Elizabeth Holmes’s Makeup on The Dropout Is Intentionally Terrible

Amanda Seyfried actually had the massive blue eyes and blonde hair to play Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder and fraud who bilked traders out of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}. But there was nonetheless loads of magic The Dropout’s hair, make-up, and costume crew needed to carry out to convincingly remodel the Oscar-nominated actor into Holmes, a Silicon Valley grind who had no time or need for aesthetic self-care throughout her 20-hour work days.“I studied all the completely different shades of purple that she wore, all her unmatched colours of basis,” says make-up co-head Jorjee Douglass, describing the pictures of the real-life Holmes that she pored over as analysis. “[Holmes] typically had clumpy lipstick and generally out-of-line lip liner…She wore make-up that generally clashed together with her pores and skin tone in faculty.”Douglass provides with fun, “I used to be afraid nobody would ever rent me once more. That was our joke.”Douglass’s software of make-up modified from scene to scene—relying on the place Holmes was within the story of Theranos’s rise and fall, and the way frantic she was changing into behind the scenes of her fraudulent enterprise.“There have been factors the place she was actually at a breaking level of making an attempt to promote her [company to investors] and was utilizing her make-up as a weapon virtually—utilizing this very stereotypically horny purple lipstick, black-rimmed eyes type of factor. She was promoting that picture to the folks she was getting cash from, however I really feel like that additionally guarded her,” says Douglass. “To me it felt like there was some type of psychological purpose for her to place that on. I used to be a musician in a band, and stepping onstage in several make-up and wardrobe remodeled me from Jorjee Douglass to a persona…I really feel like that’s what she did.”Douglass additionally used tidbits of dialogue from The Dropout’s scripts to grasp why Holmes might need chosen purple lipstick within the first place.“I believe she was drawn to the purple as a result of, rising up, she had a mother who was like, ‘You look higher when your hair is lightened,’ or, ‘You look higher while you put on lipstick,’” says Douglass. “I believe she all the time had this mom type of nudging her to look extra female, and when she lastly did it, she was like, ‘I’m going to put on this conventional tart face as a result of that is how I’m going to promote. This is how I’m going to weaponize and rule these males.’ In this circumstance, it felt like a option to defend herself.”“I needed to honor this individual, whether or not it was the character or the actual individual,” says Douglass. “Because there was no approach to have a look at the actual Elizabeth Holmes with out feeling some kind of ache. Whatever she has, there have to be one thing damaged inside. I used to be making an attempt to not choose her, however learn the script as if it’s a personality. That helped me get by means of it.”Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes in The Dropout.
By Beth Dubber/Hulu.Costume designer Claire Parkinson, in the meantime, managed to trace down each Holmes’s household pictures and her highschool’s yearbook to tell the character’s clothes on The Dropout. Given that Holmes was extra science-minded than fashion-minded, Parkinson put the character a couple of years again on clothes developments—referencing J. Crew catalogs from 1998, for instance, for scenes going down within the early aughts.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/03/the-dropout-elizabeth-holmes-amanda-seyfried