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We had the special opportunity to speak with Jacquetta Levon, the talented Hair and Makeup Department Head on Starz’s period drama, The Serpent Queen. In addition to The Serpent Queen, Levon has worked on a number of additional credits that also include historical makeup, including Little Birds and Hulu’s Harlots. In this interview, Levon gives us insight in to her personal inspirations for the visual aspects of the characters and how she started in the industry. Keep reading to learn more about Levon’s work on The Serpent Queen, her take on the concept of ‘conventional beauty’ and what that notion means to her, as well as how she combats those societal ideas through her work.
I would love to begin by asking about your journey into the hair and makeup space. What led you to this industry?
I grew up in West London and was hanging out in 80’s clubland with friends who were in bands, like, ‘The Mystery Girls’ (who were actually all boys) and wore a lot of makeup and ‘The Fabulous Pop Tarts’ an early incarnation for Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato from World of Wonder, now producers of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
I would make them up to get ready for their gigs, it was a creative time, probably a way of escaping from the difficult Thatcher years we were living in. Gender stereotypes were evolving at least in fashion and the club scenes, so I was surrounded by a lot of experimental folk who were playing with this idea of creative expression. It introduced me to the idea that through fashion and makeup we can create characters for ourselves, it’s almost a form of armour from the outside world. What started out as just having fun has evolved into my professional career!
I find it intriguing that you work as both the Hair and Makeup Department Head on your most recent project, The Serpent Queen, since it’s typical for these roles to be filled by two separate individuals in the US. How does working on both sides of the visual character presentation, through hair and makeup, shape the way you approach each facet individually?
I have always designed both hair and makeup. It is now more usual to work that way in the UK. Essentially I see the whole look as one design. As I am able to have a design for a character and interpret that look through both their hair and make up then it’s an undiluted process. I think I would struggle to not be able to use both in interpreting an idea.
Sometimes the hair story is bigger and the makeup less so and vice versa… but it’s very symbiotic. However within my team I will have more hair based or make up based people to support my ideas .It’s exciting to work with other people’s interpretations of an initial idea. I had a wide range of skill sets on The Serpent Queen, I like to work with wig people that have been trained in the theatre or opera world and sometimes will need a more prosthetic special fx team as well. As with Ludivine Sagnier who plays Diane de Poitiers it made the most sense to have separate hair and make-up artists working with her, I did her makeup and Amie Wilson her hair, which made the best use of our time with her and our skills, but ultimately I will always oversee the whole look. It’s a bit like being a creative conductor of the department.
Since The Serpent Queen is a historical piece, how did you balance remaining true to the era while also incorporating your own personal flair into each look?
I am a visual magpie and I collect images of people all the time, often from art and fashion, instagram , historic and modern but also from life . The IKEA cafe is one of my favourites particularly when wanting interesting ideas for family groups. Obviously we are all drawn to different things and I suppose the images and people that I am most drawn to and that rise to the surface when I am looking for ideas, are the beginning of my interpretation of any theme.
At the start of a historical piece, research is important. For The Serpent Queen a lot of my source material was from the art of the time, particularly paintings and portraits of Bronzino. It is important that I understand the silhouette, colour palette and lifestyles of their real world to give audiences an anchor and authenticity. But soon after I started this project I was in Berlin and saw the statue of Nefertiti in a deserted museum. It was about to go into a lock down. She has an amazingly powerful silhouette, and one I used as inspiration for The Serpent Queen. With any era in period drama, it isn’t about recreating an exact replica of the time, but about choosing elements to riff on. Interpretation is always a balance of reality and fantasy.
You’ve mentioned that this role has allowed you to play with the notion of ‘unconventional beauty’ and deciphering what makes something attractive or not. How were you able to embed these ideas into the makeup specifically?
I suppose the dialogue starts with the idea of, ‘what is conventional beauty?’ Every time period has its own conventions and aesthetics. Historically speaking, Catherine De Medici (The Serpent Queen) was considered unattractive to the 16th century French court, while Diane de Poitiers was considered a great beauty.
The artifice of beauty was well practised in the 16th century, and much like now, there seemed to be a quest for flawless skin, leading to homemade potions of dubious, often poisonous substances that were then applied to the face, in a bid to smooth the surface and hide imperfections from illness, disease, and age.
