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| Hair & make-up designer Anne Catherine Sauerberg and prosthetic make-up effects designer Thomas Foldberg |
Although we have begun to see a change in recent years, it’s still rare for genre films to get Oscar attention, but The Ugly Stepsister is something a bit different. Taking its own distinctive angle on the Cinderella story, it explores the horror of what women are sometimes willing to do in order to be considered beautiful, looking beyond traditional attitudes to vanity at the bleak economic reality facing a widow with two daughters. If Elvira (Lea Myren) can attract a prince, her family’s future will be secure. If not, they face ruin and a miserable life amid poverty and decay.
The film has come to wider attention as a result of being shortlisted for a Best Hair & Make-Up Oscar. Hair & make-up designer Anne Catherine Sauerberg and prosthetic make-up effects designer Thomas Foldberg are both excited about this, as they were from the outset about a film whose themes are very closely related to their world.
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| The Ugly Stepsister Photo: Marcel Zyskind |
“Just before I went on it, I was doing another film. I had two Polish assistants, and they were asking ‘What kind of movie would you like to do most?’” Anne recalls. “And I was kind of summing up this one.”
“Yeah, that's the thing,” says Thomas. “You get a chance to do everything from a character work to a lot of prosthetic work, to makeup effects to character prosthetics, to rejuvenation, which is actually also there. It's the full palette of our work that went into this one, so it definitely was a dream project when I was first reading it.”
He tells me that director Emilie Blichfeldt was really well prepared before they got there, and had lots to say about historical beauty techniques, some of which Anne describes as “pretty grim.” They were not, however, trying to recreate these in a modern way, Thomas says.
“Emilie immediately said what she wanted, and then we kind of did our own version of it. It wasn't true to anything, really. It just had to have an impact and have a certain look. And the tapeworm doesn’t look like a tapeworm either. So everything is different, but the base of it is rooted in some kind of reality.”
Some difference were deliberate, Anne explains, because appearance is a sensitive issue and they didn’t want to hurt people.
“It could be so easy, for example, with the eyelashes, to make fun of people having eyelash extensions. So one of the things we really thought about a lot was it should not look like the way girls do it now, because then we would be pointing out specific people and saying ‘This is wrong.’ We wanted to make our own looks, so you could see it a little bit. I mean, it's easier to see things from a distance. Just twist it a little bit. It was very important that it should be relatable, but our own universe.”
In contrast to Elvira, there’s Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss), the Cinderella figure, who closely resembles the Disney version of the character.
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| The Ugly Stepsister Photo: Lukasz Bak |
“She is an extremely beautiful actress!” Anne says. “And the thing is, it's so funny because now we're here in America and I have all the time been thinking about the Grimm version of Cinderella. Actually, it was only later in the process I realised that the ringlets Elvira has are what the stepsisters have in Disney, because I've been thinking a lot about old fairy tales. Some had this etching that I really like the detail of and it was actually them and then making it a little bit stylised that I was thinking about. So we didn't think about it – we just thought of the most beautiful princess in the world. What does she look like in a teenager's dream? So it was a super fresh face and very little make-up and a lot of hair extensions.”
That teenage perspective seems all the more important because Elvira isn’t really ugly, she just thinks of herself that way.
“That is so right,” she agrees. “That was so important.” She looks to Thomas. “That was so important in your work as well.”
“Yeah,” he says. “She thinks that she's ugly because her mother says she's ugly. They're completely wrong. I mean, the mother is crazy and hilarious, and she is young and insecure. But it's a good point. She's not ugly. That's the whole idea. I mean, she looks really cute.”
“Yeah, she just has a few pimples here and there,” says Anne. “Thomas did amazing cheeks and nose and I think a double chin as well. But it's like tiny things. It's so little. It's like when you're a teenager and you look in the mirror and you’ve got a little pimple, and it’s like the whole world is ruined.”
They then had to contribute to the wider social milieu around the central characters.
“The thing was, our director was so well prepared; and having done quite a lot of period work also with a costume designer, which is also a very big part of the film, it was very easy to go in and pick different time periods. We wanted it to look old and we chose – kind of but not correctly – around the 1880s, because there's so much detail. And then stylise it a little bit. And then later add fashion make-up. Cher was our big star for the beauty make-up for the young girls. because I just love the Seventies super shiny look, and the spiky lashes as well. And then of course we just changed it to fit into our world.”
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| The Ugly Stepsister Photo: Marcel Zyskind |
They found it really easy to work together, she says, each of them immediately knowing what to do to enhance the other’s work.
“My job is a little different because my stuff isn't related to time periods, obviously,” says Thomas. “But again, it was just very easy. It was like you kind of knew that it would fit. I didn't think a lot about what the costume department did. I got some pictures, and it was very easy. But I also think that the fact that we didn't do an exact period thing, but more like this playfulness around it, was something that just works.”
Anne agrees. “It was also like the mother's character, for example, she had been there once as well. I used a more heavy make-up for her, like the smoky eyes of the Nineties. I thought that together with this quite heavy hair piece, it could be really good. And doing things that normally would in a period drama was really fun. Now there has been Bridgerton and everything, but it could be fun to stretch that a little bit more in different directions. And very important, all the time, is realism all the time. It should all the time be relatable.”
There’s also a sense that the sisters and their mother are outsiders and there's a sort of a darkness about them that isn't there in the other characters, I suggest. And later, there are themes of decay. How did they adapt what they were doing to that?
“We like the thing about the silk and the dirt,” says Anne. “I actually think when you do the period, because the period costumes and hair is usually so elaborate, when you put makeup on top of it will always look too much. So it was like finding that belt and it was dirty and a little bit circus, and that was totally on purpose. I think what you might not know is that the family are Norwegian and the rest of the cast is Swedish and there is actually a difference. That's also why in costumes, they're a little bit too much all the time. Like the colours.”
“Trying a little too hard in a strange way,” adds Thomas, and she agrees.
It’s clear that they both love what they do, but theirs is a part of the film industry which doesn’t get much attention. How did they find their way into it?
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| The Ugly Stepsister Photo: Lukasz Bak |
“This is a niche thing to do, at least in Scandinavia,” says Thomas. “There are not that many people doing makeup effects. I came into the business very early and I actually had my first small experiences and adventures as an assistant to Anne – 35 years ago, maybe.”
Anne laughs, remembering. “He had a little book of things he’d done from things in the kitchen, like cornflakes and ketchup.”
As for herself, she says “I've always been interested in the way you express things. I mean, it sounds superficial, but everything you do in life is a choice. Even though you say you don't care about what clothes you wear, you go into a shop and you pick that shirt. So I've always been interested in how to express things. I always loved arts and history and period, so I do actually find a lot of period things and I love it. I love to dive into it and try to see what the world would look like through the glasses of the 1960s, the 1870s, how people think. Because I really love everyday history.
“I think a lot of it is about starting with the time. What was happening at that time, what was happening in the world, what was fashion, what was considered. Because very often when you do period drama, it's like you think ‘Everybody kind of looked like this.’ But there would still be characters like us, like Thomas, like the way I am. Okay, I live in 1800 and I'm this kind of person. What would I do in that time?”
So how does it feel now to have Oscar interest in their work for this film?
“Pretty special,” says Thomas. “We are extremely honoured and also very surprised. I've been a member of the Academy for a few years and I would say that at the meetings and suddenly there was interest and suddenly it went through all these things. I think it's fantastic. I'm very hyped about it, but it's nice.”
