Francia Smeets
Makeup/Hair Supervisor
The Chakram Newsletter: Issue 08
SD: Are there extensions in Lucy’s hair?
Francia: Yes, just to lengthen it a little. Make it fuller.
SD: She talked about it at one of the cons. What is an extension?
Francia: It sits across the back underneath her hair under the layers and we put them in on a daily basis. They just come in and out as we need or don’t need them. If she was in an episode where she wore a wig, we would not put them in because we don’t need the extra bulk under the wig.
SD: They’re not woven into the hair?
Francia: Originally, they were, but we found it much more comfortable for the actors to just do it on a daily basis.
SD: In an early interview Lucy said, “No one can run their fingers through my hair.” That must have been when it was woven in.
Francia: Sometimes when Lucy goes to the U.S. to do some special promotion she’ll get them put in permanently and then have them taken out when she comes back. It saves her a lot of time.
SD: You weave the hairs individually?
Francia: No. You braid the hair underneath and you stitch them on to a tiny little braid.
SD: I could see where that would be very useful during promotional tours. Saves a lot of time.
Francia: And she can’t do it herself. It’s a makeup artist arrangement.
SD: Gabrielle's ever-changing hair color?
Francia: Renee’s hair has changed over a long period of time. On screen it seems quite sudden, but it’s been gradual. She was always referred to as a blonde even when she was quite a bit redder in the initial first two seasons. We’ve gone lighter and lighter. It's been a progression with her character and other changes that have happened.
SD: And now it's all gone!
Francia: What do the fans think of that?
SD: They haven't seen “The Way” yet. Who actually cut her hair?
Francia: One of our team here.
SD: Right where I'm sitting? (Laughs)
Francia: I think we did it in the next room. It was a pretty quick thing because we finished one episode and started the next and we had to do it between them. It was on a weekday so it was quite a tight thing. I think we were doing it at 9 o'clock at night. (laughs)
SD: She loves it. She was telling her mom, “it's gone!” You do both makeup and hair.
Francia: The whole team does.
SD: How many people are on the team.
Francia: Seven - 5 on main unit and 2 on second unit.
SD: And you, yourself, are mostly here at the studio as opposed to being on set?
Francia: I am always on set in the morning. I go for the first calls and help out and get everyone underway. And then most of the time. I’m here because there are so many meetings and sittings. l attend all the fittings so that we organize the whole look of the character at that point. Ngila and I and the directors usually come and we have a full consensus and everyone’s agreed on the whole look.
SD: What happened for your department when you discovered you were going to China?
Francia: Rob was particularly up with what was happening on those episodes. He had a great input in the writing of those and the storylines. So he was my greatest source of information and he often brings books with him with lots of visual reference. We have a reference section, a lot of modern and old references. Sometimes it’s a combination of old and new. Between us we have lots of meetings and we nut it all out and get down to what he wants and what everybody wants and what the whole look of it is.
I think “The Debt” would have been the one with particularly hard things in that we had those three men with the shaved heads and the long braids down the back on the little circular hair piece. All of them had very short hair so they were all extensions, but to put them on a very small area was a really tricky thing and difficult to make it look convincing. But we always come across those kind of hurdles and somehow we always manage to get over them. (laughs)
SD: Is there a difference in the makeup used on regular Xena from the young Evil Xena?
Francia: We’ve always distinguished young Xena with very long, long hair. We’ve got super long hair extensions and double wigs and things for young Xena which is what makes young Xena a bit different. And we’ve gone with the lighter skin tone.
SD: I thought it looked lighter. Why?
Francia: I don’t really know actually. It was a thing Rob wanted us to establish that when she decided to do good, it was a turning point in her life and they wanted it to be symbolized in some way. So, as normal Xena, we’ve always had slightly shorter hair and a very dark skin tone. Which makes sense if it’s an outdoorsy world. But for younger Xena, the lighter makeup makes someone appear ten years younger. We’ve established that young Xena was about ten years ago.
SD: I knew something was different, but I didn’t realize what it was about the skin tone until someone pointed it out.
Francia: That’s the point. It’s not to be totally different, it’s just a subtle thing that might say she’s a bit younger.
SD: Let’s say you get a character like Alti - how do you start designing a new character?
Francia: Because she was supposedly a very evil character and always wanting to kill Xena or get Xena in some way, and her eyes were her main feature, we went for very, very dark eyes. Claire wanted to play down the lower part of her face. In that character, we symbolized they had some kind of ritual where she put blood on her forehead. That was always there under those little beads and things. Her whole character was in the upper part of her face.
SD: The Horde, and the makeup that Lucy wore when she went undercover among them in “Daughter of Pomira” - did that have any basis in something from real life?
