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It Ain’t Easy Being Green: Why It Took Months Creating Cynthia Erivo's Perfect Shade of Green in Wicked
Makeup artist Frances Hannon breaks down the movie magic behind Elphaba’s signature hue.
Stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande typically don’t need much help to step out the door already exuding natural radiance, but when cast in a movie musical that’s as rich in imagination as Universal Pictures’ Wicked (in theaters November 22), it takes a little extra effort to conjure just the right look to merge their natural beauty with all that Oz-inspired fantasy.
The Tony award-winning Erivo stars in Wicked as Elphaba Thropp, the movie’s back-in-time precursor to the green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West. Long beloved by fans as the perhaps-misunderstood baddie at the center of the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz, her Wicked backstory explores the early-life adventures and misfortunes that eventually stuck Elphaba with her Wicked-Witch reputation.
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But whether it’s back in her school days at Shiz University or much, much later into her spell-casting career, Elphaba’s signature feature remains the same: it's that unmistakable green glow (of course!)
Wicked artist Frances Hannon breaks down Elphaba’s “most difficult” makeup challenge
Getting a camera-worthy green-hued makeup that could meet the movie’s production demands while also working with Erivo’s natural skin tone took a lot of advance planning, as Wicked lead makeup artist Frances Hannon recently shared with NBC Insider.
“She was the person I started with. As the witch [Erivo] would be wearing the black hat and the cloak,” Hannon explained. “… Finding the green,” took top priority in creating Erivo’s overall makeup plan, “because it was [difficult] to discover the product — because it didn’t exist.”
That means Hannon had to begin experimenting early behind the scenes, mindful that the makeup she tested with other models might not precisely work with Erivo once the actor arrived from U.S. shores to begin filming on Wicked’s U.K. set.
“It was easy with models, before we didn’t have Cynthia on board at that time; she was in America,” said Hannon. “It was easy for me to work with the models to find the right color green — that wasn’t very hard at all, because there are lots of products you can mix [available] on the market. But to find the right color green that worked on the skin tone [of Erivo] was a very difficult thing, because that didn’t work on anything I tried.”
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On top of that, Hannon knew she’d have to accommodate the movie’s filming schedule, which wouldn’t allow for different makeup mixes as Erivo moved from shooting one scene in bright light to another in darker shadows. “I had to have one product that worked through every light, because we could never stop during the day to do an alteration on a makeup,” she said. “So that was my most difficult challenge on this.”
In the end, all that advance planning does pay off. As Wicked’s early glimpses prove, Erivo’s airbrush-applied green complexion stands out consistently among the movie’s many visual treats.
“We didn’t have a very long run in as with regards to prep, but I started much earlier than the prep to work on it myself,” said Hannon. “As you always do when something isn’t off the shelf — or you have to really, really discover something — you do have to put a lot of prep work in to discover it. But I found it, and we did achieve it. So when Cynthia arrived in the country [to begin filming], we already had that side wrapped up for her.”
Save your date with the Emerald City when Wicked whisks into theaters everywhere beginning November 22. Get your tickets here!
