“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” Hair and Makeup Head Christine Blundell on Bringing Out the Dead

Almost four decades after the original, Tim Burton’s follow-up, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, is a hit for Warner Bros. Reprising their original roles, Winona Ryder’s Lydia is now a television talk show host ghost hunter, Catherine O’Hara’s Delia is still a daffy cosmopolitan creative, and Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice remains an undead charlatan pining for Lydia. Lydia also has a teenage daughter, Astrid (Jenna Ortega), who misses her late dad, Richard (Santiago Cabrera), and wants little to do with her eccentric mother and cloying boyfriend/manager, Rory (Justin Theroux). But a visit home to Connecticut and the old house on the hill sends the family into the afterlife and Beetlejuice’s open arms.

In the realm of the undead, Beetlejuice has company as a specter with an ax to grind. There’s his ex-wife and murderer, Delores (Monica Bellucci), recently put back together and out for revenge. She’s wanted by Wolf Jackson (Willem Defoe), undead actor and self-appointed detective. And the afterlife’s waiting room is full of the recently deceased, from a half-decayed cat lady to a half-eaten surfer. Back above ground, nobody is safe, particularly after Astrid unwittingly strikes up a camaraderie with a ghost hiding in plain sight. For the head of the makeup and hair department, Christine Blundell, the process was all about working together with the prosthetics team, doing as much prep as possible before the actors arrived, and staying true to the beloved Beetlejuice’s original characters while having some fun with the sequel’s new undead denizens.

How much creative license did you have to determine the characters’ overall looks?

Michael [Keaton] had to look close to how he did in the original. The rest of the afterlife was total free rein. We had different levels of color. At the start, we did lots of testing with Haris [Zambarloukos], our DP, just because the afterlife was always going to be really dark, so we had to pump it all up and be very theatrical. Tim was very respectful of the fact that he wanted the actor in the room so that we all collaborated on the look, especially with the returning actors. My job was to prep like mad because, aside from Winona, who got there ten days before, everybody else arrived literally the day before. So, with Catherine, I made six wigs in a very light copper color. We asked her, how vibrant do we want your character to be now? And obviously, she went for the maddest red she could go for. So then my colorist literally just spent the whole night coloring the other wigs, and I cut them into shape.

What was the process like recreating Beetlejuice’s look?

We brought in a body double for Michael so that we could test his makeup, get it down pat, and then show Tim. Tim had a couple of little tweaks. Because Michael was very involved in his original look, he fine-tuned what we had done. We just wanted his look to be a little bit more three-dimensional but as close to the original as possible. 

His level of undead makeup does vary from scene to scene, which I liked.

There are definitely minor little tweaks. I have three different variations of teeth for him. With Beetlejuice, your hands are really tied with where you can go with it because, obviously, he is in the afterlife, so he shouldn’t have changed. But we did little bits — the bit where his eyes pop, that was a little mask that Neal Scanlan [the creature effects creative supervisor] and I put together.

What was your process like as it related to the prosthetics? For example, Willem Defoe’s open head?

Tim would do sketches and give them to Neal and me, and we’d work out where Neal and I crossed over. But a lot of the time, like with Dolores and with Willem, it was very much about testing, with Neal doing the prosthetic side of it and me working out the good half of the face and the hair and working out how to hide the joints. It was very deliberate with Willem’s look — it was meant to be almost like a crude, old-fashioned prosthetic. It was all done for comedy effect. When Willem arrived, he had the whole idea that he wanted to look like the guy from Hawaii Five-O. We got it to a certain level with the prosthetics, the hair, the makeup side, and the fake tan, and then he brought it to life.

Speaking of Delores, how did you create Monica Bellucci’s elaborate, all-new look?

With Monica Bellucci, again, I was over in Neal Scanlan’s workshop, and we got a body double who looked similar to Monica. I met Monica very early on and had her all sized up, ready to have wigs made for her. We spent a fair couple of weeks working out how she could come together. Neal would put together a little reel of it, see if we were getting close, and then we’d come back and go again. Then we had the little flashback of her alive look, and she’s obviously the most beautiful person around. But we wanted her to look a bit deranged and fantasy-monstery. It’s very hard to make her look bad. We initially tried with a massive electrified wig, and it’s a fine line between taking the character into something that is too comically driven for what we want our character to be. We wanted her to be fun but slightly terrifying and, obviously, the only person that Beetlejuice had ever been scared of.

How did you divide the work between makeup and prosthetics?

We worked out early on that Neal would never have time to do all of the afterlife with just prosthetics. So we did a divide, where we crossed over about thirty percent of the time. They’d come to make-up with us first and then go over to prosthetics to get the swollen head or the brain and things. The cat lady came into us, and that was all done with just little makeup effects. We would do whatever Neal could offload onto us with our own out-of-the-kit effects. We just worked very closely with prosthetics. There’s a very fine line that divided us.

How did you balance staying true to the original with a raft of new characters?

It’s one of my favorite films, the original Beetlejuice. I think it would be a dangerous thing to say that I didn’t want to give a good, healthy nod to the original because all of us are such loyal fans. I think that’s kind of the driving force behind what’s made [Tim] wait so long to do this remake. I watched the original again and again just before we started. I didn’t want our film to take anything away from the original, but to add, if you like. There were many more featured characters in the afterlife than there ever were in the original. One of the beautiful things about working on this project is that it restored my faith in the industry. I loved every day. My team loved every day. Tim’s a delight to work for, and part of what makes it so fun is you don’t really see him until you’re on set. And if you watch his face when people arrive, you know whether or not you’ve hit the nail on the head with him.

For more on Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, check out these stories:

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” Editor Jay Prychidny on Capturing a Debauched Poltergeist’s Manic Energy

“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” Editor Jay Prychidny on the Gospel of Ghoulish Pacing

Featured image: Caption: WILLEM DAFOE as Jackson in Warner Bros. Pictures’ comedy, “BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures