“Smile 2” Prosthetic Makeup Designer Jeremy Selenfriend on the Sequel’s Gruesome, Grinning Details

Editor’s Note: The story contains spoilers to the movie Smile 2.

Prosthetic makeup designer Jeremy Selenfriend is no stranger when it comes to creating blood-curdling horror. He grew up watching Freddy Kruger films and turned an interest of the spooky into a career of conjuring some of the most terrifying dread imaginable. “It’s a weird thing to say, but when I was eight years old, I was in love with the Nightmare on Elm Street films,” he tells The Credits. “I don’t know why that was acceptable for a kid back in the eighties, but that was it for me, and I went on from there.” For Smile 2, Selenfriend, who reunites with writer-director Parker Finn, was more than up for the challenge.

The sequel to the 2022 horror hit sees popstar Skye Riley (Naomi Scott) become infected with the supernatural parasite in the midst of a comeback tour following a tragic car accident that took the life of her movie star boyfriend (Ray Nicholson) and left her scarred – physically and psychologically. Now, she’s imagining everything from her dead boyfriend, fans stalking her, and her mother (Rosemarie DeWitt) turning against her. She tries everything she can to stay “in control” and make it stop. But does she?

The nuanced story shines a terrifying klieg light on the music industry while giving audiences plenty of jump scares and gruesome deaths. The latter required close collaboration among Selenfriend, special effects supervisor Johann Kunz, visual effects supervisor Robert Beck, and, of course, Finn. While some of the bloody visuals were outright CG effects, most were grounded in practical effects that started with the work of Selenfriend and Kunz’s special effects team.

Below, the prosthetic makeup designer talks about working in New York, what blood is really like on set, and what goes into breaking someone’s jaw off their face. Yummy.

You’ve turned a childhood love of creating monsters into a career, eventually starting a business in New York dubbed Monster in my Closet FX. What’s the one thing you’d share about working professionally in NY after multiple decades?

That I’d rather be in New York than any other film locale. I’ve been lucky here on the East Coast that I got to grow with the size of the film industry here. It was just really taking off when I was cutting my teeth twenty-plus years ago. There are a handful of shows here, Law & Order, SNL, of course, and Broadway, but there wasn’t a whole lot of big stuff in New York. So you go to do a ton of really fun independent films where we were able to build my shop name. It’s been nice to kind of grow with the New York film community. 

Since you’re embedded in the New York prosthetic makeup and creature scene, how do you approach bringing in new people for a project or mentoring?

I mentor from time to time. Every season, there’s a litany of emails about wanting to work with us, and we’ll look at the books and portfolios. And if there’s something in there that jumps out at me, that really off the beaten path where they put some real effort in and done something, I can see there’s actually artistry involved, whether it’s a sculpture or mold or any aspect of what we do, we ask them to come on in and give them a shot.

The technology behind creative workflows has evolved tremendously in the last five years, with 3D printing and even more so with artificial intelligence recently. Have you considered adding any of the more digital workflows to your process?

I’ll sculpt tangibly with my hands until the day I’m told I physically can’t, just because I genuinely love it. But I also respect the hell out of what’s going on with digital sculptors. For Smile 2, Naomi [Skye], she was all digital scans by Millennium FX in the UK. Morphology did some of the lifecasting from prints of the digital scans, and Studio Gillis was also involved again, like the first film. There was a lot of teamwork between departments and other shops.

You can tell there’s a lot of teamwork involved in the Smile films. One of the things that make them thrilling to watch is that, for the most part, the gore is grounded in practical effects. 

That started with our very first conversation with Parker back before the first one. I didn’t know who he was yet, and we were getting to know each other at the time and just talking about horror stuff. And he’s as into it as anyone I’ve ever met. He knows what he wants probably more than anyone I’ve ever met. He wants as much in-person on-set as he can possibly have, which we love the hell out of. It’s so great that there are still directors out there like that, but still also know there will be a healthy amount of visual effects for the film, too.

Exactly. There has to be a balance since gags that are completely digital can sometimes take you out of the story because of how fake-looking they can appear. 

