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‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ hair and makeup team on adding ‘a little bit of our stamp’ onto these iconic characters

Marcus James Dixon
3 min read
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Just like you at home, the artisans behind the scenes of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” were all “massive fans” of Tim Burton‘s original comedy-horror film from 1988. Christine Blundell (Makeup & Hair Designer), Lesa Warrener (Makeup & Hair Supervisor), and Neal Scanlan (Animatronic & Special Make-up Effects Supervisor) recently chatted with Gold Derby about the highly anticipated sequel, including what it was like recreating some of the classic looks from 36 years ago, as well as manufacturing some eye-popping new ones. Watch our exclusive video interview with the hair/makeup team above.

Speaking about Michael Keaton‘s titular character, Blundell explains, “We had to keep him as close to the original because he’s in the Afterlife, so you know, he’s dead.” At the same time, “It’d be really nice to kind of add a little bit of our stamp to it,” she notes, “so we tried to make him a little bit more decomposed and a little bit more texturized” when it came to the makeup, hair, fingernails, nose and teeth. In all, Keaton was in the makeup chair for about “40 minutes from start to finish” each day.

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Scanlan goes into detail about Monica Bellucci‘s character Delores, who is a collection of body parts all sewn together. “We choreographed nearly five girls that were all playing different limb parts,” he says about the process. “So one girl would play the left arm, another girl would play the right hand, the right leg, left leg, etc. And that choreography kind of let us know where the parts were that Delores had been chopped up. That absolutely drove the design of the makeup, and where the scars were.” The ultimate goal was that, “even dismembered, her body parts should look beautiful.”

SEE Box office: ‘Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’ revives movie theaters with $145 million global opening

Catherine O’Hara‘s over-the-top character Delia Deetz returns for this film, and Warrener recalls the actress being “an absolute hoot.” Delia’s wigs were all “different variations of red,” and they started working with her “the day before” shooting officially began at the gallery. “I’m not sure if you can really tell by the gallery scene how many looks she had,” Warrener details. “Tim came in, and they chose exactly what color wig they wanted and what style, and then Catherine guided me through it. And yeah, if she didn’t run her makeup off once a day, it just wasn’t Catherine — we had so many laughs.”

There are 15 shrunken head characters, known as Shrinkers, in “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” and Scanlan gives Colleen Atwood a shout-out for “her ability as a costume designer to make those characters work so well.” He divulges, “Obviously, you’ve got a very small head on top of someone else’s head, and you’ve got this strange sort of proportionality between the top of the shoulders and where the arms are.”

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Also in our video interview, the hair and makeup experts talk about working hand-in-hand with the animatronics creators and costume team members, how they feel knowing that everyday people will be dressed up as their characters for Halloween, and what it was like creating a “baby Beetlejuice.”

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