this story about “Niamh Morrison, Hairstylist and Makeup Artist for Great Expectations, first appeared in TheWrap Awards Magazine Limited Series/Movie-for-TV issue.
Miss Havisham is one of the most iconic characters in English literature. The wealthy recluse in Charles Dickens’ “Great Expectations” is so well known that she’s become shorthand for heartbreak, revenge and being stuck in time: a person fossilized while she’s still breathing. The story of her, left at the altar, retreating to her mansion, forever dressed in her wedding dress, has been reimagined more than a dozen times on screens big and small.
The latest adaptation of the novel, the FX limited series produced by Steven Knight, is a darker, more modern interpretation, filled with sex, drugs, and four-letter words (something not found in most Dickens adaptations). . So when it came to creating the look for Miss Havisham (played by Olivia Colman), hairstylist and makeup artist Niamh Morrison saw an opportunity to push the envelope. “With the whole aspect of the show, we broke a lot of rules,” she said. “We were much broader, rather than staying very true to the 1830s.”
Morrison started with Havisham’s signature shocking white hair, which she and her team achieved by dyeing a wig until it had just the right shades and an unhealthy quality. “I made my own nicotine stain and we were able to wash it out to increase or decrease the color as the wig aged,” she said. To show off the broken hair around the hairline (which, he said, “would happen quite naturally, especially with someone sleeping with their bridal hair, don’t do that ladies!”), they applied bald pieces, complete with veins. and realistic skin. discoloration. To match the wig, Morrison used a special mascara to “wash out” the color from Colman’s eyebrows and eyelashes.
Havisham’s face must have been unnaturally pale, as she remains sequestered in her tomb-like home, smoking her opium pipe. The idea was to give the impression that she was rotting inside. “This is a woman who is mentally unwell,” Morrison said. “She is not living a healthy lifestyle. She has some bad habits, let’s say, and we needed to dial that into her appearance.” Once again, Morrison added veins (red on the cheeks and blue around the eyes) and continued those markings on Colman’s hands and chest.
There were also two sets of prosthetic teeth: one reflecting everyday wear and tear, and one worn while Havisham eats betel nuts, which give the mouth a startling and grotesque red color. Morrison made the betel nut juice out of food coloring and glycerin, applying just enough so that he “got caught in the dryness of his cracked lips.” He didn’t want it to look like she had gone all vampire,” he said. False teeth, he added, can be tricky. “I was very nervous about the teeth because actors usually take time to get used to them because they can affect his speech. We did quite a few, actually, in anticipation of that. And Olivia, like a troupe, just before a take, would just grab them and tuck them in herself.”
At the end of the series, Havisham (spoiler alert!) makes peace with her shattered wedding dreams and, for the first time in decades, ventures out into the sunlight wearing a blue velvet gown (after which she burns cathartically the portrait of the fiancé that she stood up). his). “It was a side of her that we hadn’t seen before, and he was very keen not to push it too hard, so it was like a magical bath that he had,” Morrison said, laughing. To indicate that Havisham had washed her hair, Colman wore a different wig, this one with free strands of the dry, faded yellow tones and held back in a loose bun with chopsticks. “He felt quite elaborate, much softer, which is what we wanted to convey. He has a little bit of color in his skin,” Morrison said. “It’s almost like a renaissance.”
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