Saltburnrising star Jacob Elordi has just joined the sensational cast for Guillermo del Toro’s upcoming Frankenstein, which the visionary director is putting together at Netflix, Deadline confirms. Elordi joins Oscar Isaac (playing Dr. Victor Frankenstein), Christoph Waltz, scream queen Mia Goth, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery, Felix Kammerer, and more in Del Toro’s take on Mary Shelley’s iconic tale. Elordi takes over for Andrew Garfield, who had to bow out due to scheduling conflicts.
It’s hard to imagine a better pairing of material and filmmaker than Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein” and Del Toro, who is writing, directing, and producing the film. Del Toro’s been developing his adaptation for a while, yet whether he’s going to keep the film rooted in the past or set it in modern times is unknown.
Elordi made a big splash in Emerald Fennell’s wickedly fun Saltburn, where he played the impossibly rich and impossibly handsome Felix Catton, the apple of the conniving Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan)’s eye. He also recently played Elvis in Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla.
Composer Kris Bowers didn’t have to read the script before saying yes to Blitz Bazawule’s emotionally captivating version of The Color Purple. He was already a fan of his work, particularly the director’s debut, The Burial of Kojo, and Beyoncé’s visual album Black is King.
For this collaboration, early discussions focused on “being innovative musically” and connecting themes to one of the two dozen plus songs featured in the heartfelt musical that sees actor Fantasia Barrino playing the role of Celie, a Black woman in the early 1900s destined to reinvent herself. Through its production design, cinematography, and costumes, the visual vernacular is immersed in a visceral vibrancy, the score of which had to both support the grounded realism of the rural South with the fantastical worlds of song and dance. To do so, Bowers blended layers of piano, cello, and banjo, among other instruments, in a melodic symphony that plots Celie’s journey as she pulls away from her demanding husband Mister (Colman Domingo) and reunites with her sister Nettie (Ciara).
Below, Bowers discusses working with the director, what went into writing Celie’s theme, and how Ghanaian instrumentation found its way into the score.
You’ve accomplished a lot in your budding career, but what did it mean working with Blitz on this particular film?
For him, this was sacred work, so you felt that in terms of his intention and his effort really early in the process. Before we even sat down for our first meeting, he had driven hours and hours by himself to do location scouting just because he needed to see the spaces to envision this world. He also hand drew over 1200 individual shots and cut together a version of the film with hired actors to do the dialog, sound design, and temp store. He even had footage of the choreography, so at our first meeting, there was already so much and that went well into our process.
Do we start demanding the “Blitz Bazawule pre-production cut”? Kidding, obviously, but I’m curious if that type of preparedness translated into anything unique while you previewed the score?
Into the scoring process, if I made a slight adjustment to a cue that he had already heard before he wanted to watch the whole reel just to see how that cue played in context. So, if the cue were a minute long, we would watch the 20-minute reel just to see how that one minute of music felt in the context of the whole reel. It was always that type of focus and dedication to detail for him.
That’s quite amazing. Your score delivers very unique notes and melodies. What type of instruments did you experiment with?
The banjo was something I wanted to find because of its importance to Mister’s character and the story. Banjo is one of those instruments that has so much character that it’s hard not to associate it with every other time you hear it, so it was a fun challenge figuring out how to have that beat in the score but feel different.
COLMAN DOMINGO as Mister in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
There are also a lot of jazz elements and cues that are more textural. Like when we first meet Shug there are these horns playing and improvising these fluttery textures. The upright bass was another one for when Mister kicks Nettie out and when Sofia [Danielle Brooks] goes to jail. I wanted to put that up against this bigger orchestral sound. Then piano-wise, I love to play around with different pianos for different reasons. An upright piano that has a little twang to it, a felted piano so it has a softer sound, and then there’s a clear grand piano.
Did you find yourself writing with a tempo or improvising with what was on screen?
It was a mix. For the first couple of themes, I wrote freely on the piano and then improvised them to picture. Then there were other cues that were more sound design-y and were shaped to picture. Like the moment Mister is kicking Nettie out of the house or when Sofia is being beaten by the gang of men. Those were moments where we followed what was happening on screen and then added layer after layer.
One of the more powerful pieces is “Celie’s Theme.” How did her journey impact the writing?
That was the first theme I wrote. I started seeing dailies and wrote it more to the tone and the way Celie felt to me at this stage of the story. A lot I was having the humble simplicity that Celie represents at the beginning of the film. In the first iteration, you hear it with strings, and then there are iterations that are just upright piano, a couple of solo instruments, and a detuned banjo. There’s an aspect that feels a little bit lonely, a little melancholy, but at the same time, there’s a bittersweetness to it and a slight hopefulness when the fuller strings come in.
The theme “Nettie’s Gone” has a heavy emotional weight to it, and we hear it when Mister forces her out of his home, leaving Celie behind. What was your approach there?
The emotion I was drawing from watching Colman’s depiction of Mister, and how much you fear him. There are a lot of textures, and everything is organic. There are a lot of layers of banjo in the beginning and then a chorus of celli and basses, which are detuned. And then it breaks out into this emotional outbreak. It definitely was the more emotional and darker emotions in the score. The movie has so much darkness, but the score is playing to the sense of hope.
There are several sequences where we see Africa through Celie’s imagination. How did you want to approach them?
What was exciting was that Blitz wanted to be specific towards the Asante tribe in Ghana and not a general African concept but a specific location, culture, and community. I worked with a Ghanaian percussionist to help me with the sound for the sequence when we see the Asante tribe being pushed off their land by the British. He told me that there just so happens to be a traditional percussion about the experience. He played it for me, and I showed him the piece of music I wrote and we worked to find a way to fit it in the context of the piece that I had written for the section. A moment like that I felt so thankful to have Blitz’s guidance to be that specific.
For the scene when Celie reunites with Nettie, we hear a wonderful musical piece called “My Family Home.” How did that come about?
That one is a culmination of the themes. It starts off with Celie and Nettie’s themes as Nettie arrives back. Then it breaks into their theme when they first embrace and then it transitions into Celie’s theme. A big part of that cue was trying to ride the emotional wave of what we are seeing on screen and reprise these themes we’ve been hearing. It’s always fun to me to have that be the concept in terms of building themes out in a film in hopes that they land in a really cathartic emotional way. It means so much when the themes we’ve been hearing up to this point come in and allow for an emotional release that they are all reunited.
For more on The Color Purple, check out these stories:
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery, FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and DANIELLE BROOKS as Sophia in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
The 2024 Golden Globes took place on Sunday night, and Barbenheimer continued its historic run from last July, coming away with multiple awards. Barbenheimer is, of course, the two-headed cinematic phenomenon that is Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, with Barbiewinning the award for Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, while Oppenheimer was named Best Motion Picture, Drama, and Christopher Nolan took home the award for his directing work.
Meanwhile, Yorgos Lanthimos’ Poor Things won the Globe for Best Motion Picture, Musical or Comedy, while Justine Triet’s Anatomy of a Fall won for Best Non-English-Language Motion Picture. The legendary Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron won the Globe for best-animated film.
On the small screen, the two big winners were Jesse Armstrong’s HBO smash Succession, which won for Best Drama Series, and Christopher Storer’s buzzy, delicious FX show The Bear, which won Best TV Series, Musical or Comedy.
The acting award winners included Killers of the Flower Moon‘s Lily Gladstone, The Holdovers‘ Paul Giamatti and Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Oppenheimer‘s Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr., The Bear‘s Jeremy Allen White and Ayo Edebiri, Succession‘s Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook and Matthew Macfadyen, Beef‘s Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, Poor Things’ Emma Stone, and The Crown‘s Elizabeth Debicki.
The new categories in this year’s Globes included the one Barbie took home for Best Cinematic and Box Office Achievement, which boasted eight nominees chosen from films that had a box office receipt total/gross of $150 million, “of which $100 million must come from the U.S. domestic box office, and/or obtain commensurate digital streaming viewership recognized by trusted industry sources,” the Globes explained when they announced the category. Another new category was for best performance in stand-up comedy on television, which featured six nominees. Ricky Gervais took home the award for Ricky Gervais: Armageddon.
This new look Globes, hosted by Jo Koy, was the first that was not associated with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which was replaced by Dick Clark Productions and Eldridge, owned by Penske Media Eldridge. A new racially and ethnically diverse group of voters made up of 300 journalists from around the world, representing 76 countries, selected this year’s nominees and winners.
For a full list of this year’s nominees and winners, click here.
Featured image: BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA – JANUARY 07: Margot Robbie attends the 81st Annual Golden Globe Awards at The Beverly Hilton on January 07, 2024 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
“The action evolves with the story — I’m not trying to invent action just to invent the next big stunt. It’s got to be emotionally engaging through action and fit the character,” says second unit director and stunt choreographer Wade Eastwood of Mission: Impossible’s brand of character-driven action choreography.
An accomplished fixed-wing and helicopter pilot, Eastwood is also a licensed skydiver, rescue scuba diver, black belt martial artist, master stunt driver, and Formula Racing competitive driver. “Growing up, I’ve always wanted to do everything that was exciting. That’s why I got into movies; it’s the perfect job,” shares the South African native. After completing compulsory military service at 19 years old, a local film crew was looking for “a few guys to jump out of a helicopter into this [crocodile-infested] river” in his hometown, Durban. Ever since then, he has been drifting, crashing, flying, and diving through a long list of actioners like Spectre, Edge of Tomorrow, and Men in Black: International.
The opening salvo to writer-director Christopher McQuarrie’s two-part finale, Dead Reckoning Part Onedigs deeper into Ethan Hunt’s (Tom Cruise) emotional psyche and backstory. “We live and die in the shadows for those we hold close and those we never meet,” the weary yet indomitable super-spy quietly utters his oath to unlock for-his-eyes-only orders after the latest global threat is unleashed.“Ethan Hunt is all about doing the right thing — looking after his team, saving his team and loved ones, and protecting the world from disaster,” says Eastwood, who has worked on four Mission films since 2015’s Rogue Nation.
Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
If Ethan has one weakness, it is his loyalty to his friends. As he tells a newcomer to the franchise, the sly thief-turned-ally, Grace (Hayley Atwell): “Your life will always matter more to me than my own.” And that’s why Eastwood thinks audiences around the world have connected with the IMF agent for almost three decades: “He would jump off a cliff to save someone and then figure out how to save himself. They respect and admire that.”
It also helps that Mission has always thrilled audiences with adrenaline-inducing action, setting a high bar in action cinema, particularly when it comes to capturing practical effects in-camera. To maximize audience engagement, Cruise famously performs just about every stunt in these films. We have seen him scale the 2,700-feet Burj Khalifa (Ghost Protocol), clutch onto the outside of a cargo plane mid-takeoff with his bare hands (Rogue Nation), and in 2018’s Fallout, he became the first actor to perform a HALO (High Altitude Low Open) jump on film.
Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt in MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – FALLOUT, from Paramount Pictures and Skydance. Courtesy Paramount
“Tom, McQ [McQuarrie], and I hash out the best way to do it. Ethan’s got to get from point A to point B; what’s the coolest way he can do that but also be practical? What can the audience relate to? If we jump into space, the audience can’t relate because no one’s really been to space. But people have ridden motorbikes and have been in the mountains. So, that’s relatable action,” Eastwood says, referring to the jaw-dropping sequence where Cruise jumps off a vertical cliff 3,900 feet above sea level in a motorbike. “And once they can relate, they’re on board with the character. Now, they’re invested.”
In Fallout, Eastwood helped cast stuntman and Wushu champion Liang Yang in the savage bathroom brawl against Ethan and Henry Cavill’s turncoat, August Walker. “We hadn’t done that style in a Mission fight before, but Wushu is one of my favorites. It’s like a dance, just mesmerizing, and Liang’s style is fluid and intensely beautiful. For that sequence, I wanted a hard, grungy fight but with traces of Wushu. Throwing that wildcard into the mix meant that August and Ethan had to adapt their fighting styles,” he remarks on one of the most popular Mission stunts. “Tom playing Ethan wasn’t scared to get his ass kicked a bit and not be the hero, which made it so brutal. You could put yourself in that fight and go ‘God, what would I do against such a powerful, talented fighter?’ You’re getting your ass kicked! Now, you’re engaged with the story.”
With a main lead performing all of his own stunts, the line between main unit and second unit is almost non-existent. “My second units have always had the actors; I like to shoot subjective action, which you need the actors for,” says Eastwood. “Tom does literally everything, so it works differently on Mission. We come up with a story together, and then I’ll work out the choreography with my fight coordinator, Ruda Vrba, assistant stunt coordinator Scott Armstrong, and my team. Then we’ll come back to show everyone and tweak it.”
After the vertiginous highs of Fallout, this latest installment has Ethan going up against the most uncannily topical adversary yet: a sentient AI dubbed “The Entity” has accessed all of the world’s digital data and targeting intelligence networks on a global scale. With governments and criminals alike clamoring for it, he has to locate a two-part bejeweled cruciform key to unlock and destroy the algorithm. The visually discernible villain — Esai Morales’ diabolical Gabriel — serves as the human proxy to the AI, with help from ice-cold henchwoman Paris (Pom Klementieff).
In one of the most bone-crunching assaults, Paris and Ethan punch, kick, slash, and pummel each other in an unbelievably narrow vicoletto in Venice, one that is literally shoulder-width. Desperate to get out and help romantic interest and rogue MI6 agent Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson) and Grace — both are under attack at a nearby bridge — Ethan begins with defensive moves before shifting into high gear. “Ethan didn’t want to fight. He just wants to get out and save Grace and Ilsa. Having that as the background makes the audience watch it differently. You’re watching the moves and the style, sure, but you’re immersed in what he’s trying to do. So, you’ve got that emotional connection. Tom is a master at keeping that emotional storytelling alive.”
Pom Klementieff in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
With three decades in the business, Eastwood has seen a lot in the evolution of action choreography, “but the biggest thing that’s helped us is technology, especially smaller cameras that we can get into better places to capture the action more intensely and subjectively,” he says, referring to the Zed miniature cameras. Small and flexible enough to capture kinetic chaos in tight spaces, it was used in the teeth-gnashing car chase through central Rome in a tiny, yellow Fiat 500 — with Ethan steering one-handed because he is handcuffed to Grace. “I love that car chase. We trained at racetracks in England, just like we did for Rogue Nation at Goodwood, Silverstone, Bedford. We set up cones to rehearse all the scenarios that we’d experience in Rome.”
When it came time to shoot, the team might only have access to a highly trafficked area for five minutes at a time, so everything had to run like clockwork. “Logistically, it’s a real challenge. Like in the Arc de Triomphe car chase in Fallout, we only had that for an hour with 70 cars going around and Tom weaving in and out of traffic on the motorbike. It was the same in Rome. I got my stunt drivers set up so that we could be in position within 30 seconds from the side streets. If we get a five-minute lockup, we can be in and out in two minutes filmed.”
The intense training Eastwood puts the actors through is no joke. “I set them up with drills and exercises with scenarios, like what to do if a pedestrian walks out when you’re mid-drift. We drill on all the what-ifs. I train them to the point where I wouldn’t put someone else in that car. We’ve trained them to be so competent and safe that we could safely shoot and put camera mounts all over.” He wants the audience to understand just how tough it is to perform these stunts at that level as an actor. “When I’m drifting a car or flying a helicopter, I’m doing it. But when Tom does it, he has to do it as Ethan while watching out for bogeys or what might go wrong. So, he can’t necessarily look where I would because he’s also got to find the lens and the light, playing to different emotions than what he might be feeling while drifting a car through a narrow street, hitting a wall, or bouncing off a car. To do it at that level requires unbelievable skill.”
