Ever since Searchlight Pictures released stills of Jessica Chastain in “The Eyes of Tammy Faye,” audiences were captivated by her transformation, and now, the hair and makeup team, along with Chastain, are all in the running for Oscar. The goal of makeup department head Linda Dowds, hair department head Stephanie Ingram and special makeup effects artist Justin Raleigh was not to make a caricature of the famous televangelist but create a real person.
Raleigh’s process began with 2D conceptual designs combining the real Tammy Faye Bakker with Chastain to figure out the elements that had to be altered with prosthetics. “From those 2D designs, we then went into clay sculptures over Andrew [Garfield, who plays Jim Bakker] and Jessica’s life casts. From those sculptures, we molded and created several prosthetic variations to test in each of our three major prosthetic stages related to their weights gains and age requirements based on the scripted timeline.”
Searchlight Pictures
He pulled all inspiration and reference real-world archives of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker, books, videos and images.
His process in transforming Chastain required three stages of prosthetics, all made from silicone:
Stage one involved silicone cheeks, silicone chin and invisible tape to pull the tip of her nose up.
Stage two involved more silicone cheeks, silicone chin, full silicone neck, silicone upper lip appliance and a bodysuit for the weight gain.
Total combined time including hair, makeup and costume was three and half hours on average.
Stage three required more silicone cheeks, chin, neck, back of neck, lips and stretch and stipple to age around her eyes, forehead and furrow. No nose tape to help age her nose.
Total time in all departments above: four hours.
Once that was completed, it was over to Dowds who turned to drugstore makeup for eyeshadow and lipstick, even mascara since that’s what Bakker liked to use.