Prosthetics designer Richard Martin knew that the first time audiences saw Eddie Redmayne in full makeup in The Day of the Jackal, it was going to be a make-or-break moment.
“It’s the bar-setter,” he explains. “The original concept was that no one was supposed to know the janitor was Eddie in prosthetics until he started to take them off. Before the show came out, magazine articles gave the game away; however, if you take any premise away and watch this, all you see is this old boy committing this atrocity.”
Martin was inspired by the diner scene and title sequence in Quentin Tarantino’s iconic 1994 film Pulp Fiction — a moment of calm before mayhem ensues.
“Here you see someone that looks exactly the same as the janitor, and suddenly, the action happens. He takes his face off, and it’s the Jackal. It’s like the start of Pulp Fiction, when the music hits, and bang! Here we go,” the prosthetist says, admitting it was “nerve-racking” to pull off.
Peacock‘s reimagined and updated take on The Day of the Jackal is based on Frederick Forsyth’s novel and the 1973 film. In this 10-episode incarnation, Redmayne plays Alex Duggan, the titular assassin being pursued by MI6 agent Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch).
Martin, also known for his work on The White Lotus season three and The Substance, strives for “absolute realism,” using materials that mimic skin so no one can see where his work begins or ends.
“If you can see it’s someone in prosthetics, you’ve failed,” the Brit muses. “Filming in Vienna, the green room was in a hotel around the corner, so we made Eddie up, and he walked through the street to set. It was about 5 o’clock in the evening, so there were loads of people around, but he strolled through in his full prosthetics with Alexandra Reynolds, his movement coach, and they were chatting.”
Martin hung back “about 20 yards” to watch the passersby’s reactions and see if anyone recognized Redmayne, but “nobody batted an eyelid,” he recalls with a chuckle. However, the extent of the prosthetics combined with the filming conditions created uncomfortable challenges.
Through prosthetics work, the actor transformed into the janitor in episode one.
Courtesy of Carnival Film & Television Limited
“With the janitor makeup, the only things not covered by prosthetics were the tops of Eddie’s ears,” Martin says. “He had a bald cap, a full forehead, cheeks, neck, both front and back because I gave him a hump, nose, lips and earlobes, as well as a full wig. We were filming at the peak of summer in Budapest, and it was over 30 degrees [86 Fahrenheit]. It was mainly studio stuff, and they’re not air-conditioned at all, so it was sweltering. Eddie also wore a thick foam rubber body suit under his costume.”
Between takes, Redmayne would sit near an air conditioning unit in his tent. But because Martin uses silicone, which is water-tight, the sweat couldn’t go anywhere. “We found that blisters would form underneath the piece on the thinner areas of the prosthetics, particularly the bridge of the nose,” he laments. “I had very sharp needle-nose tweezers, so I’d go in and pierce it, slightly open it up, dab it out, then pop it back down; otherwise, it looked like he’d come out in hives. At the end of the day, when you stripped everything off, there was a pool of sweat in his clavicle. It was pretty grim.”
This story first appeared in a May stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