Hayley Atwell and Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
For the much-hyped climactic set piece, Cruise drove his motorcycle off Norway’s Helsetkopen mountain and plunged 4,000 feet into the ravine below. The vertical rock face gave Eastwood everything he’d been looking for: it had sufficient height to film the plunge but with a near-vertical cliff face to minimize the risk of Cruise hitting it on the way down. “It gave us the danger and a terrain where we could make it look dangerous on-screen, even though it was so dangerous!”
Once Cruise leaves the mountain and detaches from the motorcycle, he only had six seconds to deploy his parachute, so there was no room for error. “Tom is already an accomplished skydiver, but we had to drill his tracking. If he tracked the wrong way from the bike, he wouldn’t track away from the mountain. If he opened his parachute and had a small twist, he’s going to turn and slam straight into the mountain, and it’s game over. We trained with my skydiver coordinator, Jon DeVore, who’s incredible. They would fly in a helicopter at the speed of the bike and just jump and track, jump and track.”
Tom Cruise and Christopher McQuarrie on the set of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
After training for a year, Cruise had done over 500 skydives and 13,000 motocross jumps. “My motocross team was incredible. Tom did jump after jump to get his body position and rhythm right on the bike. I set up a mock version of the whole stunt in England where we had him on wires and jumped the motorcycle into 20,000 boxes, so it didn’t get damaged,” Eastwood explains. To intensify the visceral and nail-biting experience for the audience, Cruise would push it as far as he could. “Once the bike was airborne, he would try to hold onto the bike an extra half a second or a second to maximize drama, maximize jeopardy, and maximize audience participation. That’s what immerses the audience. What he did there was incredible. He put in the time and did the work, and that’s why it is the biggest stunt in cinema history.”
With Dead Reckoning, Part Two slated for summer 2025, Eastwood only has this to say for the nonstop cinematic thrill ride: “We’re still shooting, but what we’ve already done is absolutely scary. It’s breathtaking.” Unfortunately for Ethan Hunt, the battle against evil never ends, at least not for a man who would move mountains to protect those he holds close.
Dead Reckoning, Part One is streaming now and a nominee at this weekend’s 81st Golden Globe Awards.
Featured image: Base Jumping Coach John Devore, Tom Cruise, Prop Supervisor George Pugh, Christopher McQuarrie and Stunt Coordinator Wade Eastwood on the set of Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part One from Paramount Pictures and Skydance.
What’s a girl to do when she’s separated from the boy she loves? Well, if she’s in the movies, she’s going to do whatever it takes, even when what’s separating them isn’t overprotective parents, rival romantic competition, or even unrequited love, but death itself. This is the conceit writer Diablo Cody and director Zelda Williams play with in Lisa Frankenstein, a new kind of coming-of-age story where young love requires a little more elbow grease—and perhaps, a new elbow—than your typical fare. The first trailer sets the stakes, and one wonders if, as in 1931’s Frankenstein, adapted from Mary Shelley’s deathless novel, if the neighbors might not be chasing Lisa’s new lover with stakes of their own. (Okay, in the movie, they were actually pitchforks.)
The trailer shows us what happens when Lisa (Kathryn Newton) manages to raise The Creature (Cole Sprouse) from the dead, just as she dreamed, only he comes back in unsurprisingly bad shape. How bad? Even his tears smell. (How can he still produce tears? Movie magic!) We see Lisa attempting to give The Creature a makeover as she struggles to reconcile her feelings for him with the fact that he is, well, a corpse. Then a solution arrives, one that decidedly pushes Lisa Frankenstein into comedy-horror territory in the form of a rude boy who might prove useful to Lisa and The Creature.
Lisa Frankenstein has Cody’s signature mischief and genre-melding, and the cast supporting our two death-crossed lovers is solid—they’re joined by Carla Gugino, Liza Soberano, Jenna Davis, Trina LaFargue, Paola Andino, Ray Gaspard, and more. The trailer is fun, and the movie, lurching into theaters right in time for Valentine’s Day, looks like an early year treat.
Check out the trailer below. Lisa Frankenstein hits theaters on February 9.
For more on Universal Pictures, Peacock, and Focus Features projects, check out these stories:
Like its heroine, Celie (Fantasia Barrino), The Color Purple is a story that continually grows in boldness and beauty over time. Director Blitz Bazawule’s musical version of Alice Walker’s classic tale of hope and sisterhood is a vivid interpretation for a new generation.
Makeup department head Carol Rasheed approached the film with a clear intention and steadfast goals. She exchanged vision boards, music, and more with Bazawule for nearly six months to prepare for the shoot. Their meticulous planning produced a natural and realistic depiction of the characters.
“A lot of the elements – in terms of the beauty that’s in the skin – came through,” she explained. “I made sure that my team and I did not over-makeup. You can still see the texture in the skin. You can see the oils bleeding through from the skin, just really making the melanin pop off the screen.”
Caption: (L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Rasheed has gained a reputation as a “skin specialist” for her talent in matching any shade with precision. One of the most powerful elements affecting skin is time, and The Color Purple spans more than three decades. Rasheed ensured that the characters looked appropriate for each stage of their lives.
“[Bazawule] made it very clear very early on that he wanted our skin, Black skin, to age like Black people generally age,” she shared. “I think so often when you see Black people aged on screen in the past, they’re always over-aged. They look very, very old. With this, it wasn’t as dramatic. It was more of a subtle aging like how people age.”
(L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade
Sisters Celie and Nettie are introduced as children, which called for two actresses to fill each role. Rasheed credits the casting team for the remarkable natural similarities between Fantasia Barrino and Phylicia Pearl Mpasi as Celie and Halle Bailey and Ciara as Nettie. To maintain consistency, Rasheed paid careful attention to their attributes and made special accommodations to carry features from one actor to the other.
Caption: (L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO and TARAJI P. HENSON on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon
“One of the things with the Nettie character specifically, Halle Bailey, has a mole on her face,” she noted. “The decision was made when I talked to Blitz about it, ‘Let’s just leave that. That’s her natural look.’ I said, ‘OK, no problem.’ But what happened is, when the older Nettie came, which was played by Ciara, she didn’t have a mole up there, so we had to create a mole to go up there to tie in the two characters together.”
Unthinkable suffering takes hold of Celie early in her life. Rasheed muted the natural youthful blush of Phylicia Pearl Mpasi’s complexion to give her a more hardened appearance.
Caption: PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
“She has beautiful, full, pink lips,” Rasheed observed. “Of course, the lips made her look really rosy and beautiful, so we had to take that color of rosiness out of her lips. We did that by darkening her natural color in her lip.”
Caption: (L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Eventually, Celie finds someone who brings the color back to her world and her lips. She finds unexpected counsel in the glamorous and confident Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson). Hoping to highlight the beauty in Celie that she had never recognized in herself, Shug shares her lipstick. Rasheed specially designed the lip color used for that scene and provided it for the props department.
“Celie supposedly goes and grabs her lipstick color to put it on Celie’s mouth, that is the only time where the color is similar,” Rasheed revealed. “I gave them that color to use that was close to what Taraji was going to wear.”
(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo
Throughout the rest of the film, she ensured that each woman wore a unique tone of red that was reflective of their individuality. Rasheed experimented with endless blends to perfectly match the characters with the color that served them best.
“I had lipsticks from every shade. I had blue-reds, true reds, orange-reds, purple-reds, pink-reds,” Rasheed laughed. “My main focal point was to make sure I did not have any woman in the movie have the same shade of red.”
Caption: (L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery, FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and DANIELLE BROOKS as Sophia in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
After filming wrapped, Rasheed had a revelation that the palette she mixed would celebrate women offscreen as well. She developed the Evolution of Rouge lip line inspired by the ladies of The Color Purple. The smooth, rich, and vibrant formula comes in three bold shades that are now available to order.
“Women are all going to want a red and match these reds, so I came up with the Evolution of Rouge lipstick trio that is paying homage to the ladies of the movie,” Rasheed noted. “The colors are very similar. I did a blue-red, which is what Celie wore, and then I put affirming names with all of them. I AM Hope is very similar to what I used on Fantasia in the movie.”
I AM Resilient is a berry red derived from Sofia’s color (Danielle Brooks) and the First Lady of the Church (Tamela J. Mann), and Shug’s colors informed the red-orange I AM Inspiration.
Far removed from the beauty of the sisterhood the women share, hard living takes its toll on the film’s most troubled character, Mister (Colman Domingo).
“In the very beginning of the movie, when Mister comes out, he’s very handsome and he’s charming in his own way. His skin is looking perfectly melanated and poppin’,” Rasheed described. “As time went on, the meaner he got, the more I stripped away color out of his skin. I darkened under his eyes a little bit. I made everything more imperfect as the movie went on.”
Rasheed and her team hand-laid facial hair when Mister went a day and then a week without shaving. She credits The Color Purple for stretching her skillset with effects makeup from a bump on Harpo’s (Corey Hawkins) head to the injuries Sofia endures.
“I designed and ordered two different versions of an eye after [Sofia’s] beating that we had inserted to make her look like she had a bloodshot eye from the cut in her brow,” Rasheed relayed solemnly. “Giving her a bloody nose, giving her a bruised face – that all played a role into breaking that character down when she first was beat to the end of the movie when she’s sitting in prison. I had another eye designed for that look when she was cleaned up and healed. It was a whole work of progress in terms of following that character through each trauma that she experienced. We did that with makeup.”
Carol Rasheed and Colman Domingo on set of “The Color Purple.” Courtesy Warner Bros.
A dedication to the details was labor intensive throughout filming. The early 20th-century setting called for a clean slate, even across the many dancers and background actors.
“Supposedly, back in those times, nobody had their nose pierced. Nobody had tattoos on their necks and on their arms and on their legs and on their backs and chests. We had hundreds of tattoos to cover. I still have big nightmares about that,” Rasheed laughed.
A flashy musical number set on the water called for a glistening look. Rasheed applied oil to all the dancers.
(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO and TARAJI P. HENSON on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.
“We shot that particular scene in the height of summer in Savannah, Georgia,” she recalled. “It was June and July, 100-degree weather. So, of course, we were using sunscreen to protect the skin, but it also gave the skin the shine we needed in addition to putting oil on the skin as well to give it that glow.”
She applauds cinematographer Dan Laustsen for the film’s lighting. “He’s a master of his craft. He understood how to light our skin properly. That goes a long way.”
Each department on set delivered making The Color Purple a worthy revival. “The movie is very inspiring,” Rasheed promised. “It’s not like the first Color Purple at all. There are some threads of it, which you could never lose the thread of TheColor Purple. This movie, I feel like it was happier. The music was phenomenal. Just the work the actors even put in. It’s just mind-blowing.”
The Color Purple is in theaters now.
For more on The Color Purple, check out these stories:
Featured image: TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.Photo by Ser Baffo
It’s no accident that Maestro (on Netflix and in theaters) begins with Bradley Cooper’s elderly Leonard Bernstein reflecting on how much he misses his late wife Felicia, portrayed by Carey Mulligan. The biopic, of course, includes bits of Bernstein’s greatest hits as a composer and conductor, from West Side Story to Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. But the movie concentrates mainly on the complicated relationship between the bisexual Bernstein and the stylish actress who found herself living in the shadow of America’s most celebrated classical music talent.
Maestro star/co-writer/director/producer Cooper recruited two-time Oscar-winning costume designer Mark Bridges (The Artist, Phantom Thread) to chart the sartorial changes experienced by the man and his muse over the course of four decades. Drawing on his encyclopedic knowledge of 20th-century fashion, Bridges previously crafted costumes for period dramas by David O. Russell and Paul Thomas Anderson. Four years ago, he talked to The Credits about his Oscar-nominated contributions to Joker.
This time around, Bridges, speaking from Los Angeles, explains the inspirations behind the “costume plot” he designed for Maestro‘s charismatic leads, encompassing everything from underwear and Chanel dresses to turtleneck sweaters.
In 1943, when 25-year-oldBernstein gets the phone call to conduct the New York Philharmonic for the first time, he jumps up and down in his boxer shorts. Period perfect?
Yes, At one point, Bradley wasn’t going to have anything on, but we thought better of that, so we made boxer shorts that had this funny adjustable band with an adjustable V in the back. And it’s funny because in the early seventies, we see Lenny change his clothes at the country home, and he’s got his tighty whites on. So we’re doing the passage of time in this story right down to the skin.
Once he gets dressed, Bernstein wears a natty double-breasted suit. Typical of the period?
I imagined someone at 25 has one good suit. A double-breasted suit would be accessible to Bernstein, and in fact, that’s what he wore, along with the kind of wristwatch I imagine someone like him would get as a graduation gift. Throughout the forties, we also have various degrees of casual clothes and chunky jackets, which were very specific to the language of men at that time.
In 1955, Bernstein’s now a family man, married with two kids as seen on Edward Morrow’s Person to Person TV show. Were you able to reference the program itself?
We tried to duplicate that show, which is available on YouTube, but the taping is kind of blurry, so you become a bit of an archaeologist. Then your brain takes over: “Let’s use a fabric with a little more sheen that will read better in black and white for our film purposes but also gives us the flavor of that person at that time. That suit we made for Bradley is still very formal because it’s how you’d present yourself to guests at your house in the fifties — you’d wear a suit and a necktie. And for Lenny’s country clothes in the fifties, when he’s running around with the kids, you try to be as simple as possible so you don’t distract from the actors.
The sixties represent a new chapter in Bernstein’s life. What was his signature outfit?
Starting in the late sixties, you get the groovier look with the boots, and it’s also what I call Lenny’s turtleneck period. He’s aging, so it covers up the neck, and also, the kids are wearing turtlenecks. In movies from the late sixties, you’ll often see four male characters wearing them. Turtlenecks were really a thing.
In 1971, Bernstein, dressed in a slim-fit suit, meets soon-to-be-boyfriend Tommy Cothran. Inspiration?
There’s a photo of Lenny in that glen-plaid gray suit when he first meets Tommy. He’s such a movie star in that photograph, and I just had to use it because the suit’s so strong and beautiful.
In that same scene, someone compliments Bernstein on his pocket-handkerchief, and he credits Felicia for picking out his clothes.
That’s true. Felicia kind of kept Lenny in line, but when left to his own devices, he had questionable taste.
How did you arrive at Lenny’s look for the 1980s?
Lenny’s daughter Jamie invited a few of us to his house in Connecticut and showed me his closet, which had this red jacket Lenny wore well into his sixties. It looked like something a 25-year-old kid would wear without the guiding hand of Felica and the constraints of his professional life. I use it for when Lenny drives onto the lawn. He had this joie de vivre right to the end, and the jacket just felt right for that “You’re as old as you feel” idea.
In Maestro, Carey Mulligan as Bernstein’s wife, Felicia Montealegre, displays this sophisticated sense of style despite significant inner turmoil. Where did you start with Felicia?
The first time we see Felicia at a party in 1946 at [pianist] Claudio Arrau’s house. There were rules about what you wore in post-war America: a nice cocktail dress for women and men in tuxedos. I wanted to dress Felicia up a little bit, so I gave her dress beaded embellishments, and of course, her gloves match the shoes, which match the purse, which matches the hat, which matches your wrap.
Mid-fifties, Felicia’s at the family country home chatting with Bernstein’s sister Shirley (Sarah Silverman), and for the first time, she’s wearing pants. What did you have in mind with that change of pace?
