How ‘Gaslit,’ ‘Impeachment: American Crime Story’ Makeup Pros Turned Sean Penn, Sarah Paulson Into Historical Figures

As Sean Penn’s prosthetic makeup and hair designer on Gaslit, Kazu Hiro had to turn the two-time Oscar winner into former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell. That meant a full face of prosthetics. (Penn also wore a bodysuit to change his frame. “We wanted to make it look believable,” Hiro explains, “but not to pile things up on the actor so he can’t move well.”)

Hiro had to create prosthetics that wouldn’t render Penn immobile or trapped in the makeup chair for excessive hours. “I have to consider the makeup time. How long it will take on set? Because if it’s one day, we can spend five hours. But he worked, I believe, about 40 days. We have to know how long it will be good for him to sit in the chair.”

The process began with a 3D scan of Penn’s head. “I made a copy of his head cast in the plaster, and then I started to sculpt,” Hiro continues, noting he used historical photos to detail the differences between Penn’s and Mitchell’s faces. “I made Sean’s face close to John Mitchell’s by adding stuff — we can’t take out actors’ facial features; we only can add.”

For Sarah Paulson’s makeover as Linda Tripp on FX’s Impeachment: American Crime Story, a collaborative overhaul of her facial features proved necessary. Paulson even went so far as to bleach and thin her real eyebrows to aid the makeup team. “That gave us an opportunity to go in with a medium light pencil and reshape her eyebrow to give a different structure around her eyes,” explains makeup designer Robin Beauchesne, who worked closely with the prosthetics team to reshape Paulson’s face. “When I highlighted around and underneath her eyes, it filled out her eye and matched up to her prosthetics.”

Prosthetics were attached around her mouth and neck to give her a heavier look: “Sarah has very full lips. We blocked out the top and the bottom of her lips to change the structure and give them a thinner appearance.” Beauchesne says that her job isn’t to make a photocopy of a real person but to capture their spirit: “Sometimes if you try too hard to make it look exactly like who you’re trying to replicate, it can go against you. It’s [about] the essence of the character and giving that illusion.”

This story first appeared in a June stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.