You might have read that Jessica Chastain is likely forgoing Oscar’s red carpet this year. That’s because the Best Actress nominee for “The Eyes of Tammy Faye” wants to make sure she’s on hand to watch the Makeup and Hair category, one of eight awards that will not be announced live during the telecast. She’ll be there not only because the “Tammy Faye” team helped transform her into the infamous evangelical singer, but because two of the three nominees, Linda Dowds and Stephanie Ingram, have been by her side for over a decade on 16 different projects.
READ MORE: How Jessica Chastain Got A ‘Star Is Born’ Assist To Sing As ‘Tammy Faye’ [Interview]
“I still can’t even talk because it’s so overwhelming,” Ingram says of her first nomination. “Been doing hair for 32 years in film, and to be given such an honor and you never think that you’ll ever hit that day, that you would get in. I have never been nominated for anything before. Like, I love what I do. I give a thousand percent to every project I do, but to be acknowledged at this high caliber, I’m yeah. I’m kind of having a rough time with it because I’m not that person. I’m kind. I just love my work, and I love what I do.”
Ingram was responsible for all of the human hair wigs the cast wears over the decades (more on that in a minute), while Dowds was the head of the department. Chastain had mentioned the project numerous times to both artists over the years (she developed the film for a decade), but Dowds says it was still a momentous challenge to pull off.
“Everybody knows the [‘Saturday Night Live’] sketch version of Tammy Faye with the makeup, rolling down her face and mascara smudging, and all of that,” Dowds says. “And we never ever found an image even remotely like that. You know, she put herself together very well. She was very proud of the way she looked. And so, I think creating that larger-than-life look for all of us but never going across that caricature line was our goal. And that for me, is like, if people walk away going, ‘O.K. it seemed believable. It seemed honest and authentic,’ then I feel like I accomplished that if people walk away with that impression.”
The film covers almost forty years of her life, including when Tammy Faye (Chastain) and Jim Bakker (Andrew Garfield) meet at a bible college in the 1960s to the height of their PTL Network in the 1980s and beyond. Everyone involved said recreating the couple during the ’80s was their biggest feat because it’s the Jim and Tammy (almost) everyone remembers today.
“That whole ’80s look was like, oh my, because the world of wigs at that point, they were synthetics,” Ingram says. “So, synthetic, you can actually really get the height, and you have to buy it the way it looks. But when you have human hair wigs, they don’t have that much hair in them. So, I ended up actually sewing a wig onto another wig and then setting it in perm rods to get that look. That was one of my challenges. And I loved the fact that it looked the way it did. And Jessica was like, ‘Oh, I just want to touch it.’ I’m like, ‘Go ahead. Just make it yours.’”
At that point in her life, Tammy Faye had also gotten a significant amount of “permanent makeup.” Dowds had to figure out how to make that clear on-screen while providing Chastain a somewhat natural look. Oh, and make it work around the prosthetics that lined Chastain’s face as well.
“I could just kind of go in and paint it as if it was a tattoo, color, same with under the eyes,” Dowds recalls. “And for her lips, it was just trying to achieve the color that she kind of had hers done in, which was this really deep plumbing, burgundy liner, but it is definitely a harder look. It was interesting in the documentary, [which the movie is based on], when the makeup artist is trying to take her makeup off, which is how we open as well, she’s like, ‘No, this is me.’ She felt so strongly about her look, she tattooed it there, and I kind of loved that. So we tried just to make it work in a way that seemed honest and, and didn’t budge like to two wouldn’t, and that’s where we ended up.”
The third nominated member of the team is Justin Raleigh, a special effects makeup artist whose credits include everything from “Aquaman” to “Big Little Lies” to “Sweet Tooth.” He was initially approached by Chastain and legendary makeup artist Greg Cannom, a now-retired five-time Oscar winner who was involved in a consulting capacity. The goal? Use prosthetics to give Chastain as close a likeness to Tammy Faye as possible.
“I think for her, her initial mindset was trying to just look as much like Tammy as possible and as far away from her as possible,” Raleigh says. “And the discussion that I had with her early on was that really; you don’t want to push it so far that you completely lose yourself. You want to try and find out an amalgamation. You want to find a balance of what works well, what is comfortable to wear, where you don’t feel just completely overwhelmed by all the silicone on top of your face. And we just pick and choose our battles in a smart way, based on schedule, timing, how many different changes we’re going to have to do in every single day, and just our build time that we have to actually develop these looks.”
Screen tests occurred in both Los Angeles and on set in North Carolina for both Chastain and Garfield, who also had his own subtle prosthetics.
“There’s not a single scene in the movie that Jessica or Andrew do not have prosthetics on,” Raleigh says. “Every single scene, they have prosthetics. So in the earliest stage, Jessica’s entire cheeks are still covered in a prosthetic. Her chin has a prosthetic, and she has a little bit of translucent, transparent tape that’s attached to the tip of her nose that pulls her nose up. And then that gets kind of stippled and blended out. And that just gave a little more open nostril to her, which Tammy Faye had. When you look at Tammy Faye straight on, you could kind of see into her nostrils a little bit more than what you could see on Jessica’s. That was another little subtle thing that we did to push the likeness.”
Raleigh continues, “As you get into stage two and three, stage two shows in the middle of the ’80s, where she’s gained weight. She’s now in her pill-popper sort of world. She’s had some kids at that point. So we’ve got a bodysuit on her. And then she has a full neck, full cheeks, chin appliance, still the nose piece, lip piece. So basically, three-quarters of her face is covered in prosthetics at that point. And stage three, the final look, which is in the ’90s, same thing. Three-quarters of her face is covered in prosthetics, very similar format, cheeks, upper lip, full neck, back of the neck. We did stretch and stipple, which is like a traditional technique where you stretch the skin, stipple latex, powder it, release it, and then that tension of the latex on the skin causes your skin to create natural wrinkles. And so we would do that around her eyes. We would do that between her eyebrows, in the furrow. And we would do that across her forehead to get additional aging and texture into the look.”
And the work on Garfield was almost just as intense.
“In the early stages, he had two full cheek pieces that he wore,” Raleigh says. “In the ’80s, when he gains a little bit of weight, we have slightly larger cheek pieces and a neck waddle to give him a bit of a double chin. And then when he gets into his last stage in the ’90s, when we see him in prison, he has full bald pate on him. So the whole top of his head is bald. And then the wig lays on top of that to get that sort of receded, sparse look. And then he has full cheeks, full neck, a little bit of a chin piece. And then he also has that same stretch and stipple aging technique around his forehead and eyes and in between his brows.”
The trio has been recognized by their peers in the Makeup Artist and Hair Stylists Guild and won the BAFTA and Critics Choice Award for their work, but getting the approval of Tammy Faye’s children and family might have meant the most.
“I believe by all accounts, really happy with the way that we presented her and her look, and I think it was, so that’s super important as well,” Dowds says. “I think when you’re dealing with real people, it’s one thing to create a character. But when it’s a real-life person, you have an extra responsibility, an added responsibility to be truthful, I think, and authentic and remind yourself that this is somebody’s mother, wife. And so, my understanding is generally they were very happy with what we had done on our end, and that makes me really happy.”
“The Eyes of Tammy Faye” is available on both Hulu and HBO Max.