I thought pants would mix things up and speak to Felicia’s sense of independence and also to the casualness of being at her own country home. Anytime Lucille Ball got ready to do some kind of hare-brained scheme, she’d be in trousers, so pants like these were certainly available at the time, mainly for resort wear on vacation or in the privacy of your own family.
Backstage in the fifties, Felicia’s wearing this gorgeous gown. Inspiration?
The shape of that skirt was inspired by a shot of the two of them backstage, very typical fifties. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel. This is the person, this is the life; why don’t we address the script with these clothes that would speak volumes about what’s going on?
Around 1969, Felicia’s wearing this striking green dress when she has her big argument with Lenny about his affairs. How did you decide on that piece?
That green dress was inspired by a photograph of Felicia when she and Lenny had their Black Panther party. That dress informed Felicia’s neckline and the jewelry. We found a double-knit wool jersey and dyed it that green color to make it feel autumnal. For Lenny, in that scene, we found what I call a “holiday houndstooth,” which was this green, maroon, harvest gold, and burnt orange jacket.
Felicia’s Chanel suit later in the film reflects her wealth and taste. How did that outfit come to be?
The Channel suit was written into the script. Chanel sent us prototypes from the period and gave us Chanel fabrics to choose from. We used materials blessed by Chanel, including the buttons, which were gold. I thought Chanel was a great idea: clothing as protection. You won’t get any bad news if you’re dressed well.
In 1974, Felicia’s diagnosed with cancer. How did you dress her for that era?
With Felicia’s sickness, we go to the blue dress. I was inspired by a period dress that had a great shape and was flattering on Carey, so I used that as a prototype. Then we had to think about what color it should be. Green didn’t feel emotionally right, red was too sexy, but blue felt right because there’s a coolness about a woman who’s Mrs. Maestro. And it wouldn’t have worked unless we used a stiff fabric, which was woolen silk. We had an amazing cutter. April McCoy, who made that dress. Then we accessorized it with beautiful pearls and, of course, matching shoes.
Felicia’s deathbed scene, which will likely earn Carey Mulligan an Oscar nomination, must have required a sensitive touch from you and your team. How did you fit the clothes to the occasion?
For Felicia’s final scene, I had this amazing Liberty of London floral robe that Carey wore in bed. The idea that Felicia should be in a field of flowers felt right to me because it’s pretty to look at even though something very devastating is happening.
You dressed Bradley Cooper as an actor when he was in Silver Linings Playbook and Licorice Pizza, but on Maestro, he’s also the director. What was that like?
It was interesting working with Bradley on Maestro at this other level. As an actor, he’d look at the costume, feel it, and make sure he could act in it. But then there’s always the quiet moment of reflection where he’s going through it in his mind: “Will this work for my shot and how I want to direct the scene?” I was kind of blown away by his focus.
The final trailer for Mean Girls has arrived, giving us a last look at Paramount’s upcoming movie musical, which was appropriately first glimpsed by audiences who went and saw Taylor Swift’s concert film in the theater. This musical version, from directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr., is adapted from the 2018 Broadway play, which itself was an adaptation of the hit 2004 film. The original film, the Broadway musical, and this cinematic adaptation of the musical were all written by Tina Fey and boasts a multitalented cast and music from composer Jeff Richmond (Fey’s husband) with music and lyrics written by Nell Benjamin, both of whom collaborated on the Broadway show. Star Reneé Rapp joined them to write new songs, too.
This new iteration of Mean Girls is centered on new student Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), who wins the coveted position of joining the most popular—and most ruthless—clique in school, the Plastics, led by their undisputed queen, Regina George (the aforementioned Rapp). The Plastics play rough, and Cady will find out soon enough that Regina rules with an iron fist, and Rice and Rapp will be singing their way into roles first made famous by Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams.
The new trailer reveals a few key details, including a winter talent show that will give the cast a chance to show off their considerable chops. That cast also includes Auli’i Cravalho as Janis ‘Imi’ike, Jaquel Spivey as Damian Hubbard, Avantika as Karen Shetty, Bebe Wood as Gretchen Wieners, Christopher Briney as Aaron Samuels, Jenna Fischer as Ms. Heron, Busy Philipps as Mrs. George, Ashley Park as Madame Park, Tina Fey as Ms. Norbury, Tim Meadows as Mr. Duvall.
Check out the final trailer below. Mean Girls arrives in theaters on January 12:
For more films and series from Paramount and Paramount+, check out these stories:
Callum Turner plays Joe Rantz in The Boys in the Boat, based on the real-life story of the University of Washington rowing team that won a gold medal in the 1936 Olympics. George Clooney directed the film, adapted by Mark L. Smith from Daniel James Brown’s best-seller of the same title, and it’s a classic underdog story. Coach Al Ulbrickson, played by Joel Edgerton, took a big risk by taking the junior varsity team to the Olympics instead of the far more experienced varsity rowers. The Ivy League teams, made up of young men from wealthy families, were considered to be far better prospects than the Washington team, which included poor kids, some of whom were homeless, who began rowing because it was the only way to stay in school. The Boys in the Boat is the kind of irresistible David vs. Goliath tale that filmmakers have been flocking to since the medium was invented.
In an interview, Turner talked about the training he and the other actors had to undergo to portray world-class athletes, the exhilaration of finding a way to achieve the coordinated precision of a rowing team, and the advice he got from Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis.
The rowing scenes look so beautiful. What was it like to be out on the water as the sun was coming up?
We shot mostly in Oxfordshire, near Swindon. I’m from central London, and being in the countryside is peaceful, elegant, relaxed, and calming. I’m so used to the hustle and bustle of central London and the city, and I’m only just acquiring a taste of country life. So, being up there was wonderful.
What was the set like?
George Clooney had his dog, and I had my dog. It was a harmonious set. The dogs would go for walks with each other, and we’d get videos from Nick, the driver, of them running through the river and having a really picturesque experience. Ours was a little tougher. I’d say the dogs had more fun than we did. We were making a movie and rowing, too. I kept joking that making the movie was a side hustle and that rowing was my primary job.
We hear the word “swing” used about rowing in the film. How would you define it?
Swing is the thing that you aim to achieve in the boat. It’s when the boat glides across the water, and it feels like it’s levitating. It’s when all eight of you are in sync, completely in tune. And it is the poetry of motion that George Pocock talks about and Coach Al Ulbrickson talks about, what you aim for. And you don’t always get it. Even on an hour row or two-hour row, you don’t get that sometimes. When it happens, it happens, and you have to enjoy it when you’re in the moment. We got it a few times. There’s something really elegant and spiritual about rowing that I, even whilst doing it, didn’t understand.
Was it harder to get into the swing of things on the boat than you expected?
Reading the book a couple of times before shooting, I thought, yeah, I get it. I understand teamwork. I understand being fit. I didn’t. Even whilst I was doing it, I was so in it and so present in trying to achieve the rows per minute and do a good job for the film that I didn’t understand. What your lungs have to do to stay in the boat and keep up with your teammates and what your mind has to do to remain concentrated and stay with your teammates. Because it’s all about your teammates, and losing your identity to become one is excruciatingly difficult. It was only in hindsight when I reread the book, and it was like a light bulb moment after light bulb moment. Only through rereading the book did I understand how incredible the experience was and how beautiful rowing is.
Is the awareness of the other people on the team anything like performing with other actors?
There are elements that are the same, but I think in terms of teamwork and awareness and concentration, it blows it out of the water because it is about losing your identity, whereas acting is about throwing your paint onto the canvas for the director. In rowing, you just really lose yourself. You have to. You’re so present whilst you’re doing it. Responsible in a different way. In other sports, you can have a star player that can score a goal or score a point in basketball or two points in basketball. With this, there’s none of that. It’s six and a half minutes of grueling pain.
You all must have worked very hard to be able to row at that level.
We were coached by Terry O’Neill, who won gold in Atlanta. I went to Mexico to lose weight and be as fit as possible before we started this boot camp because I knew this was going to be difficult. And I turned up, and I was still so unfit in comparison to what I had to achieve. Luckily, everyone else was, too. It’s funny; art imitates life a lot in this experience. We became a team, we got ready for it, even to the point where, you know, in the end of the film, with the photo finish, they say, “Did we do it? Who won, who lost?” We had a moment, the second to last day, when we achieved 45 strokes per minute, which was a target we set ourselves in February, the second or third day we started. And on the fourth day, I realized, no, that’s impossible, why would we say that, that’s ridiculous. The further along the process we went, the harder it felt to achieve.
What’s so beautiful, is we did it together. There’s no individual. It’s a team. It’s a pure team. And from thinking we were never going to be able to achieve it to achieving it — there was a euphoria in the boat that I hadn’t felt before.
What does George Clooney know as an actor that helps him be a good director?
A shorthand. He knows cutting the fat, getting to the point, and not beating around the bush. On Masters of the Air, I like to try as much as possible because my character my character is such a big, expressive person, completely different. The boundaries were wider, so I had to try everything before honing in on something. What we did on this was the idea that Joe’s grounded, he’s connected to the earth, he’s true, he’s from the countryside, he’s a lumberjack. His life has been so hard that the walls are up, the curtains are closed, and the doors are locked. It’s like Fort Knox inside of his brain. That basically just pulled the boundaries in. It allowed us to play within a certain space, which was freer, actually, because we knew where we were and that you could do different variations of a smaller thing. And that was George. He and I talked about that, and he just brought those boundaries in.
He’s a cinephile. He loves not only the industry, but he loves movies and he loves actors. And we were able to just lean into people like Spencer Tracy. I knew Spencer Tracy a little bit, but then I went on a deeper dive. And I brought the idea of Gary Cooper in High Noon, especially. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is another favorite of mine. That stoicism, that masculinity of the time, was then a shorthand that we were able to build through our love of cinema and actors. And as a man, I learned a lot. George is a great leader of people. He really does it in a pure form. And there’s no ego or bullshit. It’s all pretty straightforward. To watch someone lead and be authentic to themselves, that’s always inspiring.
I think the chemistry made them special. They were all incredible individual rowers. And the fact that these guys had nothing is the thing that Ulbrickson saw. They were hungry, and they had holes in their shoes, and they were homeless, and they were on the edge. And I think that edge gave them the thing to drive on and beat everyone. They didn’t lose a race, these guys. I think these guys had a lot to aim for. And they learned to trust each other.
I’m very lucky because I got acting advice from Daniel Day-Lewis. We became buddies through BAFTA. We spent a lot of time talking and being competitive with each other about films we’ve watched. He texts me saying, “I’ve watched these four obscure French films from the 50s. And I’m like, “Ah!” So, I go and watch them. I say, “Oh yeah, I’ve seen those. And I’ve seen this obscure Romanian movie. It’s a documentary. I’ll send you the DVD if you like.” He told me, “Dance to the rhythm of your own beat. Find your rhythm and dance to it.” And that is actually the greatest bit of advice I’ve ever been given. Because there’s no right and there’s no wrong. If you want to be in musicals, that’s your thing. If you want to be in a soap opera, that’s your thing. There’s no right or wrong. Don’t judge anyone else. Just concentrate on yourself and follow your heart.
For production designer Paul D. Austerberry and set decorator Larry Dias, The Color Purple was a challenge in grounding post-Antebellum South aesthetics with whimsical musical environments. Scouring every nook and cranny of Georgia, the town of Grantville provided seven shooting locations for director Blitz Bazawule’s retelling of the beloved story that follows Celie (Fantasia Barrino), a Black woman trying to find her identity while married to an abusive husband named Mister (Colman Domingo).
Austerberry and Dias carved a visual journey that parallels Celie’s character growth, where muted colors blossom into vibrant hues and patterns. Practical locations created a sense of realism, while interiors were constructed on soundstages for more control. “All the builds were accomplished in very authentic locations for our period and story,” says Austerberry. Locations in Macon, Savannah, and Inman Park became all part of the production design story, while a swamp served as the exterior of the Juke Joint for a sultry performance by Shug Avery (Taraji P. Henson), an inspirational character for Celie.
Below, the pair talk about how the era affected their choices in design, color, and set decoration and how sticking to period accuracy environments even meant making changes to the script.
How did you and Blitz want to approach the period look that is also a musical?
Austerberry: Blitz was a musician before he was a filmmaker, so we talked a lot about the music while scouting. We decided that this wasn’t going to be a stock period film, but we were going to go through Celie’s imagination to create these other visual worlds. The important thing was to be careful and set the tone of the film, so it had to be really grounded first before we go off into these imaginary worlds.
(L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo
A large portion of Celie’s life takes place in Mister’s home. Can you talk about its design?
Austerberry: We didn’t want it to be an Antebellum-style house. We decided to have a little smaller-scale house that didn’t have the overtones of an antebellum. It was a tough hunt to find the house because we wanted it to be a certain scale, and it needed to have two floors. We found it in Carroll County, Georgia. It was abandoned for 20-odd years and owned by an African American engineer, which is interesting for the story. We added the second floor, a porch, and an addition on the back.
COLMAN DOMINGO as Mister in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
When Celie arrives at his house, it’s in a dilapidated state before she puts her touch on it.
Austerberry: It’s a decrypted mess with chickens and water all over. The kids are running rampant. As the story progresses, Blitz, Larry, and I talked about how her mother taught Celie early how to sew. The mother’s sewing basket is something Nettie gives her when Celie marries Mister. She uses it to start cleaning up the house and add all these little additions like curtains. She made it more of a home, and you have to look at different viewing to see all the details.
Caption: Director BLITZ BAZAWULE (standing) with (L-r clockwise) LOUIS GOSSETT JR., H.E.R., JON BATISTE, TARAJI P. HENSON, COLMAN DOMINGO, FANTASIA BARRINO, DANIELLE BROOKS and COREY HAWKINS on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Eli Ade
We see Celie speak out against Mister in the dining room, a set that has a lot of personality and color. How did you want to decorate that room?
Dias: That room develops as Celie’s character also develops. She started out in complete disarray, where everything was a mess. Then she sort of put her hands on it. She is a very giving person who gives without expecting anything back. She sort of develops that and makes it a home even though it was never her home. She was almost a guest in it. She put her stamp on it and brought this joy and life to it. We did it in subtle ways because they wouldn’t have the funds necessary to make big, bold changes. It’s done with plants and curtains and the linens on the table. Her sewing space is in there to make it feel a little more developed. She made it a home for the people in it, and that’s very symbolic of her character.
H.E.R. as Squeak in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
One of Celie’s defining moments is the bathroom scene with Shug. The set separates itself from the rest of Mister’s home. How did you approach it?
Austerberry: The rest of the house is in a cooler color palette of muted greens, blues, and beiges. The first time you go into that bathroom, you see this burgundy color and deep patterns. We thought this could have been a place where Shug comes back to recoup from the big city life, and she left a bunch of her trappings and has money to have this bathtub. The colors are part of Shug as she rides in this red car and wears this red dress. Red is important as we go along as it transfers to Celie towards the end.
(L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery and FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade.
Yes, you wouldn’t think a bathtub would be part of those less fortunate in the region.
Dias: When it was scripted, they talked about the bathroom and steam coming out of the bathroom taps. Paul and I were looking at all this research in the rural South, and it did not involve indoor plumbing, so we had to go to Blitz and say that this is not really period-appropriate. We wanted to honor the period and the situation that people were living in as we didn’t want to make the movie version of it. At the same time, we are doing a movie with a lot of fantasy sequences, but for the parts that are real in the film, we wanted them to feel really real. So it turned out to be a bathtub in the room which consequently is the only bathtub in the whole house. We approached it like it was a shrine to Shrug.
