‘The Actor' Costume Designer on Gemma Chan's Clown Costume and André Holland's James Dean-Inspired Red Jacket
When director Duke Johnson sat down and watched Federico Fellini's 1954 classic 'La Strada,' he was immediately drawn to the iconic clown costume worn by Giulietta Masina. Now in his newest film, 'The Actor,' a similar outfit is adorned by Edna (Gemma Chan) while out on an intimate date with Paul (André Holland).
'It's these two people that feel like maybe they don't fit into the world,' Johnson tells Variety. 'With these two oddballs finding each other, the possibility of connection was the driving force. They've really hit it off.'
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The moment takes place on Halloween night when Paul, still trying to piece together who he is after waking up with amnesia, goes out with Edna after the two meet at the cinema. Despite it being Halloween, you'd hardly be able to tell by looking at the men's synonymous coats, making Edna's hand-stitched blue clown costume immediately stand out.
After Johnson pitched the idea, costume designer Suzie Harman ('The Death of Stalin,' 'The Personal History of David Copperfield') knew it was important for the design to look like something Edna herself had created. Harman collaborated closely with Chan to figure out how a 'sweet' person like Edna would make herself up, including the pink hat and red dots on her face.
'We didn't want it to look like it's come out of a couture house, instead something she would have made and hand-crafted,' Harman says. 'She's a crafty kind of character. For reference, we were looking at '50s patterns that our grandparents would have had.'
While the film is steeped in old noir aesthetics, including trench jackets and a detective narrative, Harman was actually more inspired by the 'simplicity' of Japanese films from the '50s rather than Old Hollywood films.
'I mean yes, there were certainly references with the femme fatale, but it was more inspired by Ozu Yasujiro,' Harman says. 'Since noir was mostly black-and-white, we're actually injecting color into a noir-esque movie, so we had to be really strong with the palette.'
In juxtaposition to Edna's blue clown costume, Paul wears a red-plaid jacket, one of the first visual choices Harman landed on. To make Paul's red pop even more, Harman, Johnson and the rest of the crew knew that red couldn't appear anywhere else in the film.
'It is a nod to 'On the Waterfront' and James Dean, and those iconic red jackets of the '50s,' Harman says. 'The question was then: When's he going to wear it? We wanted to bring in the soft turquoises and the cool raspberries with Edna because they would work really well with the red or whatever suit he was wearing in the scene. It all started with the red.'
With 'The Actor' being an independently-produced project, an additional consideration for Harman and her team was making the most of a low budget. As Johnson previously told Variety, the decision to have the ensemble cast of Tracey Ullman, May Calamawy and Joe Cole play multiple parts came out of creative problem-solving.
Harman admits that she got 'told off' for being too loud during the fittings with the actors because of how much fun they were having.
'It's only when the actor comes in that magic either happens, or you have to move in a different way,' Harman says. 'When actors come into a fitting, it's oftentimes their first point-of-contact. And sometimes it's one little fix, like for Tracey the glasses or the jewelry. But we had to move pretty fast with it. It was slightly bonkers.'
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