Jaime Leigh
April 11, 2021
The Last Looks Podcast (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube)
Bonus Episode: We speak with 2021’s Oscar Nominee’s Kimberley Spiteri & Colleen LaBaff about the Hair & Makeup work on the film Mank. Unfortunately the Makeup Designer Gigi Williams could not be with us for this interview.
This episode was brought to you by HASK Beauty.
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Eren Celeboglu
May 16, 2021
Because We Love Making Movies (Instagram, Facebook)
Because We Love Making Movies is an ongoing conversation with filmmakers who work behind the scenes to make the movies we love. These are the invisible warriors we don’t think of: Production & Costume Designers, Cinematographers, Editors, Producers, and the whole family of artists who make movies with their hands and hearts.
Today I talk with Gigi Williams, an Oscar Nominated Makeup Artist, and longtime collaborator with the brilliant David Fincher. Her credits are very long, but to name a few: Rock N’ Roll High School, The Howling, The Professional, as well as Single Man, Argo, The Master & Inherent Vice, not to mention her work with Fincher: Gone Girl, Mindhunter, and now Mank.
We talk about going through doors in life when they open, how her craft is misunderstood, how she cherishes working with Actors, and how she doesn’t do personal makeup, she does the movie. We also talk about Gigi’s incredible beginnings in the New York fashion world before she became a Makeup-Artist, which included working with Andy Warhol & Diane Von Furstenberg… She’s had quite a journey, and she’s still on it. It’s an amazing talk so check it out and share!
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Mandalit Del Barco
April 13, 2021
All Things Considered (npr)
Citizen Kane is often regarded as the greatest film ever made. The fictionalized story of newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst didn’t win a Best Picture Oscar in 1942, but it did win a Best Original Screenplay award. Hollywood still loves a story about itself, and this year, Mank, a film about Citizen Kane‘s screenwriter, Herman Mankiewicz, earned 10 Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. It also received a nomination for Amanda Seyfried for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Marion Davies.
In real life, as in Mank, Davies was a starlet who lived a life of luxury with Hearst. She was born in Brooklyn and went from the Ziegfeld Follies to Hollywood. She became a siren of the silent movies in the 1920s, and ironed out her accent as she moved into talking pictures.
“Marion was a really talented actor, she had incredible range, she was really funny, and she was able to lighten any scene that she was in,” says Seyfried. “She was very unfiltered like I am, and she was very allergic to being dishonest, which I am absolutely. You know, the Brooklynese was kind of, just, at the end of the day, when she took her shoes off and she grabbed her bottle of gin. She was exactly who she was and you know, she had no shame from where she came from.”
Oscar nominees Amanda Seyfried, Trish Summerville, Gigi Williams and Colleen Labaff spoke with THR’s Scott Feinberg.
Scott Feinberg
April 9, 2021
The Hollywood Reporter
“He’s extremely efficient, so the team around him has to be very efficient as well,” says Trish Summerville, Mank‘s Oscar-nominated costume designer, as we — along with the film’s best supporting actress nominee Amanda Seyfried, who plays actress Marion Davies, and best makeup and hairstyling nominees Gigi Williams (the makeup department head) and Colleen Labaff (the assistant head hair stylist) — discuss the film’s Oscar-nominated director, David Fincher, during an episode of THR Presents.
Mank, a Netflix film about the alcoholic screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz and the writing of the 1941 classic Citizen Kane, was designed to look and sound as if it was made during the same era as Kane. This required special attention from each of these four women. Seyfried had to adopt a pre-Method style of acting. Williams and Labaff had to recreate the looks of specific famous people from that time. And Summerville had to design or obtain clothing that was not only period-appropriate, but that also looked right in black-and-white.
“You guys are geniuses,” Seyfried says to her three fellow artists, noting that without their contributions she could never have given the career-reinventing performance that she did.
