Jessica Chastain, Linda Dowds On ‘The Eyes Of Tammy Faye’ Makeup – The Process – Deadline

In their newest collaboration on The Eyes of Tammy Faye, actor-producer Jessica Chastain and make-up division head Linda Dowds appeared to deliver authenticity to each the story and the various seems to be of the televangelist of the identical title, pulling this off by digging deep into analysis supplies spanning practically 4 many years of her life.
“I feel the analysis actually helped as a result of Tammy informed us quite a bit about herself and she or he talked about her upbringing. You can see she visually put herself collectively,” Dowds says in dialog with Chastain within the newest version of Deadline’s video collection, The Process. “She cherished make-up. She took loads of care in placing herself collectively. She did the matchy-matchy—costume, footwear, lips, nails, hair, all of them sort of got here collectively. She was very properly put collectively.”

Chastain, who bought Tammy Faye Bakker’s life rights in 2012 and had since been seeking to get her ardour mission off the bottom, likewise turned consumed with attending to the center of the general public persona, exploring all doable avenues to take action. “I simply had been finding out her from the very starting, so…I watched all of The Surreal Life, any time she was on actuality tv. I watched any of the PTL that I might discover. I learn all of her books,” says the actress. “I labored with a vocal coach to attempt to assist me sing like her and a dialect coach, Liz Himelstein, who helped me sound like her.”
The Searchlight Pictures movie from director Michael Showalter charts Bakker’s extraordinary rise, fall and redemption, discovering its core in its examination of her relationship with the televangelist Jim Bakker, who would in the end be convicted of fraud carried out by means of his ministry.
In their work collectively on Tammy Faye, Chastain and Dowds made certain to keep away from any and all stereotypical depictions of the determine, as seen on the late-night discuss exhibits and sketch collection of previous many years. Together, Chastain explains, they charted her path from the “little slip of a lady” she was after we first meet her in school, to the purpose the place she is “beginning to embrace make-up and push in opposition to the Pentecostal upbringing that she had grown up with”, on the Christian Broadcast Network and on this system PTL, “to the top the place she’s truly now tattooed her face and she or he’s had fairly this journey.”

The later levels of Bakker’s evolution, which noticed her bringing deeper colours into her wigs, and tattooing lipliner, eyeliner and brows onto her face, stays her most iconic.
“It actually is an arc, in make-up and in performing,” Chastain provides. “But I really feel like they each go hand in hand for me, as a result of one feeds the opposite, creating that arc.”
On the mission, Dowds additionally oversaw Garfield’s make-up, working carefully with hair division head Stephanie Ingram and particular make-up results artist Justin Raleigh to ensure that all of their supplies labored efficiently in tandem. “With prosthetics and sweetness make-up, which on this case was actually key, the 2 supplies don’t essentially work properly collectively, so you need to discover a method,” says Dowds.” So, I feel that was actually key, all of us actually discovering these methods to combine supplies, to get the seems to be down and to work at it collectively on the identical time, in order that we did one of the best ways, and to get additionally you guys out of the chair extra shortly.”
Chastain admits that she was initially “very scared” to play Bakker, given how totally different the “goofy, extra camp, extra tender and malleable” persona was from the “fairly pushed and impressive” characters she’d performed previously. “And but after we have been on set, there was a second due to these seven years of intense work the place I used to be kicked in. I used to be within the pocket and I felt like, ‘Oh, I’ve by no means met her, however I really feel like I do know her, and she or he’s so shut with me,’” she says. “I might truly lead the crew in a prayer and I did, which is a international factor. So I obtained to the purpose, I feel, of that immersion. It was whole immersion for me, and that’s what made it really feel like we have been sharing the identical pores and skin.”
Of course, the make-up required to play Tammy Faye was for Chastain each key to reaching this degree of immersion, and a part of knowledgeable her trepidation to take the character on within the first place. While she had beforehand worn and discovered to use a faux nostril for a job on Broadway in The Heiress, she’d by no means earlier than labored with the quantity of prosthetics she was met with on the Showalter movie. “I feel at first, it was loads of panic of, ‘How do you act when you possibly can’t really feel air in your pores and skin? How do you act by means of it?’ She was such an open, porous human being, so delicate, and but now I’ve a barrier between me and others,” explains Chastain.
Ultimately, she says, she approached this potential “impediment” to her efficiency by looking for the optimistic inside it, noticing that the prosthetics pressured her to put consideration on parts of her portrayal, together with her “voice, or sure gestures,” that she may not have in any other case. “[Tammy’s] look was so, so necessary that for me to not enable the time and the artistry to honor her want to look a sure method, I felt would have been a scapegoat of the entire mission. So, I used to be actually completely satisfied,” Chastain displays. “Even although the longest day was seven and a half hours within the make-up trailer…I used to be honoring her. We have been all honoring her, by honoring her love of self-expression.”
Chastain and Dowds first labored collectively on Andy Muschietti’s 2013 movie Mama, and have additionally gone on to collaborate on the movies Crimson Peak, The Huntsman: Winter’s War, Miss Sloane, The Zookeeper’s Wife, Molly’s Game, Woman Walks Ahead, The Death & Life of John F. Donovan, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, It Chapter Two, Ava and The Forgiven, in addition to the upcoming titles The Good Nurse and The 355, and the miniseries George & Tammy about George Jones and Tammy Wynette, for Spectrum Originals, Paramount Network and Paramount+, which is at present in manufacturing. Chastain acquired her third Oscar nomination for her work on Tammy Faye, with Dowds touchdown her first.
In dialog with Chastain on The Process, Dowds absolutely breaks down her work on the drama, whereas delving into her beginnings in make-up, reminiscences from early initiatives that stick together with her, the which means in receiving her first Oscar nom and extra. Chastain speaks for her half to her preparation for the function of Tammy Faye, her first assembly with Dowds, who has grow to be “household” to her, and the qualities she sees within the make-up artist that she connects with essentially the most.
Abe Sylvia penned the movie, which was primarily based on a documentary of the identical title by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato. Chastain, Kelly Carmichael, Gigi Pritzker and Rachel Shane produced, with Bailey, Barbato, Adrian Alperovich, Jenny Hinkey, Meredith Milton and Jordana Mollick exec producing, and T.Okay. Knowles and John O’Grady serving as affiliate producers.
Check out Chastain’s total dialog with Dowds above.

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