The makeup would have been thick at the time, but the intention as seen in portraits was to give the appearance of paleness and delicacy… it was very much the aesthetic to be pale, unlike those who worked outside in the sun. The world was claustrophobic and small so the courts and their style was very influential. From research we can learn that De Poitiers took her appearance very seriously, it wasn’t just vanity. At the time beauty was power; it enabled them to have the ear of a powerful man. A clever woman like Diane did much with this. And a clever woman like Catherine de Medici who can’t win the beauty game learns that engendering fear and appearing strong are her true powers.
So to find an authentic beauty look for Diane de Poitiers, I pared everything back to a pale base and a bleached brow. Using portraits and sculptures as a guide, we found a more painterly approach by adding highlights which created its own definition– light and highlight, a sort of negative photograph. The first trial felt too pared back and stark, a modern audience needed to believe she could be perceived as a true beauty and so did Ludivine who was playing her, so I added more colour to her cheeks and some brow. This seemed alternative but classical at the same time and once we had found the correct hair colour– Ludivine Sagnier totally embodied the appearance of a beautiful 16th century woman. All of these shifts however, as age like now, reveals vulnerabilities that lead with Diane de Poitiers to desperate measures to maintain a youthful appearance with an addiction to gold. That took us off on a whole other journey exploring how artifice and adornment has its own beauty as long as it is supported by a confident woman or man, once the confidence diminishes then it can quickly become too much.
Not only did you bring your artistic approach to The Serpent Queen, but you’ve also worked on a number of past historical dramas including Little Birds and Harlots. What do you draw inspiration from before coming on to a new project?
As previously mentioned, I have loads of faces in my mind as memories that are just waiting to become seeds of ideas… ‘truth is stranger than fiction.’ Whilst on holiday about 25 years ago I saw a man and woman relaxing by the side of the pool, and he was quite hirsute. She reached over and took out of her handbag a small hairbrush and proceeded to gently and so lovingly brush the hair on his back. I am still waiting for the moment to somehow use that memory for a production’s inspiration.
Harlots was very much about contrasts, showing how hair and makeup oft hat time was a sort of armour that enabled the girls to carry out their day as sex workers, and then contrasted with the tough reality of their everyday life. Little Birds was a wonderful show based in North Africa in the 50’s, and Juno Temple played Lucy Savage, an heiress. There was definitely a good helping of Bridget Bardot influence in her style. It was cross-cultural and so I got to explore different concepts of beauty, from a non white bias, with Yumna Marwan who played another sex worker with multiple facades, and I based the looks on real photos from the time, and read a lot about the traditions of the Amazigh women when finding influences for her character, Cherifa.
What was one challenge you felt you faced while working on The Serpent Queen that pushed you to your creative limits?
The biggest challenge when working on shows of this size is the roller coaster of story and characters. It’s quite normal to start a show without knowing where you are going to end up story wise, but the challenge for my team was to keep up with the twists in story arcs and the time jump of 12 years.
I think that working with Samantha Morton as Catherine de Medici felt very organic, her rise to power was matched by her strong silhouette. Whilst Diane’s was more complicated, she successfully at first takes gold to look younger, so we had to balance portraying her as older but still youthful. We had many discussions around that! We did in the end tweak her age when the balance between a healthy focus on looking good turned into an addiction.
This world of The Serpent Queen definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone, it was high speed creating, but I think having a great team, an amazing costume designer to work with, and the trust of the director, producers and actors means that you can be brave and jump into the creative abyss, (sometimes too far possibly) but it was fun!
Is there anything you have coming up that you’re excited about and can share with us?
I am currently filming in Scotland on a Victorian period drama titled, The Buccaneers for Apple TV. It’s about a group of American girls who arrive in England to do the season. It is another marathon of looks as they move from ball to party to home . I am excited for audiences to see this!
And finally, where can we keep up with you and your work?
I’m not a massive social media user but I do love going down the Instagram rabbit hole! My instagram is @jacsprat11. More pics of my work can be found on my website, Www.jacquettalevonmakeupdesigner.com.
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Thanks for reading! Find more of Levon’s work on her IMDb.