Caption: Director BLITZ BAZAWULE on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Eli Ade
Speaking of Shug’s red dress, what went into creating the Juke Joint set as she makes her entrance via boat?
Austerberry: Something important to me was this feeling that Shug is bringing in music, plugging the music into that building. The exterior is a practical location. We found this barge and created this amazing entrance, and cinematographer Dan Laustsen created this blue lighting behind her as she comes through the doors. When we went indoors, it’s a set build that’s only a little bit bigger than the exterior. When you’re doing a musical, you think of stylized numbers, but this movie had to be grounded in reality. It meant small, more realistic spaces to make the dances vibrant. Then Larry got some amazing decorations. It was a really fun set.
TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. PicturesTARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.Photo by Ser Baffo
Did you have a guiding light for decorating the Juke Joint?
Dias: What I wanted to achieve was believability. I wanted it to feel like Harpo [portrayed by Corey Hawkins, owner of the Juke Joint and the son to Mister] did not have a surplus of money, and this was a dream he had. I wanted to fill it with things he could truly acquire, all completely mismatched, where a lot of fits could have been handmade or scavenged. None of it had any sort of nobility to it. Almost found objects. So that’s how I went about it, looking for mismatched things to place in there but doing it in a way that was stylized and had an ethereal quality to it.
Since we can see outside of the Juke Joint, how did you match the interior set with the location?
Austerberry: The blue lighting and the swamp as a backdrop created a proscenium line with the stage, so we did it practically with force perspective using smaller lights to match the exterior shots.
Dias: Paul was brilliant in creating a shortened set and we lit in the same way as the exterior location using barn lanterns. We found them in different sizes, all the way to the tiny wee ones. So we could place them out and trick your eye so it felt like the same space. Then we put this plastic down on the set floor that had this reflective quality to it. It made these ripples of water on the floor, which was a happy accident.
Celie reunites with Nettie (Ciara) under a gorgeous tree sequence. How did you find the location?
Austerberry: We were scouting south of Savanna, and I was looking for an amazing tree, and we found a grove of trees the Prime series The Underground Railroad was using and they had it surrounded with three shacks underneath it. We convinced the owner to allow us to bring in movers to move them to another part of the property, and then we restored the tree to its glorified beauty.
Caption: (L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO and TARAJI P. HENSON on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Lynsey Weatherspoon
We actually see it earlier on during the pat-a-cake scene with Celie and Nettie, right?
Austerberry: Yes, welooked at it like a family tree. It’s a place Celie remembers from her childhood, and she comes back to it.
(L-r) PHYLICIA PEARL MPASI as Young Celie and HALLE BAILEY as Young Nettie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade
Was the circle of tables around the tree the idea from the start?
Austerberry: The script was written as an Easter dinner in a field of lilies, which may have been a reference to the original film. It felt completely appropriate to do it in a big circle because the circle is symbolic as well. The circle of life, the journey of life.
A scene from Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Part of the set decoration in the scene is the quilts Celie makes. What went into designing them?
Dias: One thing that is part of African culture is quilting. It was done out of necessity and made from children’s clothing. Women would take scraps of fabric and make quilts out of it as a functional piece for a domestic environment. We found a group of women from that time period, the Gee’s Bend, who made quilts in a freehand way with an imbalance of colors and weight to them. I wanted the quilts in the scene to be one piece of art.
It’s also nice there are several quilts instead of one giant one Celie could have made. Was that always the intention?
Dias: Blitz wanted to span the gap between fantasy and reality and have a series of quilts instead of one. We went out and handpicked what I felt had proper uniqueness that didn’t feel made by a church group or had an ordinary approach. I wanted the quilts to have an organic quality to them. Then, with the white palette at the beginning of the film and at the end, it fits perfectly well because white has a purity to it, and both Celie and her sister Nettie are pure of heart.
The Color Purple is in theaters now.
For more on The Color Purple, check out these stories:
Featured image: TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Lynsey Weatherspoon
Spanning four decades of love, art, and loss, the tortured yet deeply moving marriage of American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein (Bradley Cooper) and Costa Rican actress Felicia Montealegre Bernstein (Carey Mulligan), serves as the crux of Cooper’s sophomore directorial offering. Rather than a pure biopic, Maestro — the visually (and sonically) absorbing musical drama from Netflix — anchors its narrative verve on the couple’s tumultuous marriage and the sacrifices that art demands.
His second collaboration with Cooper since 2018’s A Star Is Born, cinematographer Matthew Libatique (Black Swan, The Whale) especially appreciates the director’s keen sense of editorial. “He has the mind of an editor — he really understands structure and scenes that he needs and doesn’t need. I think it has to do with how much he has worked with Clint Eastwood and David O. Russell,” says Libatique, who was nominated for an Oscar for A Star Is Born.
With six years devoted to prep, Cooper’s commitment to authenticity included spending six years learning how to conduct so that they could execute a six-minute live sequence to recreate Bernstein’s 1973 show-stopping performance at the Ely Cathedral, where he led the London Symphony Orchestra in Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2. “He creates a lot of depth and with every choice, whether it’s the shot or his performance, it’s about creating as much depth as possible. Every layer is one step closer to authenticity,” Libatique reveals of Cooper’s style.
Shot on Kodak film with Panaflex Millennium XL cameras, the visual palette is a mixture of 1.33:1 in black and white (Eastman Double-X 5222) and color (Vision3 500T #5219 for interiors and Vision3 200T #5213 for exteriors) and 1.85:1 for the scenes that took place in 1989, which bookend the film with an aging Lenny reminiscing about his life years after Felicia’s passing. “We came up with the decision of framing with 1.33:1 after months of shooting tests that ended up with a 40-minute proof of concept. We tried every format – 35mm film, ARRI 65, RED, Alexa, a multitude of lenses, anamorphic, but we really fell in love with the 1.33:1,” Libatique recalls of the meticulous process.
“We wanted to first transport the audience into this time period of Lenny’s life in 1.33:1 black and white. When the story graduates into the 1970s, to mark the time period, we switched to color. Then, after Felicia dies, the film expands to 1.85:1,” Libatique explains. In addition to delineating time periods, the different aspect ratios also have a way of setting the emotional tone: “The 1.33:1 frame, because of its lack of left and right, feels like an embrace of these two people.”
Moments after the movie begins, the conductor’s meteoric rise is captured efficiently in an exuberant “God POV” sequence that compresses space and time. After Lenny gets an early-morning call to step in for a guest conductor that night at the New York Philharmonic, he dashes out of bed, leaving clarinetist and lover David Oppenheim (Matt Bomer), and strides down the aisle that magically leads into Carnegie Hall, all of which was captured in one sweeping camera move. “Bradley wanted the camera very high, looking down at Lenny at the very beginning of the film, and the camera lower while he conducted. So, he had this idea of the God POV pulling Lenny into his future life. As he conducted, he becomes larger than life, so the camera was a lot lower,” Libatique shares.
Since the set was already built, it took some work to figure out how to get that shot. “The main piece of gear that we used was a 45-foot telescopic crane. We started in the bedroom and then graduated to the hallway and eventually blended into Carnegie Hall. That was a tricky shot. We did maybe twelve takes of it, and around take four or five is the one that ended up in the film because Bradley saw how it really felt like the camera was pulling Lenny.” This is one of the two black-and-white shots in the film where color film stock was used due to light conditions, as Libatique reveals: “The shot that pulls you into Carnegie Hall was shot on color film [and then filtered to black and white] simply because it was much faster and more sensitive. There was no way to really bring up the light levels inside that space. But everything else was shot in regular black and white and not colorized.”
Even though Felicia remained the love of his life, Lenny continued to have affairs with multiple men throughout their marriage and raising three children. One of their many ferocious quarrels was shot entirely framed through the arch trellis in their garden. “The minute you put the camera in between two people being very emotional, it takes a little away from the intensity of that performance. Bradley liked being further away so that the actors could really emote when they could just really feel comfortable,” Libatique notes. Shooting that scene from afar “made me feel like I was trying to hear it more. With that obstruction, you can’t see everything, but you’re trying to hear it.”
Amidst the soaring music and the crackling, overlapping banter, one of the emotionally crushing scenes is the tearful, unspoken farewell between Lenny and David as they walk alongside each other on a Manhattan sidewalk, years after both men have married women and had children. The camera stays on both men for a few beats, their faces telegraphing every sliver of emotion. “It was a very subtle way of conveying the dynamic between them, the kind of sacrifices they had to make because of the time period that they lived in,” Libatique remarks. The scene was originally shot with dialogue, but Cooper and Bomer’s understated yet moving performances amplified the pain in the silence. “We were able to veil those emotions and anxieties with that silence, which then culminates with Lenny suddenly stopping and breaking down. The scene originally had dialogue in it, we did one take silent, and that’s what you see in the film.”
When it came time to shoot the pinnacle of the film from the music perspective, they had the majestic Ely Cathedral and the London Philharmonic Orchestra for three days — one for rehearsal and sound check, and two for filming. “The acoustics were phenomenal in that space. We were all in there prepping, and when the philharmonic started playing, everyone literally stopped whatever they were doing. I sat in the front row, first pew, just listening. It was the most moving thing,” Libatique recalls of the singular experience. Cooper captured the essence of Bernstein’s physicality and zeal in the cathartic and transcendent sequence in one live six-minute take on the second day of shooting. “It was basically captured in one shot. It cuts out of that shot to show some of the orchestra, but then it cuts back to that single shot [of Lenny conducting]. The telescopic crane goes over the musicians and up to Lenny and then back to the musicians again. That was a magical take, and that’s what’s in the film.”
Editor Jon Poll knows comedy structure forward and backward, having worked on such classics as Meet the Parents, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. So, how did he wind up editing The Color Purple? The deeply dramatic musical, directed by Ghanian-born rapper-turned-Beyonce collaborator (Black is King) turned filmmaker Blitz Bazawule, features Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson, Colman Domingo, and Danielle Brooks as members of a resilient Georgia family bound and determined to persevere despite trauma, insecurity and generational dysfunction. The film presented Poll with an unprecedented level of engagement. “Working on this movie changed me, my relationship to trauma, to how I see the world,” Poll says. “To be frank, I never thought I’d be working on a movie that had the word God in it so many times or that I’d be crying at so many things.”
Poll, speaking from Los Angeles, talks about collaborating with Bazawule, absorbing studio notes, and understanding the transformative power of a good dinner scene.
As someone who’s specialized mainly in comedies, including last year’s Father of the Bride reboot, how do you see the differences between cutting for punchlines versus editing for dramatic effect?
To me, Meet the Parents or Meet the Fockers are basically dramas that have jokes in them. Honestly, for me, the only movies that sometimes leave me wanting more are dramas that don’t have any humor in them. With The Color Purple, Blitz and I weren’t chasing comedy, but we were also not running away from it.
(L-r) DANIELLE BROOKS as Sophia and COREY HAWKINS as Harpo in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Comic relief comes through in the performance by Danielle Brooks as flamboyant Sofia. Unlike most of your earlier work, you also had to integrate song sequences with dialogue. How did you balance those elements in the edit?
I was proud of the way we transitioned between music and dialogue. e just tried to stay out of the way audience’s way. We did not play the score really loud. We were not pushing for emotion. If both felt that we get the emotion, we’ve earned it, but let’s just hang back and try to be subtle. Blitz’s goal was to make a movie that felt grounded, elegant, personal, and intimate.
How did you get on Blitz’s radar in the first place?
The producers wanted a partner for this guy who hasn’t made a studio movie. Luckily, [Warner Bros President of Production] Courteney Valenti at the studio was happy with Father of the Bride, and I knew [studio post-production executive] Paul LaMori,who I knew from working with him on [1999 comedy] Mystery, Alaska. They said why don’t you get on the phone with Blitz. So I did, and I tried to talk him out of it.
Really?
I said I’m not your guy. So he pitched to me. And I told him about how my favorite musical is Walk the Line, where they’re telling the story up on stage. I also loved Summer of Soul and Jimmy Cliff’s The Harder They Fall, because it took me to this world where the music was part of the fabric of the movie. There’s a relationship between those films and what became The Color Purple. Three days later, I had the job
Caption: (L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery, FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and DANIELLE BROOKS as Sophia in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Once you started editing dailies, what was Blitz like to collaborate with?
His work ethic was astounding. If he had a night shoot, Blitz would then come into the cutting room in the morning. If he had a day call that ended at sunset, he’d come into the cutting room. There wasn’t a week that he didn’t come in at least once. And he was very specific when he gave me notes, but sometimes I’d surprise him, and he’d be like: “You cut out that oner? Come on, Jon, no.”
A “oner” being a single continuous shot?
Yeah. There are no cuts, and you stay in that one shot for a minute or two. In one scene, we see young Celie moving into Mister’s house. Blitz had a beautiful oner following Celie around cleaning, and I turned it into five jump cuts. He said, “You can’t do that.” Two or three weeks later, he said, “Remember that thing you showed me? Let’s live with it a little.” Months later, we’re watching that scene, and he’s laughing. “It’s funny that I told you to take out the jump cuts because clearly, they’re working.” For any collaborator, it’s wonderful when someone gives you the leeway to try things.
Did you stay in L.A., or were you editing on location in George during principal photography?
I was in Georgia for seven months. I told Blitz I’d post whatever [rough cuts] I had at the end of every week, and he said, “I don’t want to work that way. I want to come in so we can talk about it together, and then we’ll come up with a plan.”
What did you have in mind when you designed the overall edit?
The most important thing was to get the director’s cut ready as soon as possible so we could screen it for an audience and address any issues before showing anything to the studio.
(L-r) TARAJI P. HENSON and FANTASIA BARRINO with Director BLITZ BAZAWULE on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Eli Ade
And then came the notes from the producers and studio executives.
We never got a note that we didn’t try and believe me, there were lots of notes. “What if you took out this song?” But every time we tried to take out a song, we’d screen it, and everybody would agree: “Nah, not as good.”
Can you give an example?
“The Working Song.” We put that song back in because even though Harpo [Corey Hawkins] is not the focus, we still need to know where he’s coming from.
The Color Purple‘s dinner scene feels like a real turning point, gathering all the main characters around one table. What do you enjoy about cutting a sequence where everybody’s confined to a single room and forced to deal with each other?
I love dinner table scenes. Meet the Parents, Meet the Fokkers, and Father of the Bride all had family scenes. It’s fascinating to me because the whole family’s stuck there, and you get to get all the little reactions.
Caption: Director BLITZ BAZAWULE (standing) with (L-r clockwise) LOUIS GOSSETT JR., H.E.R., JON BATISTE, TARAJI P. HENSON, COLMAN DOMINGO, FANTASIA BARRINO, DANIELLE BROOKS and COREY HAWKINS on the set of Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Eli Ade
With The Color Purple, those tension and release dynamics play out in such an interesting way.
That was a big challenge for me because all eight characters have to be kept alive the whole time. I worked on that dinner more than any other scene to the point where it almost got funny: “I want to do another pass. I need to get Squeak out the door. We see Harpo get laughs with just a shrug. These are tiny, minor things, but we ended up with a scene where you knew what was going on with every single character.
Celie’s journey is rooted in trauma, and she suffers shocking abuse in the first half hour. How did you handle the violence?
The first part of the movie is pretty tough. Horrible things are being done yet we can’t shy away from it. You don’t want to turn the audience off, but you have to deliver the violence and show what it is. I personally still jump when Mister slaps Celie, and she falls to the ground after he discovers that she’s been reading Nettie’s letter.
COLMAN DOMINGO as Mister in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo.
