‘Wicked’ Didn’t Just Paint Elphaba Green — The Makeup Team Also Had to Create a Horse of a Different Color
Jon M. Chu’s adaptation of “Wicked” has already proved indisputably popular, and much has been made of the production’s efforts to give Oz a gravity to defy through practical sets and intricate costumes. Frances Hannon and the film’s makeup departments also had their hands full doing the kind of visual worldbuilding that gets us to invest more deeply in the drama and the characters without really realizing it.
The most notable challenge was, of course, nailing the right shade of green for Cynthia Erico’s Elphaba. But the makeup team did a lot more work that one might assume would’ve been hidden behind the curtain of fixing it in post. Chu wanted as much of the fantasy as possible to be real in front of the camera. Actually doing that, however, is a horse of a different color — and it required painting multiple horses different colors.
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“Fiyero’s (Jonathan Bailey) horse had to be this beautiful, iridescent, shimmery blue, and so we had to design that makeup,” Hannon told IndieWire. “David Stoneman, who makes bespoke makeup, he found that they have an oil that they use on horses to shine their hooves and everything, that’s very safe for them, so we took the oil and we found a beautiful blue pigment from Japan. [Stoneman] discovered how to find them, and he made the product.”
Every day that horses were on set — not just Bailey’s equine BFF Jack, whom he worked with both on “Wicked” and on “Bridgerton,” but also standby horses and stunt horses for second unit filming — two or three makeup artists would paint the horses blue from big painting trays using brushes and sponges.
“It was something I think that people probably think happened afterwards, but it’s a great example of how Jon wanted it all at the time [of filming],” Hannon said. “We also put extensions in their manes and their tails — Jon wanted them long anyway, but [this way] every horse looked the same as Jack. It was so lovely. Jonathan has a wonderful relationship with that horse, and I loved it.”
The final shade of blue took a bit of trial and error; Hannon and Stoneman experimented with different color blues over about five weeks to find the exact right combination that would sit naturally on a horse’s hair and not clumpp. But of course, colorful animals are only one piece of the vibrant, technicolor world of Oz that the makeup team helped to create.
For as intentionally different as Elphaba and Glinda (Ariana Grande) look throughout “Wicked,” Hannon’s work is one of the sly ways they’re visually drawn together. The Shiz student who will become The Good Witch has a kind of classical elegance — Hannon says she was inspired by Princess Grace, particularly with Grande’s hair — and skin that is opalescent. Paired against the fluorescent base of Erivo’s green skin, both Elphaba and Glinda’s skin reflect light in a very similar way.
“Within Galinda, we kept a very iridescent — nothing sparkly or anything like that — but just a really nice iridescent quality so that when they’re side by side, they both have a natural kind of a glow,” Hannon said. “One doesn’t outweigh the other in makeup and hopefully, if people still watch this film in 30 years like they do ‘The Wizard of Oz,’ [the makeup] will be very timeless.”
It was important that Galinda nor Elphaba looked accessible and natural on camera (give or take a few designer pink trunks of couture) not only so that the audience invests in them but that they stand in contrast to the more stylized characters in the film, particularly Madame Morrible (Michelle Yeoh) and The Wizard (Jeff Goldblum). There are a lot of small, cheeky nods in Morrible’s hair and nail design, for instance, to her magical specialty of weather control.
“ That sort of pure, pure white of the clouds and the lifting and the twists [in her hair], like the clouds floating through the sky, it gave her a great structure with her costume design. It gave her the height of power. She likewise used her nails, her hands, very beautifully when she controlled the weather,” Hannon said. “ She has a story arc where it travels through her story and in [Film 2] we’ll see more of what happens with her visually — so being big and billowy and cloudy when she’s so in control and as life changes, [her look] changes too.”
Even with characters looks who seem very set — Elphaba gets to have just as big and billowing a cloak as Broadway’s Elphaba, in the end — Hannon found little visual details to sneak in additional visual context. Working with Erivo in particular, Hannon, costume designer Paul Tazewell, and their teams found ways to show that Elphaba is no waif at the start of her journey.
“Yes, she’s green, but she comes from a very well-to-do family, and there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s an extraordinary, clever woman. So yes, she does dress beautifully. She always is self-defensive… but she does wear jewelry, she does take care of herself, she does her nails,” Hannon said.
Elphaba draws on the strength of her lived experiences and values to take on the mantle of the Wicked Witch, and we see this through how Erivo uses her hands, worries her rings, flashes her fierce nails, and looks so natural in her (green) skin. “She used these things in the timeline of her story arc and it was a wonderful addition. As she grew in strength and in power within herself, recognizing how good she was, she used it as part of her growth. And it really worked terribly well,” Hannon said.
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