Fincher is famously a perfectionist, sometimes shooting dozens upon dozens of takes, and is also regarded as intimidating by many who don’t know him, as was the case for Seyfried and Labaff prior to Mank. But Summerville had previously collaborated with him on music videos, 2011’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and 2014’s Gone Girl, and says, “Every time I work with him I feel like I become a better filmmaker, I become better at my job.” Adds Williams, who worked with him on Gone Girl and the 2017-2019 TV series Mindhunter, “I just adore him — he has made me a better makeup artist.”
Whatever Fincher does, it clearly brings out the best in those around him, at least on Mank, which landed 10 Oscar nominations, four more than the next-most-nominated film this year, including best picture.
Wendy Mitchell
March 3, 2021
Netflix Awards FYC
A conversation with Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, ASC, Production Designer Donald Graham Burt, Set Decorator Jan Pascale, Costume Designer Trish Summerville, and Makeup Department Head Gigi Williams on behalf of Mank. Moderated by Wendy Mitchell.
Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt, Make Up Designer Gigi Williams, Production Designer Don Burt & Costume Designer Trish Summerville
Giles Alderson, Andrew Rodger, Phil Hawkins
April 2, 2021
The Filmmakers Podcast
We are delighted to bring to you our SPECIAL bumper episode on the Making of David Fincher’s BAFTA & OSCAR nominated ‘Mank’.
We start with Giles Alderson and Andrew Rodger having a chat with ‘Mank’ Cinematographer Erik Messerschmidt about going from Gaffer on Fincher’s Gone Girl to DoP on Mank and how he made the transition to make his debut feature film.
He talks pre-production, how he works with Fincher especially during the repeated takes, what the process was to shooting in black and white and the camera they used.
Co host Phil Hawkins then joins Giles to chat to Make Up designer Gigi Williams about her process, the difference between shooting on digital vs. film. What she works on first how she collaborates with the HOD team and gives some brilliant Make Up tips.
We then chat to Production Designer and Art Director Donald Graham Burt AKA Don Burt about designing the film from preparation through the shooting. He explains why listening is so important in film-making, how he researches a project and how he created the 1930/s & 1940 style and look. And how you don’t have to appease to get ahead.
Finally we chat to Costume Designer Trish Summerville about how she created the look and feel of Mank through her costumes. She talks about working in teams, how to collaborate with actors to help create the characters and how to use colours and patterns to portray certain emotions!
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March 23, 2021
BAFTA Guru (BAFTA)
Make Up and Hair design transforms characters, sometimes into new people, this is a fantastic opportunity to hear from this year’s nominees.
Speakers include:
Supported by Lancôme
Bryan Abrams
March 23, 2021
The Credits (MPA)
David Fincher‘s Mank is the most Oscar-nominated film of the year, amassing ten, thanks to the beauty and brilliance of its black-and-white execution. One of those nominations belongs to makeup department head Gigi Williams, a veteran who picks her work based on her belief in the director. In Fincher, she was collaborating with one of the most precise filmmakers in the business, and in Mank, working off a script from his father Jack Fincher, Williams had caught the director on what was likely his most personal project to date.
“If your makeup is too loud, you take away from the performance and you don’t belong in this artist’s picture, because Mank is a piece of art that everyone has dabbled in,” Williams says. “Everyone has put their piece into it, and everyone flows together so that nobody stands out. My whole career, I don’t like makeup that’s too big, that makes a statement, if you see my makeup, I’ve failed. I want to see the actor, I want to see the essence of the actor. I love the process of acting. I’m there to facilitate that.”
March 11, 2021
Netflix Film Club (YouTube)
Mank makeup department head Gigi Williams explains her work on David Fincher‘s black-and-white dip into Hollywood lore, particularly the way she captured the eponymous screenwriter during an exhausted, overworked state.
March 4, 2021
Netflix Film Club (YouTube)
Mank actors Gary Oldman and Amanda Seyfried sit down with casting director Laray Mayfield to discuss their work in David Fincher‘s acclaimed film. Oldman discusses tapping the vulnerability of the eponymous screenwriter and using his actual physicality for the portrayal, while Seyfried speaks to Marion Davies‘s legacy and how it shaded Seyfried’s depiction of her.
