How ‘Wicked’ Makeup Artist Perfected Green Color for Elphaba

Only a handful of figures are so famous for wearing a particular color that they’ve had a shade named after them — take Alice blue for instance, derived from the pale azure tint of the dresses frequently worn by former President Theodore Roosevelt’s eldest daughter. Wicked star Cynthia Erivo is now among them, with her Oscar-nominated makeup team dubbing her character Elphaba’s unique skin tone in the Jon M. Chu feature adaptation of the Broadway play “Cynthia Green.” 

Makeup artist Frances Hannon quite quickly settled on the vibrant shade of green that would best work on Erivo’s complexion while completing trial runs on models with similar skin tones in preproduction, but there was one pesky problem she kept encountering. “I couldn’t get the green to look as lovely in every shade of light,” Hannon tells The Hollywood Reporter. “It might look lovely in the makeup mirror, and then you walk out into the daylight and it’s bluey purple, and then you go into the shade outside and it looks gray and not green at all.” 

For a production as large as Wicked, with sets that span the sunny campus of Shiz University to the dark enchanted forest and the luminescent Emerald City, adjusting the lighting for one character, albeit the film’s lead, wasn’t an option. Hannon needed a fix, and as it turns out, it was a simple one: a dash of neon yellow, which SFX makeup artist David Stoneman, who created all of the bespoke makeup for the film, mixed into the base of the green color. “He started adding it in and trialing the correct amount, and once we got that right, it was like a huge breakthrough in life,” says Hannon, who’s modest about the work that earned her a second Academy Award nomination. In 2015, she won the Oscar for best makeup and hairstyling for The Grand Budapest Hotel. 

“Of course, the beauty of Cynthia is paramount,” adds Hannon. “She just carries everything, and the makeup’s a reflection of that base that’s underneath. Sometimes it would pick up on her cheekbones or wherever the light struck her, and it just brought it to life — and it resisted, can you believe this, all the tears, all the sweat and the singing.” 

The key to the makeup’s longevity was a custom green primer made by Stoneman that was applied at the top of the typically two-hour-and-15-minute makeup process each day. “We got it down to like one hour and 45 minutes, give or take, some days,” Hannon notes proudly. Airbrushing was used to place the alcohol-based green makeup on Erivo’s face, neck and hands, a technique that contributed to the realistic appearance of the color on her skin. 

“[The particles are] slightly finer, and it could be touched up again on the odd occasion where the hat might have rubbed it off,” explains Hannon. 

Next came the fun details, like the green contact lenses, the prosthetic caps that were placed on Erivo’s ears to cover her piercings, and the freckles. “The little freckles are something that I’ve used often in films. You make somebody look younger with a few freckles, and then you fade them out as they mature, but Cynthia loved them so much that she kept them,” says Hannon. “It’s a lovely bit of the story that carried through really well.” 

Because Erivo keeps all of her hair shaved in real life, the makeup team also had to apply eyebrows daily. “I used tattoo transfers, and with the hair and the hat and the gown and the tie necks, it worked really well,” Hannon says of the realistic appearance of the sticker-like product. “The eyebrows didn’t need to be three-dimensional.” 

The behind-the-scenes effort that went into Elphaba’s look sits in contrast to the reserved personality of the character whom Ariana Grande’s Glinda famously promises to teach how to be “popular.” Yet her appearance is a key aspect of her journey from a young girl who once only dreamed of being de-greenified to a woman who eventually sees her uniqueness as her superpower. 

“Jon never wanted the visuals for Elphaba to be based on the face — that wasn’t the story he was telling,” says Hannon. “But that very much was something that Jon and [producer] Marc Platt were very happy to play with.” 

As was Erivo, says Hannon, remarking how hands-on the actress was when it came to her character’s look. “Elphaba is very simple. She has no vanity, and as she grows stronger, she gets freer. Cynthia brought 100 percent to the table how she felt and would like to look every day, whether it was darker eyes, stronger lips, less, looser, tighter,” says Hannon. “Her Elphaba was hers.”

This story first appeared in a February stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.