Turning Charlie Hunnam into Ed Gein required more than simply making the actor look older. For Monster: The Ed Gein Story, makeup department head Corey Castellano said the process was about developing a physical language for the character while making sure the prosthetics never overwhelmed Hunnam’s performance.
“We never wanted to lose Charlie in too much makeup,” Castellano said on the latest episode of Deadline’s podcast The Process. “We never wanted him to get so old or so unusual looking that we lost the fact that he’s a leading man. Part of it is just making sure that nothing is too heavy.”
Castellano began in pre-production, studying reference photographs of Hunnam and using Photoshop to develop the character’s progression. From there, the team moved on to life casts, sculpting, and a 3D scan of Hunnam’s face, which became the template for designing the various aging appliances.
One of the most significant details was Gein’s hooded eyelid, a feature Hunnam specifically wanted to incorporate because it gave him additional physicality to work with. The appliance tucked underneath the brow bone rather than sitting directly on the eyelid, creating the droop that became an important part of Hunnam’s performance.
“The process of the eye alone, we had down to about 45 minutes,” Castellano said. “For the full aging, it was closer to two hours.”
For the older versions of Gein, Castellano and makeup artist Mark Nieman would tag-team the application. Forehead, eye-bag and nasolabial-fold appliances were applied in sequence, blended and then painstakingly painted to replicate natural skin. The pieces were primarily fabricated from platinum-based medical-grade silicone, which Castellano explained offered the most convincing flesh-like quality.
Period research also played a key role. Rather than depending solely on stylized magazine photography, Castellano looked to yearbooks and news footage to study the hairstyles and facial grooming of the post-World War II era.
And then there was Hunnam’s performance. Castellano remembers that it took about two weeks of shooting before the actor’s interpretation of Gein’s voice became second nature to everyone on set. Then, after filming a particularly unsettling scene, Castellano had asked Hunnam if he had needed any assistance, just to watch Hunnam put his arm around Castellano’s shoulder and, still in Gein’s voice, say, “Oh, that’s okay. You’re my friend.”
“I have never been so creeped out in my life,” Castellano added with a laugh. “It was amazing.”
To learn more about the show’s prosthetics, watch the video above.