Francia: A lot of that reference is taken from a great variety of tribal peoples. The first time we did the Horde, not “Daughter,” but “The Price,” we took a lot from New Guinian tribes. If you remember that makeup was very colorful - bright, primal colors on their faces. The second time, in “Daughter,” we went for a much more primitive look. More roughly done with just fingerpainting as they would have done it themselves. We tried to simplify it too. We found that the first time round if you did too many patterns, it was confusing. So the second time, we gave all the people who were doing the painting a general guide and said do them all fairly similar. It gave a much more uniform look and was much easier to look at.
SD: Lucy, at one point, goes undercover so she gets the makeup put on her face. How do you do that?
Francia: We do a lot of makeup tests particularly for anything that goes on Lucy. We use the body double. We do lots of tests, lots of photographs. We’re always running upstairs and showing Eric or Chloe or Rob our progress. We might spread a whole range of photos out and then we’ll narrow it down. Because of Lucy’s availability, obviously, we can’t do all those tests on her. It works out really well. By the time we actually get to put it on Lucy, it's all finalized and we know exactly what we’re doing.
Kali in the India episode, “The Way,” is a good example of that. We did lots of tests to decide where we wanted the black and the red and the blood. There's a lot of reference material on Kali and it varies quite a bit. We took all that from real Indian references. But Kali was depicted in many ways. It was a matter of working out what we wanted as our interpretation of Kali, but sticking within those guidelines.
SD: That was spectacular! I saw that image first in slides and suddenly noticed the eyes and realized it was Lucy!
Francia: (laughs) The three India episodes were shot just before Christmas and they were probably the most stressful. There were actually four episodes in a row because “If The Shoe Fits” came first which was huge as far as making wigs and all those clothes...
SD: The blue makeup on Renee as she turned into a statue in “Paradise Found.” Would that have been in the script, her turning blue?
Francia: The color wasn’t, but her turning to stone was. So it was then a matter of deciding…
SD: …how you depict it?
Francia: Yeah. What kind of stone. (laughs) That was a collaboration with Rob Gillies. Because they made the statues and they had to fit the statues within the colors of the set. The set was all sandstone, from what I can remember. It was all whitish, that lovely pale sandstone. So we said, “Why don’t we do something that will really stand out? Let’s put something in really incredibly strong.” That was how we got to do that vivid blue.
SD: The body makeup that Lucy and others wear. If Lucy leans on a table, does it rub off?
Francia: (laughs) No, no. For instance, we don’t need to put in on the palms of her hands. And it’s the best makeup you can get. Once it’s absorbed into the skin, it’s fairly stable. A tiny bit will come off on a very light costume, but it stays on pretty well.
SD: And then it washes off? Lucy had talked about the orange grout in her shower. (laughs)
Francia: (laughs) Yeah. They all say they get brown baths.
SD: “In Sickness And In Hell” and Gabrielle’s fungus.
Francia: (laughs)
SD: “It’s red, it’s green and it’s on the move.” (laughs) Is it fun when you get to do something like that?
Francia: Yeah. Because it’s not realistic, I guess that’s what makes it the most fun. You can actually get a bit carried away. You want to SEE this fungus, so you’ve got to make it obvious. It can’t be something subtle that no one’s going to notice. We had a lot of fun with it. I think we invented some pretty good concoctions. We used breadcrumbs so it was nice and gross. (laughs)
SD: Was there any difference in the makeup used on Gabrielle as opposed to Hope?
Francia: I think with Hope we went darker and tried to get a slight evilness into the eye makeup. They are subtle changes when we do those double characters. So much of it comes through the acting which is obviously fantastic. We just do very small changes that help delineate the character.
SD: My eye couldn’t actually detect any difference, but it crossed my mind that the makeup of a character would be affecting me even though I wouldn’t really know what was causing it.
Francia: It definitely has an effect, but you shouldn’t just think “she’s got black eyes.”
SD: Have there been any changes over the course of the series on Xena’s or Gabrielle’s makeup?
Francia: Very slow evolutionary changes, I suppose, but basically it’s probably stayed the same because people do like familiarity. Lucy’s has probably changed less than Renee’s because Renee’s character has changed more.
SD: One of the questions someone wanted me to ask is what lipstick does Xena use or Gabrielle? Is there an answer to that question?
Francia: (laughs) No, we use lots of different ones. Because I think they’d just get bored if we used the same thing all the time. That is one thing that does vary.
SD: They’re just a couple of typical women trying new lipstick picked up at the local village. (laughs)
Francia: We are a little limited by the colors. They use a filter all the time on the camera which brings out the reds and blues, I think, but the reds particularly so. Those colors are very accentuated. We have to be very careful we don’t use anything too bright because it becomes brighter.
