‘Oppenheimer’ - Interview with Makeup Department Head Luisa Abel

Oppenheimer became an unexpected box office hit, close to making 1 Billion dollars. Christopher Nolan’s three-hour historical epic follows J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy), the man behind the atomic bomb. Nolan and his team, including Makeup Department Head Luisa Abel , came together to recreate one of the most pivotal moments in history.  

The film spans decades, locations, and perspectives during its lengthy runtime with over 70 actors in speaking roles and 18 being aged over time, taking the audience into the inner workings of Oppenheimer’s mind. Offscreen had the opportunity to talk to Abel about using prosthetics to recreate the essence of these real life figures, working in IMAX, and how she transformed Cillian Murphy into a young Oppie.

Jillian Chilingerian: Hello, how are you doing?

Luisa Abel: Hi, nice to meet you.

Jillian Chilingerian: Nice to meet you, too. I'm very excited to talk to you today, because this is my favorite film of the year. I've seen it five times. I'm going for number six tonight. You just can't get enough of it.

Luisa Abel: I'm glad you enjoy. It's been lovely to see how everyone's responded to the film.

Jillian Chilingerian: I really love your work in this because I think it's like, so subtle. I wanted to dive into the prosthetics work, when you are tasked with that, where do you first start for how many people specifically and how much over time?

Luisa Abel: Sure. That's a great question. Yeah, it's a, it's an interesting overall thing that we do in prep. I mean, basically, every director is different, but with our prep on this film, it was a long time, because you have to research all the actual characters, and then research the actors and obviously understand what the actor's faces look like and who their roles are going to be and then be able to customize the looks for each actor. Once you've done that, then you can actually see them as an overall group and then customize the looks for each decade of their aging process. So for Oppenheimer, you know, we had 73 speaking roles and 18 aging people that we had to age out to stage. Within that, a lot of the actors had sort of three to five different stages of aging. Some of them even were aged from their first stage. So when they were their youngest, they still needed to be aged to look right for their characters. So all in all, it took a long time to process that. So we ended up having aging charts that we could formulate different aging sequences per actor, and then do a visual chart once we started testing that we could work from.

 Jillian Chilingerian: Did you guys do it all linearly or how much time did you have in between figuring out how you age people?

Luisa Abel: We didn't film in a linear way, but I made prosthetic aging charts for each character, they were linear. So, you know, we literally formatted each decade for each character. And then I did a chart that allowed us to age and actually not only tell you what everybody looked like per decade of their life but then also allowed us to kind of format the overall look everybody for the film so that people looked right as a group within their specific decade right so it was really specific to this film so that when you watch the film, you weren't pulled out in any way by you know, somebody looking off within the group.

 Jillian Chilingerian: In this film, you have so many recognizable actors in an ensemble every time someone pops up. So your role of taking these such recognizable faces playing these real people where it's not super overdone but it's like very subtle to help them kind of embody and for us as the audience to believe Oh, that is, you know, Groves or that is President Truman.

Luisa Abel: So I think for this one specifically, Chris didn't want it to look like makeup, but he definitely wanted the audience to be absorbed in the essence of who each character was. We researched each person and what they looked like, and then found the elements within each of the actors that we could do that with. One of the main things I really wanted to do and I think was really important was to customize the look so that they worked for the actor, so the actors felt comfortable and not thinking about the prosthetics all the time. Then I did looks that actually worked for each scene, so that at the end of the day, even though it all appeared invisible, a lot of people had a lot of makeup on and a lot of prosthetics most of the time, but the idea was that you wouldn't ever see it even on IMAX.

 Jillian Chilingerian: Going into the IMAX, I love the close-ups of this film, and we have so many. Was it a challenge with that additional layer for your work, you can't really hide it.

Luisa Abel: It's really challenging. I mean, luckily, I've worked on IMAX many times before, and that for sure helps. I've also seen a lot of aging, you know, in different films, so I am aware of what aging can do and cannot do and what I personally felt the head of the department, what would really help sell the story with this was to make sure that we pushed all of the look. So you gave the maximum look for IMAX. But understand that, you know, it was going to be close up, and that even texture can read, so being aware of that, and making really calculated choices for every character. With Emily, for the 50s look, she had like a waddle on her neck and different eyepieces, and then aging all over. We'd actually tested different other pieces that didn't specifically give us more than what we needed. I think all of the tests that we did with all of the actors really changed that too, so that we ended up with what you saw. There were three or four tests per actor per stage to get to that point.

 Jillian Chilingerian: I'm always curious when you're doing black and white and going back to the texture and coloring. Does that impact any choices? Because we do go from black and white to those color sequences where they match so well.

