.
Yeah, I was gonna hint at that. I imagine you won’t tell me much about looks from part two, but when you were designing the looks for Fiyero and Boq in part one, how much were you designing them in tandem with their future looks and characters that they evolve into?
Oh, much so. I mean, it’s only, yes, it will be shown in two, but it’s really one story. And the visual storyline, I mean, my intention with actors in this film was to always create some memorable looks that didn’t just enhance the characters visually but deepened their roles within the story. So you have to think right from the opening scene to the end closing scene two. But then we just happened to finish in a particular area. So we could never have just acknowledged that first one and not completed the second, which we did simultaneously. But what I always do and is very important is I can make my story arc, you know, and then in conjunction with Paul Tazewell for costumes. But within that, the artists, when they come, they bring their Elphaba and their Galinda and their Fiyero. And I’ve just laid down some basis for them to work within, and then they pick it up and do everything they want, and I move along with everything the character brings. Does that make sense?
Oh, it absolutely makes sense. I think your work on this film is incredible and makes all of these, especially these principal characters here, stand out. But there are also many big crowd scenes in “Wicked” as well, in Munchkin Land at the beginning, and then, of course, when the girls get to Emerald City. There are so many fascinating looks throughout all the Ozians there, and I was looking at Emerald City and wondering how much of a huge undertaking that must have been with so many fantastical looks. How did you approach that entrance to Emerald City?
Oh, well, that was, I mean, the whole Emerald City is excellent, but I guess if you go back, you plot out with Paul Tazewell and with Jon M. Chu and Nathan Crowley, who’s the production designer. We look at what it will be, and we plot out the color palette and the shapes within it. And it’s always organic and moving, but it’s very much, as with the Munchkins or Ozdust, given that punch of extravagance that was really important with Emerald City. From the train, the super tall, very stylish, massively high sets are unbelievably tall, and the characters that both Paul and I created were within that but stayed in that same space. I mean, no matter what shape or size the person was, it was very opulent and extravagant and anything you could think of to bring into a new look. So we researched history, but we also moved forward into bringing everything we could do to the plate that really gives you some new design that makes it into something else, but always keeping it timeless.
It does feel timeless. Well, I know every show has its own learning curves and challenges, even when you’ve been in the business for a long time. What learnings will you encounter on “Wicked” that you’ll take into your following projects?
I’ve done some huge projects but never the size of “Wicked.” So, I think it’s just that my learning curve really had to do with size. We did lots of new techniques that I’ll be able to carry with me both for the crowd sequences and Madame Marble’s beautiful look about how her hair goes off into the clouds based on her magic regarding the weather. So there’s that. I always think the thing that really makes you better is makeup artists or artists, in general, search for the very tiny details because they’re really what makes the bigger difference to your picture. So whatever about the opulence and the timelessness, it’ll be the tiny things like the tattoo transfer, the eyebrows or the freckles, or the dewy foundation, all those little things new artists up and coming alike look for and appreciate. But it’s the nuances that really can bring something special to the screen.
Well, you definitely brought something special to the screen. Frances, thank you very much for your time, and congratulations again on the Oscar nomination.
Oh, and thank you so much. It’s lovely to speak with you. Thank you, Daniel.
You as well.
“Wicked” is now available to rent or purchase on VOD and is now available on Blu-Ray or 4K UHD from Universal Pictures
You can follow Daniel and hear more of his thoughts on the Oscars and Film on X @howatdk