SD: So that would also have an Impact on the makeup.
Francia: All the things we make, like blood, is color corrected for our filter. It’s always there. It’s been on since day one. The only time they may not use it is on a very special episode. It may not have been on “The Bitter Suite,” an episode where they had a completely different look. They might not have used it in the India episodes. I have a filter, so does the costume department, and we all check everything through it. Sometimes when we’re doing a fitting. Ngila might look at a color in a costume through the filter and make sure the colorations are what she’s wanting. I'll often check for lip colors or blood colors. Cause the red of the blood can look really fake if it’s too bright.
SD: Speaking of cuts - are you in charge of the wounds on Xena?
Francia: Yes. The major special effects are usually done from outside because we don't have the time to be able to prepare them all like prosthetics
SD: But If Xena has a knife slash?
Francia: We do that.
SD: Ever notice she's always getting cut on the left arm? (laughs)
Francia: (laughs) Okay, next time I'll make it the right arm. (laughs) I’ll tell Vanessa (Hurley), next time it's gotta be the other arm.
SD: What’s the hardest thing about your job?
Francia: Time. That's our greatest enemy.
SD: A new guest actress, Jennifer Sky "Amarice," arrived today. How do you start with her?
Francia: She arrived this morning, Tuesday, at 6 am. She came in for her first fitting at 11 am. That’s the first time I see her. And she starts filming Thursday. So you've got a lot to cram into those two days.
SD: And some shows have villagers or soldiers or Amazons. More people to do.
Francia. I get the costume drawings from Ngila usually a few days before we start fittings. Often she incorporates some form of hairdo, headpiece, hat or helmet. So already I've got it in my mind what is coming up.
SD: The script is the first thing you see?
Francia: Yes.
SD: And if It says, “Xena’s going undercover among the Horde,” then you know you need a special makeup for Lucy for that show. Or “Gabrielle’s going to be turned to stone.” How early do you get the script?
Francia: It varies. When we come back from a break there are usually two or three lined up. Sometimes there might be three lined up. Sometimes there might be three lined up but the first one’s not completely finished. It’s whatever happens in LA with the writers and how much they change it along the way.
SD: What’s the most rushed thing you ever had to do?
Francia: I think probably the biggest pressure we ever had was to get all those Mehndi designs done for India.
SD: Where did they come from? Do you have a book of Mehndi designs?
Francia: Yes, we did have two reference books and we took a few ideas from them. We invented some ourselves. We sat here till all hours of the day and night, two of us, to get it done. In fact, quite a bit of that time, I was still continuing on doing the rest of my work while Barbie (Cope), who’s a graphics person, sat with a lightbox and tracing paper and pens. It was just like an art department in here! (laughs) She drew and drew and drew for about a week. We ended up sending about 60 pages of designs to a place called Temptu in NY. And they printed them off as tattoo transfers. We got them two days before we started. It was so close.
SD: The designs are different. They appeared three-dimensional in “Between The Lines” and at the end of the episode they seemed to be tattoos.
Francia: Do you know what henna tattoos are?
SD: No, I don’t.
Francia: It’s applied as a paste which is a mixture of the henna plant root and various secret ingredients that the Indian people have. Each person has their own recipe. It’s put into a tube that will squeeze out a line and then pasted on. You sit for six hours or so while a reaction occurs with your skin. The acidity of your skin makes the color transfer to your skin. Then you apply something over it - I think lemon juice or something that sets it - and then wash it off. You’re left with that pattern on your skin which lasts for up to three weeks. It’s usually green when they put it on as a raw paste and the color goes reddish brown on the skin. What the mixture is made of will determine how bright or dark the color turns out. So there’s quite a variety of henna colors.
SD: You obviously wouldn’t have had time to do that procedure on the actors.
Francia: No. We had prosthetics on them. We made all the lines in little latex prosthetics. All that was put on Lucy and Renee. And then, when they were doing the bit where Gab was squeezing it out of the tube, they just were doing the extra bit.
SD: All those lines?!
Francia: Yes. It was in pieces, but it was all cut out. The best way to describe it was that it was like a little lace doily. What we wanted was that raised effect.
SD: Xena still has them on her feet? And Gabrielle has them all over?
Francia: We haven’t seen Xena’s because she has her boots on, but supposedly her chakram’s still there. (laughs) But Gabrielle kept hers.
SD: Renee showed me the ones on her stomach, feet, hands and neck. How are they being put on now?
Francia: They are put on daily with the transfers that came from New York. They’re like rice paper and you lay them on and transfer them in a special way. Then you take the paper off and the pattern is left there. It’s ink so it stays on for the day and washes off at night. I’ll send you one of the patterns to use in the newsletter.
SD: Great! (And she did.)