You relocated to Georgia, immersed yourself in these performances, and edited an intense saga that has proven itself over the decades in several iterations. After investing all this time and energy in The Color Purple, how did you feel when you came out on the other end of production?
I just have a lot of gratitude to the people who let this guy who cuts comedies come in and work on something so meaningful and heartfelt. Oprah Winfrey said this story is about underdogs, and I think everybody understands what it means to be the underdog.
The Color Purple is in theaters now.
For more on The Color Purple, check out these stories:
Featured image: (L-r) FANTASIA BARRINO as Celie and TARAJI P. HENSON as Shug Avery in Warner Bros. Pictures’ bold new take on a classic, “THE COLOR PURPLE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by Ser Baffo
For The Boys in the Boat, directed by George Clooney, production designer Kalina Ivanov had to make England of 2022 look like the Pacific Northwest of the United States in the midst of the Depression. No easy feat, but one the talented filmmaker was more than prepared to tackle. Ivanov, who worked with Clooney on The Tender Barand currently helped create the iconic Gotham for the upcoming The Batman spinoff series The Penguin, is at home in everything from exacting period pieces to the sprawling, gritty underworld of DC’s most infamous megalopolis.
In an interview with The Credits, she talked about the difference between British and American university architecture, re-creating the airplane hanger-turned-boat-building facility that was used by the University of Washington rowing team that won the 1936 Olympic gold medal, and her “joyful moment” from a change she suggested to Clooney that took her back to her roots in theater.
I don’t think children say, “When I grow up, I want to be a production designer.” So I’m always interested in the origin story.
My mission in life is to get children to say, “I want to be a production designer!” I’m a co-founder of an organization called the Production Designers Collective, together with Inbal Weinberg. We have gathered 1,300 production designers from across the globe. One thing that is common amongst all of us is that we all randomly ended up being production designers. We come from very different backgrounds, whether it’s architecture or in my particular case, it’s theater.
The theater is a rich world from which quite a few production designers are drawn. How was that experience for you?
I grew up in Bulgaria, which, to begin with, has a very tiny film industry, and at the time, because it was a communist country, it was very controlled by the government. So, needless to say, I had very little chance of becoming any kind of an artist in Bulgaria because my family was blacklisted.
Oh, wow.
In 1979, my family and I escaped from Bulgaria. We landed in New York, and the very first thing I said was, “I want to be a theater set designer.” And my parents had a heart attack. But they were very encouraging. To their credit, they never discouraged me. I ended up by pure luck at NYU’s theater design program, which is incredibly good. It gave me the foundation for understanding design and the discipline to produce on time, which is half the game, actually.
What was the theater world like for you?
It seemed bigger from Bulgaria, but theater ended up being such a small world, and not a lot of women set designers. I was working as an assistant on a Broadway show, and I met a woman who said, “You draw really fast. You should consider storyboarding.” And so, I bought the book of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which had the storyboards in it, and self-taught myself. Once I got interested in film, I went as a graduate student to NYU’s film program. That was very valuable. And then, I literally harassed every friend I ever had, like to get me a job as a storyboard artist for about a year, and finally landed one.
And were you off to the races then?
From there, it just snowballed, and then I ended up doing Silence of the Lambs because I met Jonathan Demme in film school. I think storyboarding is a fantastic way of segueing into production design because it teaches you about the camera. That’s something that is very important for a good design, to understand what the camera is going to see, and how it operates, how the spaces play to a camera, and the proportion of the human figure.
It’s difficult to understand the contribution of production design because if you do it really well, people are not aware of it. But if you make a mistake, particularly in a period film like this, everybody will notice it.
Yes, I call production designers “masters of invisibility” because that is what we are. If we do our job right, you should not know that we’re there. I don’t think anyone recognizes the fact that most of what you see in The Boys in the Boat are built sets on stage or on location. The entire shell house [where the team’s boats are built] is a recreation of the real one, and it’s a gigantic building. It’s 110 feet by 88 by 36 tall. It took us three months to build from scratch. The unique thing is that even though it’s called a shell house, it originally was an airplane hangar. That immediately informed us about what kind of floor it would be, what kind of structure it would be, etcetera.
I contacted the university, of course. And they were immensely helpful. They were very enthusiastic about the film. I couldn’t go to Seattle because of COVID, which was a really missed opportunity. So, I had to do everything from photos, and from oral history. Because they were in the process of restoring the shell house, they have more contemporary restoration drawings, which were immensely helpful. Then my next task was, okay, this building is so big; how much can I actually make it a little bit smaller but still maintain its proportions and fit the boats? And the most interesting thing is that George Pocock’s workshop was really on the mezzanine level, which is counterintuitive because he had to take them out of the window and down a floor. And a boat is 62, about 62 feet long. So clearly, I couldn’t reduce the volume too much because you have to fit a boat in there, the length of it. I was able to reduce it by about ten percent. Not to mention that we also did all the hotel rooms and all the dorm rooms. There’s so much scenery. The Seattle street is a back lot. The restaurants, the train, all of that is set. So I’m delighted that people are not guessing that. It is so beautifully transferred to the screen, and the blend between the production design and VFX is so perfect that both of us did our jobs very, very well because you don’t know where one starts and when one stops.
How did you turn England into the American Pacific Northwest?
The very first thing I wanted to teach all my London colleagues, the locations, and the art department is that American college campuses are very eclectic in their style of buildings. Where in England, it’s very much as if it was built during the Tudor era, it’s Tudor. If it’s during restoration, it’s restoration. If it’s Beaux-Arts, it’s Beaux-Arts. When you look at Seattle’s University of Washington campus, and you see, here’s the Beaux-Arts building, here’s the Tudor style building, here’s a colonial style building, they’re all very eclectic. So, for that purpose, we combined four different locations, or entities basically, to create one campus. And it worked beautifully because it gave you that scope of what an American campus has and the eclectic and less formal nature of American architecture.
It was the very first image. We start with Hooverville. That was critical. In research, we learned that Seattle’s Hooverville, at one point, had 8,000 people. And it was massive. It had its own post office. We built it on what we called the back lot, actually a field. The organic nature of it is something that sometimes is harder than straight architecture. We basically looked at all the textures. We collected wallpapers, tin, and any kind of material. You have to start thinking about the characters — how would they build this, and what would they use? Joe, of course, lives in a car, so right off the bat, that was something that had to be very authentic. I did my own black-and-white sketch first to show it to George [Clooney]. And then we went to a color concept and then we put in all the buildings around, et cetera, for VFX to be able to recreate it.
What was your first conversation with George Clooney about when you began to talk about the film?
The very first thing he stressed is authenticity. He said, “I want to be able to smell and feel the depression. It’s so important to see these boys as underdogs, as boys who had holes in their sweaters and holes in their shoes.” So, we aged everything, and we worked very hard on getting that kind of sense of dust and dirt and neglect that actually doesn’t exist in England in more pristine quarters or even contemporary life. One of the things that I think that both George and I share is that both of us approach things in a rather more subtle and simple way. We go for more simplicity rather than ornamentation. So, we looked for locations with very straight lines and very simple architecture.
Is there one particular detail that you’re especially proud of in the film?
One particular thing that I take pride and very personal joy in was when the script called for the boys to be cleaning in the school. And the script called for a music room. And I went there and thought, “Oh boy, we’re going just to see a piano and some black curtains, and what is happening?” I just thought visually it wasn’t aspirational enough for them. It wasn’t like they wanted to be part of this university and wanted to have a better life. So, I thought, what better than to do a Shakespeare play, and what better than to do than A Midsummer Night’s Dream? A performance of that instead of a music recital. And so I pitched that idea to George and he like, “This sounds great, go for it.” When he saw the set, he was giddy. He said, “This is so beautiful.” And the next day, he came in with a 1930s edition of Shakespeare’s plays and gave it to the actor, put him on the stage, and said, “Now read from this.” And that, to me, was such a joyful moment because we both improvised and informed the characters and gave them something to do.
You’ve returned to your roots as a theater set designer.
Yes! I told George, “You can nevertake the theater kid out of me.”
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year.
Before Barbie, before producing Bruno Mars and Adele, before winning an Oscar for co-writing Lady Gaga’s duet “Shallow” for A Star Is Born, Mark Ronson made a living in New York City as a deejay pulling from his encyclopedic knowledge of musical genres from many eras. Ronson’s talents earned wide acclaim when he co-produced Amy Winehouse’s breakthrough album “Back to Black” in 2006. Since then, Ronson and his frequent collaborator Andrew Wyatt have gained a reputation as studio-savvy hitmakers in collaboration with a wide range of high-wattage talent.
So it made perfect sense when filmmaker Greta Gerwig enlisted Ronson and “Shallow” co-writer Wyatt to oversee the music for Barbie and its companion “Barbie: The Soundtrack” album. Together, they produced the movie’s effervescent tunes featuring pop stars Charli XCX, Nicki Minaj, Haim, Sam Smith, Pink Pantheress, Khalid, and Billie Eilish. The result was 11 Grammy Award nominations.
Speaking from Los Angeles, Ronson and Wyatt talked about their love of 80s-era synths and the experience of being in the recording studio with Ryan Gosling as he belted out Barbie‘s big power ballad “I’m Just Ken.”
You guys usually write and produce songs for pop stars. What’s the difference between collaborating on an album with a singer versus the way you created music for the Barbie movie?
Mark: A lot of time we work with brilliant artists who come in with an idea: “I just broke up with my boyfriend, and I need to get this emotion out” or “I just came up with this funny line,” someone else delivers the inspiration to you. But sometimes you show up at the studio thinking, “What can I possibly say today that I haven’t said before?” When you get a script like Barbie, it’s so emotive; your brain goes to places it never would have gone, and that’s a real gift for a songwriter. As soon as Andrew and I read the script and had our initial conversations with Greta, music started to come out of us.
Greta Gerwig loved her Barbie dolls during the eighties. Did the music from that time period influence your sound?
Mark: Maybe in some ways. With the Cold War still happening, Reagan and so forth, the eighties were kind of the heyday of American triumphalism, so we naturally gravitated to that.
And that eighties synth feel seems to come through in bouncy numbers like “Hey Blondie” and “Speed Drive.”
Mark: 80s synths have never gone away; they just keep evolving in contemporary pop. The eighties mean so many things from Duran Duran to Herbie Hancock’s “Rocket,” but it also means some very rich scores from [film composers] Vangelis and Maurice Jaubert and David Grusin, who were like: “We’ve been using orchestras for 70 years; let’s try something else and see if we can get the same emotive-ness with these other instruments.” Greta loved the emotional wallop and the romance of the orchestra, but she also loved the more synth-y stuff. Andrew and I were just trying to play in this place where we could weave these things together.
Given your collective track record as producers and songwriters, was it an easy sell to get major stars like Dua Lipa, Nicki Minaj, and Billie Eilish on board with Barbie?
Mark: Greta was the easy sell. Especially with younger artists, they’ve grown up with Lady Bird and Little Women so everybody was excited to come to the table because of Greta.
Creatively, what came first?
Mark: Our first marching orders were to write a dance number because they were going to film it soon and were going into choreography rehearsals. With Dance The Night, Andrew and I have both worked with Dua [Lipa], and it seemed obvious: Who else is going to do the killer dance sequence like her? She put her whole boot through the genre of modern disco, so that was really exciting.
It’s incredibly catchy. Who else stands out?
Mark: Well, we didn’t produce every song. On “What Was I Made For?” we just did the string arrangement, but as soon as we heard the first demo from Billy [Eilish], we were like, “Wow, I can’t believe she watched twenty-five minutes of the film and cut right to the heart of Barbie’s experience.”
“I’m Just Ken” has turned out to be the movie’s big showstopper, with Ryan Gosling belting out this emotional power ballad. How did that song come together?
Mark: The Ken character got under our skin as soon as we read the script. Everybody can empathize with the loser. We were just trying to write something that made you feel for this guy, so one day, I was walking to the studio, and I thought of the line, “I’m just Ken; anywhere else, I’d be a ten.” I made a little chorus idea, sent it over to Andrew and he came up with the verse.
Greta Gerwig liked “I’m Just Ken” so much that she rewrote the script to make room for it in the third act. That must have been gratifying.
Mark: Yeah, of course. We’re working with Greta and with [Barbie co-writer] Noah Baumbach, who are kind of comic geniuses with words. So Andrew and I were like, “Oh, they think our words are good enough that we’re not going to ruin their movie if they literally change the entire third act to accommodate this thing.” When they sent us storyboards with our lyrics and a drawing of Ryan on the bed singing, you go, “Oh s***, this is real!”
What’s it like working with Ryan Gosling in the studio?
Andrew: Ryan’s a talented vocalist, so he was easy. I don’t think we did more than a couple of takes. We’ve been doing this stuff a long time, and sometimes, at the end of a session, you go, “Boy, I hope we can make this sound good.” Including my own vocals, I should say. But with Ryan, we just did a few takes, and the sound was already there. We were quite blown away.
Mark: Ryan was in the vocal booth behind this glass window. You don’t want to stare, but I’d look over occasionally and see that he was really far back from the microphone. First rule, producing 101, is to get the singer as close to the microphone as you can so you can go directly to the feeling. But I realized Ryan was singing as if it were both a mike and a camera. He used his whole body, kind of what opera singers did back in the day at Carnegie Hall. Ryan performed that song with every bit of Ken in him.
You recorded him in London?
Mark: Yeah, we went to London because we only had three hours to get this song done in between Ryan’s insane workouts and dance rehearsals. Later, we also recorded the other guys on Skype singing the background, “And I’m enough!” Andrew sang backgrounds, too
Andrew: That was fun.
In addition to all these soundtrack tunes, you also composed the score, which plays underneath that poignant scene when Margot Robbie’s “Barbie” meets Ruth Handler (Rhea Perlman), inventor of the Barbie doll. What were you aiming for in that sequence?
Mark: Greta was like, “I need to be crying here,” so we did probably like seventeen drafts of that thing until we got it right. The music couldn’t get in the way of dialogue, so we used a lot of synths and sound pads to swirl around it, and choirs, and the orchestra, and a glass harmonica, which is this beautiful droning instrument. We knew the emotional crux of the film was in some ways on our shoulders, so on our last pull-out-our-hair night, Andrew sat at the keyboard for the longest time, just watching this scene over and over.
L-r: Rhea Perlman and Margot Robbie in “Barbie.” Courtesy Warner Bros.
Tweaking the music until. . .
Mark: Tweaking until we were f***ing making ourselves cry.
Featured image: Caption: (L-r) RYAN GOSLING as Ken and MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Jaap Buitendijk
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year.
An elite force of female soldiers, the Agojie, is all that stands between the African Kingdom of Dahomey and the combined forces of the Oyo Empire and Mahi people. The Oyo and Mahi plan to raid Dahomey villages and sell their captives to European slavers. We open on a Mahi village where raiders heat their machetes over a fire at night. Their leader hears something in the tall grass surrounding them and quiets his men, standing to get a better look. A flock of birds burst from the grass. The men laugh. Their leader is paranoid. All is well, and their raid will go off as planned.
A moment later, the leader of the Agojie, Nanisca (Viola Davis), rises from the grass, followed by her fellow female soldiers. It’s an ambush. And despite it taking place at night before we’ve met Nanisca and her elite force, the action is framed by someone who knows exactly where she wants her camera to be, exactly whose story she’s telling, and exactly what the purpose for every beat is.
