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Agatha All Along’s Lead Makeup Artist Reveals the Intense Way the Wicked Witch of the West’s Look Was Created, and Now I’m Even More Impressed

Umito November 12, 2024

One of the most magical titles of the TV schedule 2024Marvel Agatha throughout didn’t shy away from campiness and this was especially evident during episode 7. The episode saw several of the main characters dress like iconic characters, with Catherine HahnAgatha Harkness by Agatha Harkness, billed as the Wicked Witch of the West. As soon as I first saw the episode, I was drawn to the look of it. However, after speaking to the head of the show’s makeup team on behalf of CinemaBlend, I’m even more impressed with how everything came together.

I had the pleasure of speaking with AgathaCindy Welles and Vasilios Tanis, who led the hair and makeup teams, respectively. During our conversation, I couldn’t help but ask them how they managed to put a new spin on the iconic Wicked Witch of the West look for “Death’s Hand in Mine.” Tanis – whose Marvel Cinematic Universe credits include WandaVision And Spider-Man: No Way Home – confirmed that two people had to apply this makeup and revealed the personal flourishes that were added to update the look:

This makeup required two people. It was me and Addison Foreman who did the special effects. He mainly applied the silicone devices. And I wanted her to have the essence of Agatha, even though she will play a version of the Wicked Witch of the West. So that’s part of it, for me and for Kathryn, because she has the most confidence in me and my aesthetic. We work together in a cool way throughout WandaVision as well as Agatha, and we all agree that (the character) should have Agatha’s color palette, which is purple, which is the color of its purples. So I really focused on a different type of color palette. I didn’t want her to be completely green, green lips, green eyes, green, green, green, green, green, green. I wanted her skin to be green so you could really absorb the fact that she’s the Wicked Witch of the West, and the costume sells that point very, very well.

I’d like to bet I’m not the only one who saw The Wizard of Oz and others Oz related movies over the years. And, in most of these productions, the iconic witch sports a black ensemble and a completely green face. I found it incredibly clever that Vasilios Tanis and his team sought to use Agatha’s purple motifs to not only stay true to her character, but also to convey a new vision of the wicked witch. Going this route might seem obvious on paper, but it’s hard to say when you consider that some makeup artists can be tempted to pay homage to what came before, to a fault.

Most versions of the famous Witch of Oz tend to portray her as relatively grotesque. However, this is not what Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania the artist was trying to do. As he later explained, he wanted to inject a significant amount of pure “beauty” into this interpretation. He explained this to me and how it fits into what we know about Agatha Harkness:

I also wanted a beauty aspect and some sort of vanity attached to it. Because she’s such an important character, and you can tell by the way she plays this specific character in this specific episode. You know, he’s a very great character. So everything was more animated, more exaggerated. Her chin was more exaggerated. His nose was more exaggerated. His complexion was completely altered and exaggerated. So I thought there should be an element of beauty. So I went for a more dramatic touch, you know, and added her color palette of purple to green, which I thought worked pretty well in the mix of pinks and, you know, just a little more like a macabre style. palette to reflect Agatha’s madness and grandeur in this specific episode.

Honestly, I’m exhausted just thinking about the painstaking work that went into this. And while that’s far from the most important aspect of all this, it’s also intriguing that the debut of this version of the iconic Oz character coincides with the release of the Wicked adaptation. So it’s great that Vasilios Tanis, right from the jump, made an effort to make the Witch of Harkness different:

I wanted it to stand out. I wanted to stand out. I didn’t want to be a complete and utter replica of every version of the Wicked Witch of the West we’ve seen in pop culture. I wanted it to be different. I wanted to create a dramatic contrast to anything you might see with an actor playing that type of character.

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Agatha All Along’s Lead Makeup Artist Reveals the Intense Way the Wicked Witch of the West’s Look Was Created, and Now I’m Even More Impressed

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Agatha All Along’s Lead Makeup Artist Reveals the Intense Way the Wicked Witch of the West’s Look Was Created, and Now I’m Even More Impressed

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