Elizabeth Holmes’s Makeup on The Dropout Is Deliberately Awful

Amanda Seyfried unquestionably had the significant blue eyes and blonde hair to participate in Elizabeth Holmes, the Theranos founder and fraud who bilked investors out of thousands and thousands of bucks. But there was still plenty of magic The Dropout’s hair, make-up, and costume staff had to accomplish to convincingly rework the Oscar-nominated actor into Holmes, a Silicon Valley grind who had no time or want for aesthetic self-treatment in the course of her 20-hour work days.

“I researched all of the various shades of purple that she wore, all her unmatched colors of basis,” suggests make-up co-head Jorjee Douglass, describing the shots of the true-daily life Holmes that she pored in excess of as analysis. “[Holmes] often experienced clumpy lipstick and occasionally out-of-line lip liner…She wore makeup that from time to time clashed with her pores and skin tone in university.”

Douglass adds with a chortle, “I was concerned no a person would at any time hire me all over again. That was our joke.”

Douglass’s software of make-up transformed from scene to scene—depending on exactly where Holmes was in the tale of Theranos’s increase and tumble, and how frantic she was turning out to be behind the scenes of her fraudulent organization.

“There were details the place she was definitely at a breaking stage of seeking to market her [company to investors] and was applying her make-up as a weapon almost—using this quite stereotypically alluring crimson lipstick, black-rimmed eyes variety of matter. She was promoting that image to the men and women she was getting money from, but I come to feel like that also guarded her,” claims Douglass. “To me it felt like there was some variety of psychological rationale for her to put that on. I was a musician in a band, and stepping onstage in distinct makeup and wardrobe reworked me from Jorjee Douglass to a persona…I feel like which is what she did.”

Douglass also made use of tidbits of dialogue from The Dropout’s scripts to fully grasp why Holmes may have chosen purple lipstick in the initial spot.

“I consider she was drawn to the red for the reason that, rising up, she experienced a mother who was like, ‘You search superior when your hair is lightened,’ or, ‘You glimpse improved when you dress in lipstick,’” suggests Douglass. “I imagine she always experienced this mom variety of nudging her to glimpse much more feminine, and when she eventually did it, she was like, ‘I’m likely to put on this classic tart face simply because this is how I’m going to sell. This is how I’m likely to weaponize and rule these guys.’ In this circumstance, it felt like a way to protect herself.”

“I desired to honor this individual, whether it was the character or the serious human being,” claims Douglass. “Because there was no way to glance at the authentic Elizabeth Holmes with out feeling some type of pain. What ever she has, there ought to be a little something broken inside. I was trying to not judge her, but go through the script as if it is a character. That assisted me get as a result of it.”

Costume designer Claire Parkinson, meanwhile, managed to observe down both of those Holmes’s relatives shots and her large school’s yearbook to tell the character’s garments on The Dropout. Provided that Holmes was far more science-minded than manner-minded, Parkinson put the character a number of a long time back again on apparel trends—referencing J. Crew catalogs from 1998, for instance, for scenes using location in the early aughts.