We’re 90 seconds into the beginning of director Gina Prince-Bythewood‘s The Woman King — her second brilliantly conceived and executed action epic in a row, following her 2020 movie The Old Guard, an adaptation of a graphic novel that tracked a team of immortal mercenaries led by Charlize Theron’s Andy and joined by KiKi Layne’s Nile. With The Woman King, Prince-Bythewood once again centered the action on women, only the degree of difficulty was significantly higher for reasons technical (larger cast, larger crew, more complicated set pieces), global (Covid-19), and professional (the film had been delayed for years over concerns that its predominantly Black female cast would not attract audiences). Yet Prince-Bythewood once again deployed her immense gifts for crafting visually coherent, emotionally resonant action sequences, an ability shaped by the fact she’s a former top-tier athlete herself. Few directors better understand that action has to be legible to be enjoyable, but to make great action, each moment, each beat, each punch, and each kick have to be supercharged by the personalities, histories, and heartbreaks of the combatants involved.
For this reason and many more besides, Gina Prince-Bythewood is the Motion Picture Association’s 2023 Creator Award recipient, having created a thrilling body of work that has consistently reframed whose stories get told and who gets to tell them. From her breakout hit Love & Basketball in 2000, through The Secret Life of Bees (2008) and Beyond the Lights (2014), Prince-Bythewood has gravitated toward intimate stories that, occasionally, as of late, happen to take place on an epic scale. You can’t separate her vision when shaping an action sequence from her years as an athlete, nor can you separate her action movies from her early, intimate, personal films.
L-r: Sanaa Lathan and Gina Prince-Bythewood on the set of “Love & Basketball” in 2000. Courtesy New Line Cinema.
Prince-Bythewood has approached every film with a mantra. “I see a connection between [all my movies] in terms of the stories I want to tell, which I call intimately epic,” she says. “It doesn’t matter what size canvas I’m working with; you have to care about the character’s story first.”
One of the reasons Prince-Bythewood is one of the best action directors working is she understands on a visceral level what it takes to compete, what it feels like to believe you can and will defeat your opponent, and what it requires to achieve that. She can make a large-scale scene of hand-to-hand combat flow as beautifully and cogently as she made an offense flow on the basketball court when she was running point.
“All the lessons you learn from sports, especially as a girl, are things that are normally not encouraged or thought of as assets for girls,” Prince-Bythewood says. “To learn that aggression is good, to learn that ambition is good, to learn how to outwork everybody, to learn to have stamina, to learn to leave it all out on the floor, I’ve been able to take that to sets when I’m a director to pull the team together, to inspire and lead, and hopefully encourage them with my vision. These are all things I learned on the court and on the track.”
L-r: Queen Latifah, Gina Prince-Bythewood, and Jennifer Hudson on the set of “The Secret Life of Bees” in 2008. Courtesy Searchlight Pictures.
Crucially, for The Woman King, Prince-Bythewood also excelled in the ring as a kickboxer after college.
“To be able to know what a good punch looks like, what a good kick looks like, the intensity of when you’re in a ring and what it means when you’re facing an opponent, the intention behind your swings and kicks — those were all things I was able to talk to the actors about,” she says.
As incredible as the women in Prince-Bythewood’s The Woman King cast were — Viola Davis, Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, and more — she knew she was going to ask them to do things they’d never done before. She and her team — fight and stunt coordinator Danny Hernandez, fight choreographer Jénel Stevens, and lead cast trainer and nutritionist Gabby Mclain — built them into a cohesive fighting unit, one brutal day of training at a time.
Jenel Stevens on set of “The Woman King.” Courtesy Sony Pictures
“I knew I didn’t just want my actors to learn the moves; I needed them to really do it because I think that’s the best way to film action,” Prince-Bythewood says. “The question was, how can I build athletes? So I talked to my team, Danny Hernandez, my incredible fight and stunt coordinator who’s also a martial artist, and Gabby Mclain, who was in charge of building up their bodies so that they could withstand [the training], and we built athletes to see what they could do.”
Gabriela Mclain and Viola Davis training during “The Woman King.” Courtesy Sony Pictures.
They could do a lot, it turns out. The cast went through a grueling training regimen that began months before Prince-Bythewood shot a single frame, and they continued training once they were on location in South Africa. At one point Prince-Bythewood had them training six days a week, including morning sprints for an hour and a half, martial arts training with Hernandez, and two hours of strength training with weights.
“It was a really beautiful thing to see women who hadn’t been in touch with that part of themselves overcome so much of the negative self-talk that had been built up over time to realize the way you do one thing is the way you do all things,” Prince-Bythewood says. “That’s something you learn from sports as well. For them to see their bodies get stronger, to see their swagger increase, to see the way that they walked into a room, the confidence, all of that was built in the gym. Because I’d been through it myself, I knew that’s what it would do.”
But what about the practicalities of her profession, the technical aspects of turning a melee into a meaningful moment of violent catharsis? How does she find the poetry within all those bodies slashing and slamming into each other? How does she avoid the trap that so many directors seem to fall into, where the camera seems to move as hyper-kinetically as the action, and the viewer is left dazed and a little defeated by the scene?
“Building and shooting the action sequences in The Woman King, I could be right there with Danny [Hernandez] saying, ‘I didn’t believe that; she really needs to have intent.’ Talking to the actors, I could say, ‘You’re not just swinging a machete, you’re swinging it through flesh and bone, you have to have an intent, so what is your intent?’” she says. “And that changes the way that people swing.”
Camera placement is key. Prince-Bythewood has honed her skill as a visual storyteller by remaining committed to the emotional beats that make a physical showdown meaningful.
“First and foremost, it starts with the fact that as a director, I’m the first audience, so I need to understand the scene, I need to be able to follow the story, and then it’s my job to tell that story,” Prince-Bythewood says. “I put the camera where I feel like I can watch the action, follow the action, and care about the action. We always start with, ‘What is the character doing? What is this revealing about the character? What is the story of this moment? Honestly, I equate it to a love scene. I love doing love scenes, and it’s the same concept. It has to have a story, it has to be character-based.”
L-r: Lashana Lynch, Thuso Mbedu and director, Gina Prince-Bythewood.
Caring about the emotional state of a character is as crucial for a director to succeed as it is for a viewer to lose themselves in a story. It’s why you watch The Old Guard and feel so caught up in the initial terror and fury of KiKi Layne’s Nile as she fights Charlize Theron’s Andy on a cargo plane (an all-time great action sequence). Or why, in The Woman King, you find yourself drawn to each of the main characters within a given action set piece and know not only who they are by how they fight, but why they fight that way.
Gina Prince-Bythewood on the set of “The Old Guard.” Courtesy Netflix.
“If you take Lashana Lynch’s character Izogie, the very first time you meet her says so much about her as a character,” Prince-Bythewood says. “The fact that she uses her nails as a weapon, the intensity in her face. We talked about a feral abandon with the way she fights where she’s trying to humiliate her opponent to get back at all the trauma she’s experienced. This is opposed to Viola’s character Nanisca, who’s a general and has this brutal efficiency and shows no emotion. That tells you a lot about her. That’s the fun part, building these scenes and knowing you want them to look cool and have cool moves, but you have to have an intent, a story, and a character behind those moves for an audience to care.”
Lashana Lynch stars in THE WOMAN KING. Courtesy Sony Pictures.
Prince-Bythewood has followed her own instincts and interests, from athletics to film, from smaller intimate films to action epics, yet there’s been a remarkable consistency in all her work, no matter the scale, a genuine interest in the interiority of the characters she depicts.
“I truly believe that the first thing you come out with should tell the world who you are as an artist and tell Hollywood who you are as an artist,” she says about that crucial first movie. “I also believe everyone has a story only they can tell, and that’s what’s going to separate you. It’s something I had to learn — I really thought the way to break in was to mimic the things that were successful. People want fresh stories. Fresh perspectives. It took me a second to get there, but also, it takes courage to say, ‘My story is meaningful enough that millions of people will want to see it.’ [Laughs] Whether that’s courage or swagger, it goes back to that athlete mentality. When I walk on the court, I am the best person on it.”
It’s hard enough to write a personal story, harder still to share it, and perhaps hardest of all to hear no. Prince-Bythewood knows from this experience.
“You have to have that to be able to sit down and write a personal story and believe that others will care. That’s a hard thing to do, and there will be times where you’ll lose confidence and certainly, for me, I kept thinking [about Love & Basketball], ‘Who’s going to care about a story about a Black girl who wants to be the first woman in the NBA?’ But I believed in it so much that it kept getting me back into the chair, even after every single studio and production company turned down that film. It was soul-crushing to put something on the page that you believed in so much, that was a personal story, and to be told essentially, your voice doesn’t matter, your story doesn’t matter. But that never made me question the story, it was just a hard thing to push through. But overcoming no is something you have to learn in this industry because you just need that one yes. I was so, so fortunate to get that yes from Sundance, which changed the trajectory of my career.”
L-r: L-r: Sanaa Lathan, Omar Epps, and Gina Prince-Bythewood on the set of “Love & Basketball” in 2000. Courtesy New Line Cinema.
Prince-Bythewood credits having a great support group of filmmakers and friends. Her biggest rock, however, is her husband Reggie Rock Bythewood, who she’s collaborating with on Genius: MLK/X, which is focused on the relationship between Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. She and her husband will serve as Executive Producers under their production company Undisputed Cinema.
“My husband is my biggest champion and my biggest support and my favorite writer,” she says. “So on those days where you’re on the floor, there’s somebody saying, ‘Get up, keep fighting.’ That’s supremely important.”
As for the MPA Creator Award, she says it speaks to something she’s believed since she was working on Love & Basketball.
“The thing I’m excited about with the MPA Creator Award is what I’m being honored — that those who make film and television can change the world. That’s how I approach the work even 23 years later; I’ve never let go of the knowledge of the power of film and how it literally can change lives and change perception and shift culture. So, to be honored for that, to know that people are seeing that in my work, that it’s not just about entertaining but I am actually trying to say something to the world — it’s incredibly meaningful.”
For more on Gina Prince-Bythewood, check out these stories:
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year.
Early this season on Succession, Waystar Royco executive Tom (Matthew Macfadyen) mocks the $2900 Burberry handbag carried by cousin Greg’s (Nicholas Braun) date as being “Ludicrously capacious…You could slide it across the floor after a bank job.” And in the show’s first year, Kendall (Jeremy Strong) bought a pair of $500 Lanvin sneakers to ingratiate himself with potential Silicon Valley investors, telling them, “I got these sneakers on the way down here because I thought you’d all be dressed like f*****’ Björk, and I wanted to make an impression.” But most of the time, the privileged anti-heroes of Succession reserve their trash-talk for personality flaws rather than fashion critiques.
Nonetheless, fans pay close attention to the clothes worn by Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and his offspring, with Instagram accounts like Successionfashion tracking the characters’ tops, bottoms, shoes, and accessories in granular detail.
Credit for Succession‘s singular brand of corporate chic goes to costume designer Michelle Matland, whose credits include TheGirl on the Train along with Emmy-nominated work on Mildred Pierce and Angels in America. She’s dressed all four seasons of the show, eschewing primary colors to curate nuanced variations in black, navy blue, and beige silhouettes tailored to reflect each character’s particular strain of inner turmoil.
Matland deconstructs the Roy family wardrobe, from the late Logan Roy to the youngest, Roman, revealing where she found Logan Roy’s signature cardigan sweater, explains why Kendall Roy likes baseball caps, and more.
Logan (played by Brian Cox): In the season opener, he’s wearing this amazing double-breasted sweater with brass buttons. Of course, it’s a cardigan sweater, which became Logan Roy’s signature look, as if he’s so powerful, he doesn’t have to bother with a suit and tie. Where do you source those sweaters, and what did you have in mind for giving him this casual look?
The whole point of Logan is he never has to be anything other than his comfort zone. One of his original sweaters came from a tiny shop in a little upstate town called Livingston Manor. One side of the store had gorgeous men’s clothing, and the other side had kitchenware. We knew right away this was for Logan. It fit [Brian Cox] perfectly, it was strong, and it was immediately right. Logan Roy doesn’t have to dress up for anyone because he’s the man. He is who he is, and he maintains that through the seasons. He’s King Lear, and he’s staying King Lear.
L-r: Brian Cox and Matthew Macfayden. Photograph by Macall B. Polay/HBO
Kendall (Jeremy Strong): He likes baseball caps! What does that say about his character? And what are some other elements you’ve outfitted Kendall with that speak to persona?
The baseball cap was not an unconscious choice. It developed as a shell of protection. It fits his comfort zone as a way to hide and also as a way to set himself apart from the more formal culture associated with his position, his family, and his company. Kendall is very specific about what he wants — standard, iconic looks — and he has stuck with that throughout the series. One thing from last season, there was a Rashid Johnson necklace from the series called “Anxious Man,” which really says a lot and speaks to his character. And Kendall loves logos, especially if it’s a subtle, beautiful, understated logo. But he’s also gentle about getting those things and wearing them multiple times. It’s not like he’s looking into a logo designer; he just wants something very specific and character-driven.
Jeremy Strong. Photograph by Claudette Barius/HBOJeremy Strong. Photograph by Macall B. Polay/HBO
Shiv (Sarah Snook): She’s got one toe in the world of politics but also sees herself as a shrewd businesswoman. Her pantsuits evidently resonate with viewers. Who in the real world, if anyone, did you take as a reference for Shiv’s sense of style, and what personal qualities did you want to express?
When we began Season 2, we thought Shiv was someone who is very much embodying Katharine Hepburn. We wanted to establish a look that was high-waisted trousers and very simple, elegant, and flattering. We created a timeline where she was very classy and clean looking. And this last season, she was very comfortable in her own life, finally much more available. At one point, she was trying to be in the board room, but now she is less board room.
Sarah Snook. Photograph by Claudette Barius/HBOSarah Snook. Photo: David M. Russell/HBO
Roman (Kieran Culkin): He shows up in this season’s first episode wearing a pastel shirt and pants. He’s in L.A. with Shiv and Kendall, and that southern California vibe really contrasts with the New York shots of businessmen in their dark suits attending Logan’s birthday party. By contrast, Roman rarely wears a tie. What are you going for with that open-neck look?
Roman is the most casual uniformed guy on the planet. He is just moving through the room. He has no agenda at all with anyone; he’s simply his own beast. We have a closet for Roman, and Kieran will rummage through it for hours. He’s very personal in selecting, and that takes a lot of time.
Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin, Jeremy Strong. Photograph by Claudette Barius/HBOJeremy Strong, Kieran Culkin, and Brian Cox. Photograph by Graeme Hunter/HBO
Connor (Alan Ruck): He’s always been a bit of an outsider. Do you deliberately dress him differently from the other three siblings?
He’s a presidential candidate now and dresses like one. Connor is much more professional and political than when the show first started. Connor has become official. There’s no particular meaning behind the vest itself.
Alan Ruck. Photograph by Macall B. Polay/HBOJustine Lupe and Alan Ruck. Photograph by Macall B. Polay/HBO
Tom & Greg (Matthew Macfadyen and Nicholas Braun), aka “The Disgusting Brothers”: They exist outside the immediate Logan family but still play important roles in the story. You dress both characters in beautiful suits, and at times they almost look like twins. Was that intentional?
Yes, it’s intentional that they look similar. Greg is always following Tom, and we had every intention of giving them uniformity and showing this consistently.
Matthew Macfadyen and Nicholas Braun. Photograph by Macall B. Polay/HBOMatthew Macfadyen and Nicholas Braun. Photograph by Macall B. Polay/HBO
What’s it like designing for creator Jesse Armstrong?
He is the most fabulous, collaborative, and involved person I’ve ever worked with.
