For its Emmy-nominated third season, “Only Murders in the Building” went Broadway, which meant new characters, new locations, and a whole lot of razzle-dazzle. The Hulu series finds out if the show really can go on as podcasters and amateur sleuths Charles (Steve Martin), Oliver (Martin Short), and Mabel (Selena Gomez) investigate the murder of Ben Glenroy, the leading man of Putnam’s Broadway musical “Death Rattle Dazzle.”
Putting on a show within a show required an extra level of collaboration between creative departments. Makeup department head Arielle Toelke tipped her hat to her colleagues while discussing her recent Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Contemporary Makeup (Non-Prosthetic).
“It takes a village, right?” she told IndieWire. “Putting on a Broadway show is not easy. Making a television show is not easy. Making a Broadway show to put on TV is extra not easy. Everyone is helping each other, collaborating with each other to make the show happen, which I love.”
Toelke also credits collaboration as a crucial component of her approach to creating a character’s makeup looks. During the creative and design process, she is in constant dialogue with the showrunners, costume designer, and hair designer to ensure her makeup design supports the overall story and character development. For this season, Toelke worked with the show’s lighting team during their tests at New York City’s United Palace Theatre to see how the lighting plans would impact the makeup designs.
“The makeup is sort of the cherry on top of the sundae, right?” she said. “All the other parts have to taste really good, and then you get this bonus at the end. We want to make it all feel like it lives in this one world.”
Keeping in mind the technical aspects, Toelke also works closely with the actors to build each character’s look, like she did with actor Linda Emond and her producer character, one of Season 3’s new characters.
“Linda came to us with a picture of Cher’s mom [Georgia Holt]. She said, ‘I really feel like she should look like Cher’s mom.’ So the hair and the makeup were very sort of chic and feminine. We never took it to a place where it felt like it was a cartoon or she was out of place in this world that was created, but there were little things, like her blush are these two sort of [‘C’-shapes] that end up high on her cheekbones and then around the side of her eyes.”
If you’ve seen this season, you know that Donna’s makeup is also a key clue for the trio as they track down potential suspects backstage. Toelke was tasked with finding the perfect shade of lipstick that not only represented a color Donna would believably wear but also functioned as an important, readable prop on a dressing room mirror.
“That was a bigger conversation that I had with the director and the showrunner because whatever lipstick color we chose had to be continuous throughout the entire season,” Toelke said. “Most people aren’t going to say, ‘That pink is a little bit different from the other pink,’ but we gave extras to the props department and the scenic department so they could tech the mirror in the dressing room.”
It was another moment of collaboration between Toelke and Emond. Toelke found a few different lipsticks in the same color family, and took them to Emond to test. Toelke’s priorities were ensuring Emond felt confident in the lipstick color and that the color felt appropriate for the character.
Even with the number of characters also performing in the show, Toelke didn’t lean into the heightened makeup that the stage is known for. Since she was still designing for TV, she maintained a sense of realism needed for up-close camera work.
“We didn’t go crazy with the over-the-top theatrical makeup,” she said. “I think the sparkling costumes added that bit of theatricality. I wanted everyone to feel comfortable when they showed up in front of the camera — even if they were in a blue sequined constable outfit.”