Luisa Abel: Yes, absolutely. If you work with it, it's actually a very helpful tool. We tested it a lot. I had worked with black and white before, so I was aware that for a lot of the aging, it would actually be a very useful tool and you could color your aging makeup towards that to actually have a bigger impact when it went into black and white. We definitely used that in a good way and hopefully, you feel it worked well.

 Jillian Chilingerian: I always love with black and white, if someone's doing like a red lip and like the testing of like, it can't just be red. It's just an extra detail that you never think about.

Luisa Abel: Of course. I mean, I think all of these things were, we were aware that it was going to be really important. Personally, I felt it would really help the film and, I felt it was challenging is have so many scenes where there were people of the age that we were aging people too, but wearing prosthetics. I felt that that was really important to work with that and to understand the work that was within a room or within the Senate or wherever we were so that nothing was distracting because you know, when you have prosthetics within you know prosthetic actors, you don't want anything to be to pull focus or to do you want it to be believable. And so I think that was a very important thing during the testing phase of the film.

 Jillian Chilingerian: I love hearing that because I flash back to scenes in my head where we have a lot of ensemble scenes, and you know, you have a different mix of age groups.

Luisa Abel: I had a full lighting setup, when we were doing the very last staging sequence where, not only did we design the looks for each actor, but then once they were made up, we walked them through this lighting setup and then had them stand up as a group to then also fine tune it within the group to kind of go do they blend well as a group. Also, the pieces were literally specifically chosen per character and how their face moves, so often we tested things we actually had to fine-tune them a small millimeter to make sure it worked within how their face moved. How the eyes move, or if they smiled, so it was really detailed. When we actually used the pieces, they were molded and sculpted for each face to within a millimeter. When you're on IMAX, you know, the reality is that if they smile a lot, and they have a lot of movement on their face and a piece works against that on IMAX, you'll see that so we wanted to fine-tune all of the work.

 Jillian Chilingerian: I feel like a lot of the conversation around this film is about how great they look when they age, but I'm interested in the deaging. Specifically the first opening sequence of Cillian. I love that sequence so much. He looks so young with the curls and he has a very beautiful sculpted face in real life. This film was just like, an ode to how great he was. I've been thinking about this since watching the movie, what was done there?

Luisa Abel: Interestingly, you asking this question, because it is really important. The one thing with all of the youngest looks for all of the actors, all of that was slightly different. So this is something going back to what you said, I'll say this part, and then I'll tell you about the younger bit. Part of what I did with Chris at the beginning was format the timelines of what we needed for each character how many changes how old they were, and all of those changes, and also know how old the actors were that were playing those characters and then within that, also, whether those actors even remotely look the age of they're meant to be so not choosing anyone specific, but say somebody was 35. Did they look like 35? And most of them did, and most of them look like you know, 10 years younger than they are, right? So find that sweet spot. So say like, they look kind of 25 but that that's what they would look at the 35 points, then I would know that, okay, so we're going to have to age them, whatever, 30 years, and maybe make them younger, 10 years, and each character that's what we did. So I figured out where they could look and how they look. Sometimes that was right at the beginning of their roles, but sometimes that was right In the middle. And so that was the process. So then I could figure out whether we need to age a young. So with Cillian, yes, I had to neutralize out all of his freckles. So he has got beautiful skin. But I wanted him to look more like Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer didn't have those beautiful freckles. So I neutralized all of those and then put all the blood time back into his skin to give him that very fresh, flushed young look. And then he had internal pumpers to fill out his face to literally change the shape of his face. So then we could use the higher cheekbones and the more sculpted with extra definition and different painting that I did later on to get to where he starts to go then and then towards the age and when we get him to the real iconic Oppenheimer look. So that was Cillian, Emily, what we ended up using because she's a stunning, beautiful woman. So we use that for her youngest look. And then obviously did a period, beauty makeup on her. But that was her first look. So we ended up using her because she's so stunning and looks way younger than she is. And then obviously, we just broke her down and started to add prosthetics and different things to, you know, get hurt to the alcoholic phase and then aged. And then some of the younger actors. They needed to be aged when they were the youngest because they look too modern too baby face. And so we ended up having aging on them. So every person is different at a young age. But we did have tools to make them look like that. Yeah, and obviously with Cillian, that was a big one. It was big, because on IMAX, you know, even though we had to make him look young in that way, obviously had to not look like you had any makeup on.

Jillian Chilingerian: When the movie came out, everyone was like, How'd they do the bomb? But I was like, how did they do that entire opening sequence? I think it's so subtle, what he looks like mid 20. It was like burning in my mind of like, how did they do this?

