Golda’s Makeup and Hair Designer Karen Hartley Thomas, Prosthetics Designer Suzi Battersby, and Prosthetic Makeup Artist Ashra Kelly-Blue join Awards Daily’s Shadan Larki to celebrate their first Oscar nominations and reflect on the Helen Mirren-starring biopic.
Guy Nattiv’s Golda follows Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which lasted a tense 19 days. Helen Mirren stars as the septuagenarian politician who remains the only female to lead the Knesset.
With Mirren skeptical of heavy prosthetics usage, prosthetics designer Suzi Battersby and prosthetic makeup artist Ashra Kelly-Blue were “selective” about where to add pieces, allowing the actress freedom to emote. With only six weeks to prepare, hair and makeup designer Karen Hartley Thomas laser-focused on Golda’s key features, like her hair, eyebrows, and eyes. Mirren’s resulting transformation leaves behind no trace of the regal British Oscar winner, replacing her with a rapidly aging, chain-smoking grandma engaged in a life-or-death chess match with the rest of the world.
Here, the freshly minted Academy Award nominees discuss the challenges of a quick turnaround time, including tough decisions like using partial prosthetics that leave behind exposed edges and very little room for error. The trio also shares their chaotically-sweet reactions to watching their Oscar nomination being announced.
Awards Daily: Congratulations on your Oscar nominations! I always say that Oscar nomination day is my Christmas morning. I get so excited, and I’m not a contender! What was it like for you all to experience that announcement?
Karen Hartley Thomas: Well, it was mad. I mean. It was mad enough to get into the shortlisted ten. I’m filming in Morocco, and we were staying in the Oscar Hotel. I try to always put these things out of my mind. I don’t really like to focus on it. I drove into the Oscar Hotel that morning, a big hotel with these big portraits of all the Oscar winners, and I thought, ‘Why do I have to be here today of all days?’
I was working in the makeup bus with my Moroccan team around me. I didn’t expect it. And also, it comes around so quickly! They announced Best Supporting Actor, and I thought, ‘Oh, it’ll be ages before us.’ And then [Best Hair and Makeup] suddenly came, and they were videoing me, and I think I literally screamed. I was so shocked, absolutely shocked. It was a good thing we were in a hotel; the champagne could flow, and it did. So yes, it was an amazing feeling for the whole team behind Golda, all these amazing people that we’ve had working with us, Suzi’s side, my side, the wig maker, Alex Rouse, and everybody involved. It’s just a massive, massive boost to everybody. We’re really just very proud.
Suzi Battersby: It’s funny you describe nominations as being like Christmas morning because I’ve always loved following awards season, both in the U.K. and in L.A. I love going on the Reddit forums, reading the articles, including yours, and seeing the predictions. So it was very surreal, suddenly being involved in all of that madness. Because it turned everything on its head,
I know what Karen means; on the one hand, you just want to pretend it’s just not happening, but I couldn’t. Every time I tried not to think about it, I thought about it. So when the announcements finally came around, it was sort of midday U.K. time, so I made sure I ate early because I knew I wouldn’t be able to eat. I watched the broadcast with my team members at the workshop.
And, as Karen said, it came around so quickly. I didn’t have a chance to prepare myself for the best or the worst. All of a sudden, there it was, Golda. And I thought, ‘What?!’ I literally started crying and shaking. I don’t think I even saw who the other nominees were because they moved on so quickly. Thankfully, somebody had taken a screenshot of the announcement because I wasn’t sure if it was real or not until I saw it again. It was bewildering; it was so exciting and crazy.
Ashra Kelly-Blue: I think it was also the fact that Golda was mentioned first, so we didn’t even have time to get ready for our name potentially being said halfway through the list. It was immediate. I couldn’t believe it. I think I had to walk out of the room, my partner was videoing me, and I just ran. I couldn’t deal with it at all.
AD: What stood out to me, and was so impressive, while watching Golda, is that Helen Mirren doesn’t look anything like herself. But the makeup and prosthetics still very much allow her to emote and perform. It doesn’t feel like she’s wearing a mask. So, how did you all transform her while giving her freedom as an actress to properly express herself?
KHT: Well, that was our main aim from the beginning, wasn’t it, Suzi? Helen was reluctant to have the prosthetics, to be honest. So, it was always uppermost in our minds to give an essence of the character and not to cover the whole face in prosthetics, which wasn’t needed. That was very important to us for Helen’s and everyone else’s sake. And Suzi did an amazing job on that.
SB: Thanks. From my first conversations with Karen, it was super clear that we had to find a balance between these two women. And like you said, to not cover her face in prosthetics. So it meant that going into the sculpt and the initial design, we had to add just what we needed and no more.
I knew that Helen wouldn’t be comfortable if we did full coverage as well. I knew that she’d feel restricted. It is tough for an actor to wear prosthetics. I think a lot of people kind of assume it’s like, ‘Oh, whatever.’ But It’s not easy. Especially when actors are used to knowing what their faces can do on camera. And subtlety, in film acting in particular, is really crucial. So, that informed the approach for the prosthetic design. And it meant that the pieces we had were very selective. So, we had two eye bags and gel pieces for the cheeks that actually covered only half of her cheeks. Then we had a nosepiece and a neckpiece, but the neck again was only the front half of her neck.