Anything secrets to your success on outfitting one of the most fashionable series on TV?
I’ve been known from time to time to walk up to someone in the street and literally purchase the shirt off their back.I tend to source costumes from anywhere at any time. You might say I’m a 24-hour designer. And also, an important point that gets underestimated: through all my experiences over the years, the jewelry and the accessories, the scarves, earrings and necklaces, the rings — all of that is a constant treasure hunt and always pays off. You will be hard-pressed to find a character that isn’t wearing a distinctive piece of jewelry. I have drawers and drawers of jewelry; both refined and costume or personal pieces, and I don’t like them to go to set without something.
J. Smith Cameron and Kieran Culkin. Photograph by Macall B. Polay/HBO
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year.
There are countless unsung heroes of the civil rights movement who will never get the recognition they deserve, yet it’s hard to imagine an overlooked figure more central to the cause and more courageous and capacious in spirit than Bayard Rustin. While historians are well aware of the impact Rustin had on the civil rights movement writ large and specifically the March on Washington, most Americans are not.
George C. Wolfe‘s Rustin (in theaters now) offers a course correction. Wolfe directs from a script co-written by JulianBreece, who has put ten years into shaping the story of a larger-than-life figure whose life went so largely unapplauded. Breece first heard about the project a decade ago and petitioned Oscar-winning screenwriter (and his co-writer on Rustin) Dustin Lance Black to give him a shot. Once onboard, Breece faced the challenge that every storyteller attempting to craft a biopic about a legend must surmount—how do you capture the essence of a figure so crucial and so complex into a single movie?
Breece’s approach was to focus on Rustin’s ingenious, tireless efforts to orchestrate the 1963 March on Washington. Rustin was not just a crucial architect of this defining moment in American history, but he was also a mentor to Martin Luther King Jr., and these dual roles gave Breece the backbone of his story, vividly showing how Rustin helped take the March on Washington from an impossible dream to King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
“I grew up thinking whatever I did, I was going to have to be behind the scenes or in the shadows because I was queer, and I’m sure Bayard felt some of that as well,” says Breece. He was talking specifically about how Rustin, who was openly gay well before the March, was sidelined during portions of the civil rights movement on account of a whisper campaign about his sexuality. Eventually, King would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his mentor, but it was the journey of getting to that moment on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that Breece set his sights on.
We spoke with Breece about his decade-long pursuit of a script worthy of Bayard Rustin, Colman Domingo’s absorbing performance, and what he hopes audiences will take from Rustin’s life. We have the written portion of the interview below, as well as a shorter video version, too.
Tell me about this ten-year journey you went in researching and writing Rustin.
The year I found out about the project, in 2013, I was temping. I’d won some screenwriting awards coming out of grad school for a screenplay I’d written about the ball scene in New York, but none of that had translated into work, so I was still doing my spec scripts and working on a studio lot. My manager told me that Dustin Lance Black [Oscar-winner for his Milk screenplay] was producing a movie about Bayard Rustin, and he’s looking for a writer. At the time, it was still difficult to get into any rooms for features, particularly for Black writers. There weren’t a lot of us in the system in 2013.
Julian Breece
So, how did you get to Dustin Lance Black?
I wrote this super long letter to Lance explaining to him why I was so passionate about Bayard, who had been a hero of mine since I learned about him on my own—he wasn’t taught in any classes. I finally got a meeting with him after he saw a short I did at Out Fest, and he liked it. He read my work, and we hit it off. From there, I was off to research.
And what did your research entail?
I read everything I could get my hands on and actually moved to New York for three months because that’s where Bayard was based and where the people closest to him still live. And the Rustin Papers are in D.C. [at the Library of Congress]. But it was the one-on-one interviews that I did where I discovered the heart of the movie. I did about 19 hours of interviews with people who worked with Bayard and had close relationships with him. That was probably the most rewarding part of the research process.
How did you start to shape the story from this wealth of research material and all the hours of interview tape?
There was so much about Bayard’s life; it really could be a limited series. But I learned about Bayard in connection with the March on Washington and his relationship with Martin Luther King. You can’t do a movie about Bayard without centering the March on Washington, especially since it’s a culmination of the different parts of his career.
Did you look to any other biopics as a reference for what you were hoping to achieve?
As a student of film, there’s a place for cradle-to-grave biographical films, but I’m more attracted to films focused on the moment that made the person great. One of my favorite biographical films is Capote. I’d read the script over and over and over again. It’s so beautifully written. It really takes that moment when Truman Capote as we know him, all his flash and flair as a writer and public person, became great. It shows how his growth as an artist was also, in some ways, tragic. So, if I had to say there was a model for the way I looked at Rustin, it was definitely Capote.
There are so many moments that depict the way Bayard had of being in the world, his warmth and humor, his passion and hard-headedness. Who specifically did you interview that helped you flesh out his character?
I spoke to Rachelle Horowitz [played by Lilly Kay], who was one of Bayard’s assistants, for hours and hours. Then there was Walter Naegle, his partner, who was so generous and who has really been the person who’s carried the torch of Bayard’s legacy all of these years when it seemed like people didn’t want to know. He let me know the private Bayard, the Bayard behind the public face, behind the strength, behind the strong leader and organizer who everyone looked up to and wanted to follow, behind the Bayard who was charismatic and wonderfully flamboyant and captivating. Walter helped me know who he was in those vulnerable moments and how really felt about certain things, things that he may not have said publicly that hurt him.
RUSTIN (2023) Lilli Kay as Rachelle Horowitz. CR: Courtesy NETFLIX
You highlight so many crucial relationships Bayard had, and none more so than his relationship with Martin Luther King Jr. How did you approach their fondness for each other, as well as their falling out for a time?
What moved me the most when I learned about Bayard and King was that you have the most iconic, famous religious figure in modern history, aside from the Pope, who was mentored by a gay man. Mind-blowing. I think Bayard’s mentorship of King was the reason he was pushed out— the whisper campaign. Even though Bayard had helped mold King as a leader, it was like, ‘Well, now we can’t have you be associated with him at all.’ The lessons that Bayard taught King about bravery and leadership, we see that in the arc of King’s growth to becoming great, right at the moment before he stepped out onto that podium and made the greatest speech of all time.
Rustin also makes a very moving point that it’s the relationships between people, rather than simply the greatness of any one individual, that get things done. I’m thinking of Bayard’s conversations with Ella Baker [played by Audra Macdonald], who spurs him on to get back into the game after the whisper campaign.
Ella Baker and Bayard provided that kind of support for each other. Him being queer, and her being a woman in the movement and being underestimated because of that. You understand why Bayard’s relationship with the women in the movement was so important and why he saw them in a way that male leadership didn’t. And Ella was able to see him in ways that the male leadership couldn’t afford to, too. The March on Washington was all about coalition building and relationships. That’s the only way that it happened, and I’m hoping that we can look at that now as a country and a world and just see the importance of intersectionality and being able to support each other’s causes, as opposed to everyone fighting for themselves. Things don’t change that way. Bayard Rustin knew that revolutionary change happens through relationships and coalition building.
Another thing you take away from Rustin is the tremendous courage Bayard had. To live openly as a gay Black man at that time and be a force of nature in the civil rights movement…it boggles the mind.
People loved Bayard Rustin. Like anyone else, he has his edges, his thorns, but he was a deeply generous, deeply gentle person. The reason why he was out in the thirties, forties, and fifties is because his belief in equality and truth ran that deep. He’s like, if I’m not living it, I can’t fight for it. I can’t live a lie and tell other people to tell the truth. He drew people to him because of that courage.
RUSTIN (2023) Colman Domingo as Bayard Rustin and Johnny Ramey as Elias. Cr: David Lee/NETFLIX
His charm comes through from the very first scene, when he’s being mocked by a young member of the civil rights movement, and by the end of the film, that same young man adores him.
That was one of my favorite scenes to write. Showing Bayard coming back into the movement through the young people. You have to learn what’s going on. Even the old guard didn’t really know what was happening on the lower frequencies, but the young people who were on the ground knew. So Bayard’s relationship with that particular character, Blyden [Grantham Coleman], was a real relationship. Blyden’s a radical straight dude who, by the end, felt like Bayard was a badass. Who is more badass than Bayard Rustin? Who’s able to slay all of these dragons, say, ‘This is who I am, deal with it, come with it, I am going to fight on no matter what.’ I hope other people coming out of it feel that same way about Bayard.
Rustin is in theaters now and streams on Netflix on November 17.
*It’s our annual “Best of the Year” look back at some of our favorite interviews from the year.
Fair Play, writer/director Chloe Domont‘s feature debut, is somehow both an old-school erotic thriller and a shrewd, scalpel-sharp dissection of how far we have and have not come with gender equality in the workplace and in the headspace of men, even those who consider themselves allies.
The film is largely set at the hedge fund One Crest Capitol, where Emily (Phoebe Dynevor) and Luke (Alden Ehrenreich) are low-level but promising analysts trying to take the next step in their careers. The vibes at One Crest Capitol are deeply dog-eat-dog, with the only trappings of a more enlightened age evidenced by a policy against intra-office romance. This is why Emily and Luke keep their engagement a secret, and all seems to be going to plan until one of the firm’s PMs (portfolio manager) is unceremoniously fired—he takes his rage out on a couple of computer monitors—and a promotion for Luke to fill the role seems nigh.
Only it’s the smarter, savvier Emily who gets the gig, turning the erotics depicted between the couple in the film’s early going into the thriller Fair Play becomes. While Luke plays at being both supportive and excited about Emily’s promotion, things between them go from tense to terrifying.
Domont explains how she crafted one of the finest erotic thrillers in years by setting out not to make a female revenge fantasy but rather an exploration of that most exquisitely fragile of constructs—the male ego.
Can you tell me about researching the hedge fund world?
I had a bunch of friends in that world, and they put me in touch with some hedge fund guys, and basically, it started with me taking them out for drinks and getting some of them drunk and asking basic questions, like, take me through your day from the moment you get up to the moment you go to bed. Even the mundane stuff.I wanted a full picture of what the day-to-day is like. Then, I asked about tensions and dynamics between an analyst and a PM. What are the most frustrating moments you’ve experienced with your superior? How do you treat someone who’s beneath you? Once I had a good grasp on it, I took a pass on writing a draft, then I shared it with them and got some notes on authenticity.
The finance jargon feels authentic, as does the poisoned relationships between all the men at One Crest Captial.
Actually, I felt like the finance jargon was the easy part; the harder part was, ‘Do I have a story that people will care about watching?’ [Laughs]. The harder part was crafting the drama and how the conflict would escalate and create this ballooning tension that you don’t know when it’s going to pop, but once it does, it turns into a dogfight. By far, the most challenging part of writing it was figuring out the pace, the tone, and the rhythm.
Fair Play, behind the scenes L to R: Rich Sommer as Paul, Chloe Domont, writer and director and Phoebe Dynevor as Emily. Cr. Slobodan Pikula / Courtesy of Netflix
Was the pacing pretty well baked into the script, or did you find it while in the production and editing process?
Everything was pretty much there in the script. I even put camera directions in the script. I really worked on trying to fully realize every element of filmmaking before we went into shooting because I thought, this is my one shot, you know? Working in television was an amazing boot camp experience for me leading up to my first feature; you always have to cut shots, and you have to know what you have to protect at all costs and what you’re willing to sacrifice. But also, when you get on set, I think the most exciting thing about filmmaking is that you can rehearse it in a certain way and know exactly where your camera is going to be, but then the magic of filmmaking is something unexpected always comes up.
Your script is so tight that I’m sure there are lots of actors who could have done it justice, but I’m curious what you think about why they seemed so perfectly tailored to Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor.
Individually, they’re each such strong, versatile actors that I think they can do anything, but when you put two people together, the stars have to align. Their chemistry was just instant. The film really lives and dies off their chemistry. I remember early on, we’d rehearsed, and it felt electric in many ways, but until you get to shooting, you’re a little bit nervous if that chemistry is going to come through on camera. But I remember we shot the bathroom scene where they’re recently engaged, and they’re slow dancing, and the way they look at each other, it was just so magnetic. I knew at that moment that I had a movie.
Fair Play. (L to R) Alden Ehrenreich as Luke and Phoebe Dynevor as Emily in Fair Play. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix
There are such subtle moments where Luke is trying to do right by Emily and applaud her promotion, but there’s this simmering resentment that we can feel growing inside him. How did you shape those?
What I tried to do with the character and what Alden brought to Luke is he represents a certain generation of men who are caught in the middle between wanting to adhere to a modern feminist society but still having been raised on traditional ideas of masculinity. That doesn’t make him a bad guy at all. He adores Emily because she’s ambitious. He adores her because she’s talented, because she’s a killer; that’s why he’s attracted to her. But at the same time, on some level, you know he was raised under more traditional ideas of gender roles. It’s that conflict that he starts to internalize and doesn’t know how to deal with, and that’s something I wanted to show—how problematic it becomes when someone doesn’t know how to deal with something. But, again, he genuinely is happy for her, but he’s hurt because he thought [the promotion] was his. He has this idea of who he’s supposed to be, the kind of man he’s supposed to become. This sudden flip throws him for a loop in a way he’s not prepared for. I think it’s tough for anyone to think you’re up for a job and your partner gets it, but then, what I’m exploring here are some of these ingrained power dynamics that I think we still haven’t quite figured out yet.
Fair Play. (center) Phoebe Dynevor as Emily and (center right) Alden Ehrenreich as Luke in Fair Play. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix
Your film is set in the aftermath of #MeToo in one of the most male-dominated, nakedly zero-sum capitalist professions. There’s one moment, in particular, when Eddie Marsan’s character Campbell, the big boss, savages Emily in a brutally sexist way that I was hoping you could unpack.
It’s an animal kingdom, you know? It’s every man for himself. I think the #MeToo movement never hit the finance world. There’s a certain level of power and money that you can’t touch. I think people definitely treat each other with more respect, but at the same time, what I wanted to show with Eddie’s character when he finally lashes out at Emily is that this is someone who hired her because he sees her value regardless of her gender and genuinely thinks she’s the best person for the job, and in that way, he’s her champion. But,as soon as she slips, then her failure is through the lens of gender. And I think that’s a double standard that a lot of women face in every industry. Yes, there are these male champions out there that believe in you and support you, but as soon as slip, you f**ked up because you’re a woman. I wanted to show that in the most cutting way.
Fair Play. (L to R) Phoebe Dynevor as Emily, Eddie Marsan as Campbell, Rich Sommer as Paul in Fair Play. Cr. Slobodan Pikula / Courtesy of Netflix
And she absorbs it after some initial shock and keeps pressing on at Crest Capital.
That’s why I had him say it again. The look of shock on her face, like, what did you just call me? And he’s like, yeah, I can say whatever the f**k I want. You don’t like it? Leave. And that’s how it is.
[Spoilers below]
Can you explain how you set up Luke’s spectacular flameout at the office when he attempts to undermine Emily to his final, even more desperate and awful act at home?
In the scene with Campbell when she has to choose how to deal with [Luke’s treachery] and save face at that company because Luke throws her under the bus, Campbell gives her his thirty thousand view of the world, which is this— ‘It doesn’t f**king matter. It’s all about the money. Just move on from it. I don’t care who you kill, I don’t care who you f**k, just do it on your time.’ So she’s sitting on that idea that accountability doesn’t matter, and watching this new woman come in, and Emily’s on the other side of what she’s experienced, this abuse, and she knows everything this young woman is going to go through, that’s what’s in her head when she’s faced with Luke for one final confrontation.