I’m lucky in that I’ve gotten to do a lot of shows where, even if we know a gag is going to be completely VFX when all is said and done, I’ve had an actor say like, okay, but I still need to see my arm bulging up, because I’m acting and I need to know what I’m acting to and if there’s nothing there, I’m not giving the performance it deserves. So we build an entire rig for a thing, and sometimes we’re like, hey, that worked out great. We don’t even need the VFX, which is always a wonderful feeling. Parker is very good about trying it for real. We’ll get as much as we possibly can. We’ll augment later if we have to, and then some things going in are planned that way.

One of those visually crazy moments is the death of the character Lewis (Lukas Gage), who has been infected by the Smile demon. He smashes his face in with a weightlifting plate. What was your reaction to reading it in the script?

When I read that in the script, I was like, “Oh my god, I’ve never seen anything quite that extreme and brutal.” But because that happens within the first act, I knew we were in for a ride for the rest of it.

It’s a fantastic bloody mess. Was the disfiguration of his face something you can research?

I mean, can’t say I found any specific references. It’s tough as it’s a very imaginative thing. But we had a lot of MMA fight references, just extreme nose breaks and things like that. Relevant things, albeit nothing quite like a weight plate.

So, how did the team pull it off?

This was the one Parker was the most excited about and really wanted to nail the look for. We spent the most time with it and did a couple of different iterations of the sculptures. In the movie, there are three hits, and Parker wanted to make sure it was telling a continuous story and that each one was grander and bigger. It’s all happening simultaneously, and then, by the last one, we get to a VFX hybrid. We are actually seeing inside the head, seeing the skull, and seeing parts fall out. We also had this little puppeteer cheek flap thing tugging on a filament. That was practical. So we had practical, puppeteering, and VFX all going into that scene. It was great. We shot that over multiple days.

The color of blood is always an interesting choice, and Smile 2 has darker, thicker blood than something like Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Do you know what went into making it?

I can say that I was the jumping-off point for that, and the other department kind of matched what the practical makeup effects department was providing. So Sasha Grossman, the makeup department head, costume designer Alexis Forte, the teams in special effects and visual effects, and down the line, all matched us. But because the special effects guys were using rigs to spray blood and everything, it had to be a different kind of blood, so we had to find a balance of the color. Blood is always one of the funniest things to me on set because it’s one person bleeding, but about seven different departments have to be involved.

Are you sourcing the blood and materials in New York?

Yes, as best I can. I bring in very little from out of state. We have amazing suppliers in New York and Pennsylvania. I try not to go further than that.

We have to talk about the scene where a character’s jaw gets ripped off by a crowbar.

Oh yes. For starters, that was my little cameo in the movie.

That is exactly why we brought it up. How cool.

Thanks. That one came up late in the game. We did a similar, albeit less extreme thing in the first movie, and I think this was ok, how do we top that one? So, we created a full silicone head with jawbones and everything embedded inside like a jigsaw puzzle. Knowing the way Parker shoots, we knew we would want to do it a bunch of times, so I developed a way to reset it quickly and easily. We got it down to like a thirty-second reset.

How did you puppeteer it on set?

My shop guy, Jared, had his arms around the front of it, holding the actual crowbar. I’m puppeteering the crowbar from underneath. So he’s just acting as if I’m aiming it in. Parker wanted us to get the nastiest, grossest version that we could possibly get. I think we must have done twenty different takes of that.

At one point in the film, we see the enormity of the Smile villain. Was that done practically as well?

The monster was all created by Alec Gillis and Studio Gillis, but my team got to be part of that and puppeteer it. There are digital alterations in post, but we had that gigantic, crazy ass monster on set. The actor really reacted to it, and it was as big on stage as it is in the movie.

That’s refreshing to hear.

Yes. Alec Gillis is the guy who inspired me and whom I looked up to when I was eight years old. He didn’t come to the set for the first film, but he was there for this one, and it was wonderful to meet him.

That’s a full-circle moment. Another interesting full-circle thing about Smile 2 is all the references to The Shining – the casting of Jack Nicholson’s son Ray being the most obvious. This film opens the door for a new generation to watch that classic film.

I actually sent an email to Parker to this extent the other day. Those were all great, but it’s amazing to think that 30 years from now, people are going to be watching this franchise. It’s a legitimate piece of the horror lexicon now, and people are going to be watching it on Halloween and all through the spooky season, and that’s such a cool thing.

Smile 2 is in theaters now.

Featured image: Naomi Scott stars in Paramount Pictures Presents A Temple Hill Production A Parker Finn Film “SMILE 2.” Courtesy Paramount Pictures.