Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/831804
28 and she does an amazing job keeping that all organized. We have many talented additional make-up artists working with us and I love that our team just jumps in and makes everyone look so good. You have three versions of the big three (Kevin, Kate, Randall). How do you make this work? Michael: For younger Kate, we had to fi rst darken the actress' hair (Mackenzie Hancsicsak) to match older Kate (Chrissy Metz). Then we picked similar age-appropriate hair styles, braids half up, half down. We got to break out the crimping iron and have some fun for young Kate's Madonna-themed birthday party. The teenage Kate (Hannah Zeile) came to us with black hair which we lightened, and we keep her in hair styles between her younger and adult self. The boys are a little easier, although Logan Shroyer, who plays teenage Kevin, had to have his hair lightened. Zoe: On the pilot, we established the looks of our adult "Big Three," as the season progressed, we see the 8-year-old and 16-year-old Kevin, Kate and Randall. As our show is edited back-and-forth between younger and older versions of them, we wanted to make them look as alike as we can. We had to do full-body make-up on Mackenzie as she was very tanned. Little tricks like shadowing noses, adding moles and subtracting them made our different "Kevins" look more alike. Both 8-year-old and 16-year-old Kate and Kevin had the wrong eye color. Parker and Logan had to go from blue to brown and Mackenzie and Hannah from brown to blue. Dr. Stacey Sumner at Pro Vision Care fi t all our lenses. Whitney LePon and Brittani McNeal did an amazing job as our on-set lens techs working with the kids who had never worn contacts before. Explain the collaborative process with other departments? Michael: The actor is like a portrait—hair, make-up and wardrobe come together to create a cohesive look for each character. Aging Rebecca to 66 is the transformation that I see as one of the most collaborative—specifi cally with the make-up department. The process begins very early in the morning with a wig wrap (and lots of coffee!). She's then sent to make-up for several hours, then returns to us for wig appli- cation and styling. We've become such a well-oiled machine that we've whittled the once fi ve-hour process down to three. Zoe: Michael and I jump in and out of each other's stations often to double-team our actors to simplify the process and making it quicker, too. Our costume designer, Hala Behmet, shares all her materials from research to fi ttings making our compressed prep time move much more smoothly. Michael and I get our own meeting with each director which really enables us to have a cohesive vision of the upcoming episode and how we can approach scheduling. Our show creator, Dan Fogelman, is so involved and has such a vision for how he wants the show to look and Ken Olin is a producing director, so it's very easy to get feedback from above. Is there an episode that you are most proud of? Michael: We were proud of our work on each of the 18 episodes, but the "Memphis" episode really stands out to me. It begins with William, who is terminally ill, traveling to his hometown of Memphis to say goodbye and share family roots with Randall, the now adult son he abandoned at birth. We styled multiple lead and background characters during fl ashbacks that take us from William's childhood in the '50s … to a 1970s bar scene … to present day. We conducted extensive research on African-American hair styles for both men and women dating back to the South in the 1950s and that's refl ected in the dozens of wigs, hairpieces and styles seen throughout the episode. Zoe: There have been so many things that stand out for me from different episodes. We have covered many periods from 1900 to present day. "Kyle" was an early episode I particularly like because we got to create a look for young William with a younger actor and it was challenging given the differences in facial structure. I really loved the episode "I Call Marriage" because we got to really have some fun with mid-'70s looks for our main cast and BG, and I love the contrast to Jack and Rebecca in 1996. What is the one thing you can't do without on This Is Us? Kleenex. •