Fair Play, behind the scenes Eddie Marsan as Campbell Cr. Sergej Radovic / Courtesy of Netflix
What did you want to bring across in that final confrontation between Emily and Luke?
For me, the ending was always about Emily reclaiming the power that Luke takes away from her. The film always had to escalate to the sexual assault scene in the bathroom because the only way for Luke to reclaim the power in the relationship at that point is through physical dominance. The only way for Emily to reclaim the power again is through physical force as well because this is a man who refuses to be held accountable. So, it had to go to these places for me because I set out to make a thriller about power dynamics on the ugliest level. Sexual assault is not about sex; it’s about power. Then, when it does occur, what’s Emily going to do about it? She tries to confront him on his inability to face who he is. He’s a man who cannot own up to his own weakness and cannot face his own failures, and it causes so much destruction. For me, the last scene is not about female revenge; it’s a scene about holding a man accountable. A man who refuses to be held accountable. The whole movie builds up to the line where Luke finally mutters the words, “I’m nothing.” Once he finally does that, once he’s finally the man who acknowledges his own inferiority, his own weakness, his own failure, that’s the resolution of the film. Ultimately, this is not a film about female empowerment; this is a film about male fragility.
Fair Play. (L to R) Alden Ehrenreich as Luke and Phoebe Dynevor as Emily in Fair Play. Cr. Sergej Radovic / Courtesy of Netflix
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For Ahsoka cinematographer Eric Steelberg, lensing the latest live-action Star Wars series was a dream come true. Growing up in thrall to George Lucas’s original trilogy, Steelberg would find himself on set while filming the new series, surrounded by massive spaceships both practical and virtual (the latter thanks to Industrial Light & Magic’s LED immersive soundstage the Volume), astonished by his own job.
“You’re sitting there trying to figure this out and tell the story because it is a job, but then what you’re watching takes you aback. Like, I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Steelberg says.
The new series, the first live-action Star Wars show to spring from one of the franchise’s animated series (Star Wars: Rebels), follows its titular heroine, the rebel Jedi Ahsoka Tano (Rosario Dawson), and the return of a terrifically powerful adversary (Grand Admiral Thrawn, played by Lars Mikkelsen, who also voiced him in Rebels) in the aftermath of the fall of the Galactic Empire. Ahsoka’s allies are chiefly her former padawan Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), her trusty droid Huyang (voiced by David Tennant), and General Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Along with Thrawn, her chief antagonists are the formidable Baylan Skoll (the late Ray Stevenson), his protege Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno), and an assortment of bad guys, from droids to assassins, all working in concert to aid the return of Thrawn. Oh, and then there’s the thrilling arrival of Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen, reprising his role), who featured prominently in episode 5, “Shadow Warrior,” as he and Ahsoka tangled and tumbled through their past together in a deeply satisfying trip down memory lane.
We spoke to Steelberg about fulfilling a lifelong dream, from lightsaber duels to speeder bikes and all manner of Star Wars-styled action in between.
As a Star Wars fan, which I imagine so many of the folks working on Ahsoka are, what was it like taking on the responsibility of stepping into arguably the most storied franchise of them all?
It’s a lot of responsibility to take on. What if my fandom doesn’t translate through my work? At the same time, that amount of excitement and fear turns into healthy creative fuel.
Ahsoka has narrative overlap with The Mandalorian, but it’s a grander, more expansive story. Can you talk about the look and feel of the series?
The Mandalorian set the bar very high from what’s to be expected from a TV version of Star Wars. Your barrier for entry is already higher than I’ve ever experienced. And you’ve got the expectations of fans from the movies. I understand wanting the same level of quality. If we’re doing live-action, we’re doing live-action, and I don’t care what the budget is. All that matters is the final result. So people want those big, sprawling epic stories. They want high production value. They want a certain look. So that’s how I went into the project; we’ve all got the expectations of movie-level quality visuals, the technical expectations that were established in The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett and Obi-Wan Kenobi. So how do we achieve that but make it feel different?
I started with Dave Filoni in prep about how we expand upon those expectations technically and creatively. We referenced the movies—both the originals and the more recent ones—and then it was a lot of references to Akira Kurosawa movies, which was a well-documented influence on both George Lucas and Dave. There are tonal things, letting things play out in wide shots that give it a sense of scale. That was our jumping-off point. Then, it was working with our art departments on what we could create that would show on screen in the best way possible. And this is a different story, based on the Star Wars: Rebels animated series. There are influences, even shots, taken from that. And then, for me, it’s also about how you capture that feeling of this being Star Wars?
How would you describe a shot that feels like Star Wars?
Honestly, it comes down to a kind of gut feeling because some of its editing, some of its production design, some of its framing, and some of its lighting. Also, Star Wars is always widescreen, right? And what kind of screen? It’s always anamorphic. So that’s the most basic version, the visual starting point. From there, looking at the cinematography, for me, it’s the original three movies. That’s what I grew up on. That’s what I fell in love with. I’m always thinking of parallel moments in the original movies we can reference. At the same time, those movies were made in the late 70s and early 80s, so how do you keep that very polished, formal lighting style with the expectations of a modern audience that wants energy and pace? So that was just taken on a scene-by-scene, episode-by-episode process. But overall, it’s very composed, more classically lit, there’s no handheld camera work, everything is very deliberate. Everything is very planned and very designed.
Dipping into your episodes that have aired, can you pull out a sequence or moment that stood out for you?
The things that are classic Star Wars are the things that really got me. Sabine on a speeder bike going down the highway. That was amazing to try and give that an energy and realism I felt like we hadn’t seen before. And then the lightsaber fights, like the end sequence between Shin [Ivanna Sakhno] and Sabine—I was like, Oh my God, I’m shooting a lightsaber fight. This is amazing, and I can’t screw this up.
Even though this is the career you’ve chosen and worked hard at for years, it must still be surreal to go from being a fan of Star Wars to filming a lightsaber duel.
Just being in the cockpit of a spaceship, you know? Having those Star Wars conversations about rebels and shooting in the hangar bay and having these Star Wars ships around, which we did in the Volume in our virtual environment. It’s incredible. It doesn’t get old. You’re sitting there trying to figure this out and tell the story because it is a job, but then what you’re watching takes you aback. Like, I can’t believe we’re doing this; we’re adults playing with lightsabers, but being very earnest and serious about the best way to do it. It’s really hard, and it’s really fun. And there’s a tremendous amount of pride you get from doing something you have such an affinity for.
Ahsoka also benefits from having great villains—it’s very easy to root for Ahsoka, Sabine, Hera, and the droid Huyang [David Tennant]—but then you’ve got these great antagonists in the late Ray Stevenson as Baylan Skoll and Ivanna Sakhno as Shin.
We do. The casting is phenomenal. All the actors are not only perfect in the roles, but all good people, fun to be around, and love their characters. In Star Wars, the villains are sometimes more fun than the protagonists. Ray was fantastic. Phenomenal. Nobody else could do that role. One of my favorite things about my job is I love working with actors. I love watching actors really get into their characters. Ray would be like, ‘How was it?’ And you’d say, great! And you’d hesitate and say, ‘You know, we just missed this one look,’ but you don’t really want to say anything because they did such a good job. And you think maybe you can just work around it, but Ray would say, ‘What do you guys need?’ We’d show him, and he’d just nail it.
There’s a begrudging respect between Baylan and Ahsoka, which reads almost like an intimacy that, so far, has made this a fun series.
I was really proud of episode four. It was really very challenging. Over half of the episode is lightsaber fights, and how do you keep that interesting? But we did. I remember in prep, I read the three or four scripts that were ready, and I remember thinking, ‘My God, how are we going to do this?’ It’s so complex, and what was being asked visually was off the charts for me. You might as well have said let’s actually shoot in space; it was so different from anything I’d ever done, too. I’d done some second unit in The Mandalorian season two, but I’d never done anything like this. But for everyone involved, the fact that it was Dave Filoni asking for it, it might as well have been George Lucas. It’s Dave’s creation, and he’s such a smart, talented, nice person that you want to give him everything he wants as a director. He’s so likable, he’s such a nice guy, you just have this desire to make him happy. Everybody was like, we have to figure this out.
It must help that everybody involved is such a huge Star Wars fan.
It’s funny, my crew and everybody else [on set] acts very professional while we’re working, and then you find out when you’re done that you’ve got these big Star Wars geeks with you. They’re like, “I didn’t want to say anything, but I was really needing out when we did this or that.” These are ultra huge fans, but if you weren’t a huge fan, you’d never make it through this because it’s the hardest work I’ve ever done. The level of passion and skill that you get from people is mind-blowing. It’s not even like playing with the All-Star team; it’s like being on the Olympic team.
Ahsoka is streaming on Disney+
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Before costume designer Holly Waddington got started on Poor Things, Yorgos Lanthimos gave her a visual reference: inflatable pants. The futuristic-seeming trousers made by London College of Fashion graduate Harikrishnan buck the movie’s late-19th-century setting, which encouraged Waddington to ignore the norms of time and space. No material would be too anachronistic, no fit too audacious. “I designed a whole series of things based on this idea of inflation and compression,” she says. “It was quite wild what I came up with in response to that.”
Waddington’s eclectic clothing aligns perfectly with Poor Things‘ eclectic story. The Frankenstein riff, adapted from Alisdair Gray’s 1992 novel of the same name, follows Bella Baxer (Emma Stone) as she discovers language, sex, and societal expectations anew. Bella has been reanimated with a childlike brain thanks to a slightly mad Victorian scientist (Willem Dafoe) who sets out to observe her body and mind gradually synchronizing. Bella’s wardrobe is key to her growth. The movie introduces her in what often look like baby-doll dresses, but her fashion becomes more sophisticated as she explores the world and develops unadulterated ideas about how to live in it.
After those inflatable pants jump-started Waddington’s initial brainstorm, her work zigged and zagged as the rest of the movie fell into place. Now an Oscar contender for the film, Waddington, whose past credits include Lady Macbeth and Hulu’s The Great, was able to blend a medley of sensibilities into one eye-popping palette.
Did you know from the outset how hyper-saturated a lot of Poor Things‘ colors would be?
I had this whole journey of exploring these lung-shaped sleeves and plasticity — things that breathe and deflate. Then we had a series of meetings on Zoom, and it was really only at that point that Yorgos showed me what they’d done in the art department. I knew it was going to be rich and elaborate because I was already a big fan of [production designer] Shona Heath’s fashion work. But I was absolutely overwhelmed when I was given this bible, which was this massive, absolutely incredible 200-page document full of descriptions and references and beautiful concept work. Then, I really had something to work with.
How much of what you developed independent of that bible is what we see in the film?
A lot of it shifted because I was really encouraged by Yorgos to just go big. What we ended up with had a lot to do with texture — big textures in the clothing, things that felt organic, things that felt inflated. That manifested itself in the sleeves but not in the way that I had delivered it in this early rendition.
What did it look like at first?
In the beginning, all the big sleeves were for the men. I had a lot of ideas to begin with. It was quite grotesque originally, but Yorgos zoomed in on these images I had of these 1890s sleeves. That was very much his choice — but for the women, not the men, and specifically for Bella. I think he made a very good choice there because those sleeves are incredibly empowering to wear. They really emphasize her otherness. They also transpose into these richly textured fabrics. They feel like a sea creature.
She has an otherworldliness about her because of how her brain functions. As there are in children, there’s a bit of animalistic behavior going on.
Yes. He was very clear about that.
What other kinds of references did that 200-page document contain? I’d assume Victorian, steampunk, and modish stuff from the ’60s.
No steampunk. I know a lot of people have described the work as being steampunk, but we were actually asked not to look at steampunk at all. I don’t think it’s an aesthetic Yorgos is particularly drawn to. But yes, definitely ’60s: André Courrèges, Pierre Cardin, Paco Rabanne, and designers who were doing that whole space-age thing. We referenced astronauts and going to the moon. I was lifting little bits from these designers, like the peep-toe boots that Bella Baxter wears. André Courrèges’ had zips up the back, so we merged that with the Victoria bootie.
Were there any paintings or films referenced in that book?
Paintings, yes. Loads of stuff. And I had masses of stuff, too. I had lots of Otto Dix paintings and German expressionist paintings. The colors often came from those pictures, as well as John Singer Sargent and other things. One of the references that Yorgos had come up with was [Austrian painter] Egon Schiele, this scratchy drawing of a Victorian girl with incredibly long black hair. I’ve heard that production designers were given lists of films, but I didn’t have that.
Did you make everything from scratch, or did you find vintage and archival stuff?
For the principals, everything was made. There are pieces where I might have found something original, and then I looked at it and designed a version of it. An example would be the little frilly ivory thing that she wears underneath a few of the outfits. She wears it quite often. Nowadays, we’d call it a sleeveless blouse. The Victorian women called them modesty pieces. They filled the empty space around the neck and the chest because you’d only expose that part for evening wear in those days. They’re like bibs, and I quite like having that as a thing that she’d wear. As soon as you start going down that route of making everything, if you try to pepper in an original Victorian thing, it looks historical. It doesn’t sit well within the textures.
How much did you use period-appropriate fabrics? I assume you didn’t have to.
I didn’t, but some of the fabrics are really period-appropriate. Some of the bodices and that blue dress at the beginning, and the wool jacket are made in traditional fabrics that you’d use if you were doing a period drama. You can never fully recreate these things, but it’s striving for what the Victorians would have used. But then there were many other fabrics that were not typical of the period. I used a lot of polyurethane and latex. A lot of the blouse fabrics are very light, contemporary silks that have been woven in interesting ways. Madame Swiney [the brothel owner played by Kathryn Hunter] wears this dressing gown that we had woven by a British company to look almost like varicose veins. And Baxter [played by Dafoe] wears a smoking jacket that is quilted and woven in a very modern way. I was mixing and matching.
Once Bella sets out on her adventures through Lisbon and Paris, the visual palette becomes very rich and hyper-saturated. The clothes are all these vibrant yellows and baby blues. Were those shades informed at all by the ornate sets or the overly lit skies?
To a large degree. But if I’m truly honest, I think I’m choosing colors based ultimately on what is right for Bella. I wasn’t thinking, “Oh, I must dress her in yellow because this set has lots of yellow in it.” When she arrives in Lisbon, the world has only been black and white. We didn’t know that as creators. That was a very late decision, although we think Yorgos probably knew the whole time. In Lisbon, the whole world is like an explosion of color. I was very much wanting to align my costume choices so those yellows and golds felt like colors that belonged in that world. There’s a softness to them at that point. They’re still very childlike. With the black hair, her wearing a lot of yellow felt like a bold choice. Yellow and black are nature’s warning colors. Wasps and bees are black and yellow, and in the urban world, caution tape is yellow. She is not to be ignored, and I wanted her to be incredibly conspicuous.
The wedding dress, in terms of how much I was asking of my team. The cutters had to do a lot because it’s made of flimsy nothingness, really. It’s fabrics that are hard to work with because they’re so light. It’s a layer of organza followed by a layer of millinery netting, which is basically plastic, followed by a layer of cotton tulle, and then it has these bands of nylon that are wrapped in the flimsiest habutai silk. And then the sleeves had to be inflated like balloons with no visible structure inside them. They needed to look like clouds. It’s quite decadent in its labor, but it doesn’t necessarily look like the most decadent thing.
I started reading it when we were working on the film, but I quickly stopped. Have you read Frankenstein recently? It’s quite dense. We were not having conversations about Frankenstein at all, which is interesting when you look at what we came up with. The black hair is quite Gothic. Yorgos works more instinctively.
