Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1529095
44 • THE ARTISAN WINTER 2025 Due to the budget and how many wigs director Lee Daniels wanted for Alberta, I purchased several John Blake wigs and customized them myself. e hairline is always so important, so I put the wig on her copy block, lining up the hairline. I started tweezing the hair to match her hairline on the copy block. is process took several hours and when I was finished, the hairlines matched and looked just like Glenn's. Next, I started coloring the wigs. I always buy a lighter wig as it's easier to add depth and take it away. Aer depositing the level of color I thought suitable, I did a shadow root for depth and dimension. Last, I gave it a cut Alberta would love to wear! I repeated this process with several wigs, all different colors and styles giving the director Lee the variety he wanted. Since Alberta has cancer, I didn't want it to look like she was wearing a stock cancer wig. My favorite look for Glenn was the reveal of her slipping off her wig in a mirror revealing her bald head with thinning hair. Collaborating with Jason Collins and Chloe Sens was easy, and I was excited they didn't want the typical clean bald head and preferred to have the texture of remaining hair whisps. Leaving the remaining hair really helped to add to the drama and realism of the reveal. When cutting the hair that was punched into the cancer cap, I cut different lengths so it looked like some had not fallen out, leaving the shorter hair to look like new growth. When seeing Alberta in this look, I felt sad and uncomfortable, which added to the drama of the reveal. Never has cutting such little amounts of hair been so rewarding or so effective to me. • HAIR Continued from page 43 L-R: Kristen Wiig and Josh Lucas as Douglas Dellacorte Simmons One of my main concerns was the approach to the character of Alberta, played by the fabulous Glenn Close. Alberta would not only be facing the horrors of the devil, she would be facing the horrors of cancer as she was in the process of chemotherapy. I set out designing the look of her chemo hair which was a major reveal in the film. Sitting in front of a mirror, she slips off her wig and we see for the first time her vulnerability. A precious moment that required a tactful approach. I never like a clean bald head as my research told me hair doesn't fall out evenly. e wispy texture of thinly punched hair into the cap would add another level of sincerity to the moment. We knew we would need a scan of the actress to begin our work, and her limited availability required us to place Aaron Globerman, our studio foreman at Autonomous FX, Inc., on a plane to her Montana home. He was able to scan her and send us the information in real time, allowing us to start the print of her head. Having a ton of bald cap experience, I knew I wanted to divide the cap into two separate silicone appliances that would be easier for application and less blown out from stretching deadener. SPECIAL MAKE-UP EFFECTS Continued from page 43 Once the caps were done, individual hairs were punched into the cap by Anneliese Boise and the late great Denise Leibee-Baer. Once we started getting underway and getting into discussions with Ms. Close, we realized that she would need to have someone with her throughout the whole film as she had a multitude of looks. I suggested Chloe Sens, who is a longtime collaborator of ours and I thought she would be a good fit with both the beauty and FX aspects for the day-to-day. Once Chloe landed for the initial tests of the daily Alberta look, Glenn asked for extended earlobe appliances as she felt the character would've worn heavy gold hoops most of her life. What a great character detail. We sculpted these appliances and ran them in silicone, keeping them firm so as not to get too much stretch from the silicone, knowing the earrings would add a little drag. In addition, she had some teeth created by Chris Lyons of Fangs FX in the UK. Later in the film, Alberta's grandson Andre is possessed and snaps her neck by twisting her head and breaking the collar bone. We achieved this look in two ways with the first being a full silicone body of the actress. We designed the head based on her scan in ZBrush, then printed and molded quickly for a clay pour. A clay pour allowed us to get intricate pore detail without the drag of a silicone life cast. Once that was done, we ran in silicone and the late great Richard Mayberry painted the body. e wig was L-R: director-producer- writer Lee Daniels, Andra Day as Ebony and Glenn Close