From our side of things, for me and Ashra, when it came to application, it was very challenging because we had exposed edges all over the place, lots of places where we could stumble potentially if we didn’t get it right. But it gave Helen the freedom to do her job.
Golda was in her mid-70s during the events of the film, so we had to make sure that the prosthetic pieces looked truly believable and like the skin of a woman in her 70s. I’ve said this before, but it really looks like your grandma’s neck and cheeks, with that real softness we all know and love.
AD: I have to ask about the eyebrows because I feel like that’s also such an iconic feature of Golda’s and very important to achieving her look. What can you tell me about that?
KHT: Yes. As I say, Helen has never had such transformative makeup. I know Helen. I’d worked with Helen before. So, I just know her face inside and out. And I knew what we could achieve and what we couldn’t achieve.
The wig, I knew we could do well. The Alex Rouse Company made a beautiful wig. And the eyebrows, again, I knew with Helen’s face that the eyebrows would balance out the wig. It was about all the different components coming together, and none overshadowing the other.
I had three sets of eyebrows made. It’s a fact that when you hit the ground running like we did, decisions are made quickly. It’s true that you sit and look at the eyebrows; you decide on this color here or there. You can have six, seven, or eight colors going into a wig and different textures of hair. Wigs are difficult, those things are very difficult, so a lot of time and effort was put into it. But we were fortunate that Alex Rouse always makes wigs for Helen; she’s a brilliant wig maker. And it all came together. In terms of makeup, we had the wig and eyebrows, and we had contact lenses as well. We focused on the very prominent features to still show the essence of Golda but not overshadow Helen entirely.
AD: Tell me more about having just six weeks to prepare. What adjustments did you need to make later on?
KHT: Well, we had teeth made that we didn’t use. The prosthetics were adapted a little bit, weren’t they, Suzi? But we used most of the things that we had made. The teeth just felt a little bit too far. And Helen had to be smoking all of the time. It’s a massive thing that she had to be comfortable with because she’d have to wear them virtually all day for a six-week shoot. There was also a chin piece that we didn’t use.
All of the pieces were made so they could be used together or independently of each other.
We did have a short prep time, but we gave ourselves as many options with the look as we could possibly achieve.
SB: We knew how much time we had and what we had to achieve. We knew we would have just one camera test before shooting began the following week. So, it meant front-loading the potential problems and the solutions to those problems from the start. Our parameters informed how we went about making the prosthetic pieces.
Karen mentioned the overlaps; I deliberately sculpted pieces so that you could use all the pieces or just some of them— they could work together or singularly. The way that we actually mold pieces involves using a plaster master, which allows for tweaks to the sculpt that I did have to do. Yes, we only had six weeks from when Karen came on and four weeks for the prosthetics. At the end of the day, there’s no way we were not going to have to tweak something after the camera test. You always want to make those changes. We knew Guy [Nattiv] and Helen had feedback, and I wanted to respect their opinions. We just had to do it in a really short space of time. That meant being smart about how we planned it from the outset. And to work within limitations that were manageable. I mean, it was full-on. It was stressful, but it meant that we had to make the right decisions about the approach, to begin with, to allow for that wiggle room for adjustments because you’re always going to have those for it to be perfect, and you need to be able to do that.
KHT: A six-week turnaround is extreme. But, our job is always like that. It’s pressurized. I always say, ‘We’re not scientists.’ It’s difficult to recreate the same thing every day. And there are always decisions to be made. If you’re Suzi, it’s sculpting something. If you’re making a wig, you have to decide on the base color of that wig, and it takes four weeks. So you haven’t got another four weeks to make another one. You have to make the decisions quickly, and they have to be the right decisions.
AD: Is there anything you want to mention that I haven’t asked you all about? Any final thoughts?
KHT: I think for all of us, Golda was a job of dreams. You don’t get jobs like this every year or ten years; it just doesn’t happen. Having an amazing actor like Helen and an iconic woman like Golda was a dream job. I’ve done a lot of stuff, but Golda would certainly be up there for me as one of the most rewarding jobs I’ve ever done.
SB: Absolutely. I’m also super proud to be part of, from the prosthetic side of things, what was almost an entirely female team. Running my workshop in the U.K., there are very few prosthetic companies that are run by women at all, so to have been recognized at this level is such a privilege. There are so many incredibly talented women in prosthetics, and to have that recognized is just so lovely as well. It makes me very proud.
AKB: They’ve taken the words out of my mouth, really, haven’t they? Echoing both what Karen and Suzi said, there were so many challenges on set, like having our edges exposed in the prosthetics and always having to make everything look flawless from day one with limited checks set. It was a huge challenge, but it was such a ride. It felt so wonderful to be part of it. Working alongside Helen as well was a massive honor.
Being part of Suzi’s team was also a huge privilege and being trusted to be at the forefront of application and running the pieces and painting pieces. It was a lot to take on, but it just made me realize that I can, you do it, and the challenge is there to take me out of my comfort zone.
Golda is streaming on Paramount+.
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