Viewers of the Emmy-nominated AngelynePeacock may be shocked to discover how little Emmy Rossum was actually seen. Rossum said during a panel appearance at Deadline’s Contenders Television: The Nominees event that 10 prosthetic pieces transformed her face and body into that of Los Angeles billboard queen Angelyne.
“Nothing of me is me,”Rossum stated. “There’s two contact lenses in each eye. There’s a chest piece that wraps around up into the neck and the hairline. Even earlobes, hands — everything is not recognizable [as myself].”
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Kate Biscoe, Emmy-nominated head of the makeup department, said that prosthetics have created an unusual paradox. Biscoe normally is tasked with making prosthetic material look like human skin. Angelyne, however, has undergone plastic surgery to alter her body.
“It’s all very meta because she has put inorganic material in herself to put this other identity and reinvent herself as something else,”Biscoe spoke highly of Angelyne. “It was such a tightrope and such a balancing act of trying to make something that’s inorganic look like skin but also portray that it is inorganic in some aspects while not losing the identity of the version of the person that we are trying to have the viewer empathize with.”
Before she has her first surgery, Rossum plays Angelyne. Even then, Biscoe’s team altered her appearance.
“There isn’t a single look where I don’t have a prosthetic on of some sort,”Rossum stated. “Whether it’s just a nose and sometimes PVC piping in my nose, I think it’s a catheter ring to alter the shape of my nose from the inside out.”
Vincent Van Dyke, a prosthetic designer, stated that he hopes audiences will not be able to see his Emmy-nominated work.
“At the end of the day, the biggest goal here is to not distract,”He said. “To make it feel like it seamlessly blends into this world.”
Van Dyke and Biscoe added that providing old-age makeup for co-stars including Michael Angarano helped illustrate how different Angelyne’s look is. Both actors are 70 years old, with makeup artist David Williams handling the supporting cast.
Rossum claimed that she wore over 100 costumes as Angelyne. Costume designer Danny Glicker found the same fabric Angelyne wore and oversaw the custom design of Rossum’s costumes.
“I was able to really work with her through many decades to track not only the styles of the day and the sort of specific trends that Angelyne herself followed,”Glicker said. “But also this evolution of herself as being the embodiment of a very specific hot-pink sparkly, magical, fluffy truth.”
Rossum met with Angelyne the real Angelyne, and she paid Rossum for her life rights to help her contribute to culture.
“She has a real Tinkerbell energy — simultaneously moving incredibly quickly and also seeming to kind of hover and float in midair,”Rossum stated.
The panel video will be available Monday.