What about the Hunger Games prequel? In certain scenes you are quite made up.
I don’t think anybody was expecting that from a Hunger Games movie, especially for my character. Me and Sherry Lawrence, who was our department head for makeup, really kind of built this story for Lucy Gray because we needed to be able to justify every makeup choice. In the book, Suzanne Collins does describe that she’s heavily made up for certain scenes, but we had to make sure that it was attainable for the income that Lucy Gray had. She lives out in District 12, which is the poorest district, and she’s a musician by trade, so she’s not really making a lot of money—I say, as a musician by trade [laughs].
So we were like: Okay, so maybe she found berries in the woods, crushed them, used them as lipstick; or she found a dead beetle and crushed the wings to make the shiny eyeshadow. It made the process of getting ready in the morning a lot more fun because we were able to kind of tell the story through the makeup. Her appearance is such an important part to her, so it was a really nice way to get into character every morning.
You wear a red lip in the scene where you’re onstage playing music. Did that connect you in some way to the cohort of Grand Ole Opry women, like Patsy Cline?
Absolutely. Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn and Dolly Parton were huge influences. Particularly with Dolly, you won’t find her not made-up on a stage. That’s really where [Lucy Gray’s] vanity comes into play—she’s playing a part for all of these people. She is a traumatized individual, but the second she steps onto that stage, you would not know. That’s her way of shielding herself from the world.
You’re the voice of the main princess in the upcoming animated movie Spellbound. What has that process been like? Do you ever bring some element of physical transformation—perfume, makeup—into the room, even though all that’s going to be recorded is your voice?
Being in a recording studio is very isolating, and you’re usually in a dark room all day. It was one of those things that I learned on West Side Story, when I would spend days just trying to lay down tracks. Jeanine Tesori was like, “You should have something that brings you comfort in here.” So I had one of my mom’s old Champion sweatshirts from the ’80s with me. Now, I wear a lot of color to the studio. Sometimes I bring pictures in with me, because you’re really trying to invoke emotion and sometimes there’s no animation for you to watch.
I’ve been making Spellbound for four years now. I started out as a scratch vocalist for them—really just testing out songs for Alan Menken so that he could hear his work—and then they decided to hire me as the part. To think, January 2020 I started work in the attic of my childhood home, from a closet essentially, and now it’s a whole movie that’s going to come out on Netflix! That’s, like, crazy to me. I’ve been very fortunate these days that so much of the movie is completed, so I’m watching and matching. That’s really fun. My character, Ellian, is young and sprightly and positive. The people that I’m working with on that job are so wonderful. Vicky Jenson directed Shrek. She’s an icon to so many, including myself. And getting to hear the other voices—Javier Bardem and John Lithgow, almost all of their dialogue is recorded already—that’s really helpful.
A year from now there is another red lipstick moment for you, with Snow White.
I can’t praise enough Nadia Stacey, our makeup and hair department head. She’s kind of done every element of beauty in film, from period pieces, like The Favorite, to Emma Stone in a red lip for Cruella, which is very different from the red lip for Snow White. It’s really cool to see the spectrum of what a red lip can do. Oscar nominee, by the way. We always like to make sure we say, “Nadia is an Oscar nominee.” [Ed. note: Stacey indeed took home that Oscar for her work on Poor Things.]
Snow White has this youthful vibe, so we went on the pinkier red side. She’s green and she’s still naive about the ways of the world at the top of the film. Every morning it was a really great transformation with my makeup artist, Niall Monteith-Mann, who is so fantastic. I love that team so much. I feel lost without them on my day-to-day.
When you promote films like this, do you bring a sense of character play onto the red carpet?
This is something my boyfriend and I say a lot, where it’s like, “Okay, now I have to go be Movie Star Josh. I’ll see you later.” There’s a [persona] in our brain that is like “Movie Star Rachel gets on the carpet,” but [there are] elements of our characters, I feel. It was definitely very celebrated on the Hunger Games red carpets. I worked so hard with my stylist, Sarah Slutsky Tooley, to make sure that all of those looks came to life and that the influences were there. We’re here because of Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss. We’re here because of Elizabeth Banks as Effie Trinket. It is my way of honoring the material.
When you think about your career ahead, what transformation—whether musical genre or time period—what would you love to get into?
I would love to actually make a movie in the Old Hollywood sphere, or something that takes place in the ’80s. Y2K was ’99, and the fittings were super fun to do because there were just so many different routes you can take for different characters who are dressed up for New Year’s Eve. You’re going to have butterfly clips in your hair and frosty lips, frosty eyeshadow. I keep saying, people are going to leave the theater with stuff in their cart on the phone, all of their nostalgic ’90s, 2000s clothes.
But the ’80s—I really want big hair. I love my straight hair, but my sister got the Latina hair gene from my mother, and I got my dad’s straight, straight, straight hair. I just want, I’m talking Gloria Estefan hair. I want that!