Luisa Abel: Yes, well, I use a lot of reference to how Cillian's face was when he was very, very young even though he's playing Oppenheimer to add some of that kind of definition. We had subtle things like changing his eyebrow color to be more like Oppenheimer's. It was actually a lot of makeup on his younger look as well, which it's funny. It is very hard to do those makeups because when you have to neutralize things out of people's faces, you also have to almost treat it like a prosthetic and actually put the blood back in their face because obviously, that's what makes somebody look very, very, very young as is that sort of more flushed look. I wanted the shape of his face and the shape of all of those tones to look different than he does when he's in Los Alamos where he's very healthy. So it still looks really great and he's still young, but it's a different kind of young it's it's not like that fresh-faced, blushed kind of youth, it's more healthy, you know, outdoor riding horses, more of that kind of a look, you know, and so I wanted that transition. That's great that you noticed.

 Jillian Chilingerian: I love the whole movie, but your work on that immediately pulls you in with the close-up to the entry point of the character.

Luisa Abel: The main thing for my job as a makeup designer is really to work with the actors and then the director and to facilitate what they need to help them do what they do. So I mean, clearly that's also Cillian's phenomenal performance, but I hope as an artist and as a designer that you can bring those extra tools to visually help them be a different character and that's really what my main job was on Oppenheimer in each decade so I am to make them feel comfortable with that, then obviously, for it not to be seen on IMAX. So, you want it to be a really important visual thing in the film, but at the same time invisible.

 Jillian Chilingerian: Going into Florence Pugh's character, at that point where they meet, obviously, there is an age difference between them. What was that like matching those different characters' ages?

Luisa Abel: So again, we tested that because it was important, because obviously, yes, you're correct. So it was really important that in the time that they met, even though she was okay, being slightly younger than Cillian, she wanted to unite their characters within the timeframe. We were lucky because she is very young, and she looks very young and beautiful. One of the things that were great was not taking her too young, even at her youngest, and allowing it to be a beauty period palate makeup, that most women at that time actually looked a little older than their age because of the makeup and the clothes that they wore, and how they were, so that helped us. It allowed us, even for her younger stage, to actually do makeup that made her look beautiful, but also made her look more period-appropriate, which therefore brought her a little bit older than she is. Obviously, with Cillian, we did the opposite. It was fun finding all those tools within each person. That was definitely the case with Robert Downey, he looks incredibly young. For somebody like Strauss in that era, all of the people that they were at that were in this film at their oldest are not very old. He was 59 and nobody 59 now looks that way, so that was part of it being very conscious of what was modern, and what was the period and then marrying it all together to this really blended cohesive group.

 Jillian Chilingerian: It's interesting now with young actors, when you watch something, and you're like, oh, that person has seen an iPhone. It takes you out and there's a lot of young actors in this, but I never quite felt that.

Luisa Abel: Well, there are so many tools now that you can use that will allow people what we would call character makeup. That's really a lot of what we did in the film. So even though prosthetics were used on people, it was for character, as opposed to them looking old. So that was a subtle part of what Oppenheimer was about, really, that there was really only one time where we were so-called aging people, even though we were aging them throughout the whole film, but where we were aging them earlier on it was for character. So we were using prosthetics to make them look more of a character but at the same time, they were 35 or 45. They weren't old people. Very subtle.

 Jillian Chilingerian: Going back to that preparation. What is the timeline between when you read the script and working with Chris?

Luisa Abel: With Chris on this one, I met him the year before he contacted me and I went and had a meeting with him to pre-talk about what the film was and what he wanted from the film. He was very in tune and very aware of the technicalities of what it means to do something like this. So we then spoke about, you know, testing of what what that would mean and what it wouldn't what the sequence would need to be so that we could do all these testings ahead of shooting and know that we were in a good place. I started beginning the the year before, and then in December, we started testing. So we did a test then and then I started for prep the following year. I had a couple of months to start doing pre-tests. As we were shooting stuff, we were also testing and retesting and retesting, because, it's really important to make sure that you get the maximum testing before you actually put something on camera, it really is. We were lucky enough that Chris was very on board with all of that and for every test that we did, he had a look at and approved, and we could then make small amendments. And we were doing that throughout the whole film.

 Jillian Chilingerian: Well, thank you so much for this time, and thank you for answering my burning question for months about aging. Congratulations to you and your team.

Luisa Abel: Thank you for your kind words. It's really great that you notice all that. I'm really glad that you enjoyed the film as much as you did and, thanks for the great questions.

You can read our review of Oppenheimer, here.

You can read our interview with Production Designer Ruth De Jong, here