Throughout her career, makeup artist Carleigh Herbert has worked on a large variety of different TV series, including MTV’s “Teen Wolf” and FX’s “American Horror Story” — which has earned her four Emmy nominations to date — but nothing is quite as special as actually being part of one from the get-go. “It’s honestly a dream come true,” she tells Gold Derby in a new webchat about serving as the makeup department head on the first season of HBO Max’s new period comedy series “Minx.” “And [it’s] a period piece — there’s nothing more challenging than that. So, the challenge of it all and then designing [it] from the start has been a really wild, fun experience. It’s like it becomes your baby.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Set in 1970s Los Angeles, the series follows Joyce Prigger (Ophelia Lovibond), an earnest young feminist who joins forces with a low-rent publisher (Jake Johnson) as her last resort to get her anti-patriarch publication onto the world. Together with said publisher, Doug, she creates the titular erotic magazine for women, which also features essays from a progressive female perspective. Regarding the research she did on the beauty and makeup looks of the era, Herbert reveals that she primarily honed in on the specifics of LA in the 1970s. “I started looking at celebrities and magazines and at what was popular in the early ’70s, music-wise, movie-wise [etc.],” she details. The makeup artist used Playgirl as her “eye candy” for Minx and looked at erotic magazines and old Sears catalogs to get a sense of how men and everyday people were respectively rocking those days.
SEE our interview with ‘Minx’ star Ophelia Lovibond
It probably doesn’t surprise you that one of the show’s most discussed aspects is its depiction of full-frontal male nudity. After all, right in the first episode, there is a one-minute sequence in which around 20 men audition bottomless to become a centerfold in Minx. While Herbert clarifies that prosthetic penises were not used for this sequence, she divulges that they did come into play for certain characters, including Shane Brody (Taylor Zakhar Perez), who becomes Minx‘s first cover model. For the prosthetics, she and her team collaborated with the company Autonomous F/X, Inc. and its owner, Jason Collins, whose credits include Hulu’s new miniseries “Pam & Tommy” and HBO’s hit drama “Euphoria.” Once an actor was cast and Herbert would discuss a design with showrunner Ellen Rapoport, Collins would “sculpt [it] from fresh, mold it and do a silicone prosthetic,” she explains.
One of the instances in which a prosthetic penis was utilized is during the filming of a centerfold photo shoot in Episode 5, where the endowed model is meant to resemble Michelangelo‘s Statue of David. Ironically, the prosthetic penis used for these scenes is the same one worn by Sebastian Stan on “Pam & Tommy.” “We would just lay hair, paint it differently and make it look a little different,” highlights Herbert about the changes that were made to said prosthetic before employment.
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In our chat, the makeup artist also discusses what went into creating Joyce’s look and when changes were applied to it. “At the very beginning, when we meet her, she’s very dulled down, she’s very simple. And then you see her start to play with makeup a little more as she goes,” she expounds. “But for the most part, we wanted her [makeup to be] really minimal, so that we could see her break out of her shell a little bit here and there.” The Emmy nominee shares that her biggest influence for Joyce was American model and fashion designer Cheryl Tiegs. “So, Cheryl, sometimes when she would get laid up, she just played up her lashes and popped a pastel color on her lid. So, I really [liked] that for Joyce.”
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