Though in any other case “The Substance” had monstrous luck on the 2025 Academy Awards, Coralie Fargeat’s horror movie starring Demi Moore did stroll away with one Oscar for Greatest Hair and Make-up Design, because it was favored to do. Now, nonetheless, producer Nicolas Royer has weighed in on acrimony between members of the hair and make-up crew that has been brewing each earlier than and after the Oscar ceremony.
You would possibly effectively assume that a complete crew would qualify equally for an Academy Award; or that one single consultant, the division head, would mechanically be the nominee for an Oscar class. However every Hair and Make-up nomination is restricted to a few nominees. This partly displays the advanced means that prosthetics, hair design, and standard make-up all work collectively to remodel actors into characters and nonetheless caps the variety of award winners. But it surely’s an advanced compromise.
The nominees aren’t simply self-selected, both. The Academy’s Make-up and Hair Department Government Committee goes by means of the packets submitted for awards consideration by particular person artists and decides, based mostly on supplies submitted and interviews, which three artisans would be the nominees for every movie. This vote is non-public. Within the case of “The Substance,” the nominees had been particular make-up results designer Pierre-Olivier Persin, key make-up artist Stéphanie Guillon, and key hair artist Marilyne Scarselli.
Key hair artist and hair division head, Frédérique Arguello, has been saying publically that she was unduly handed over for Scarselli, her assistant, who took over as a key hair artist for 15 days on the finish of the shoot, notably on Elizabeth’s and Sue’s (Margaret Qualley) remaining type. Each Arguello and Scarselli had been a part of the crew that received BAFTAs and Critics Alternative Awards, so it’s the Academy limitation that has created the problem.
Now, as reported by Deadline, Royer has despatched a letter to the Affiliation of Manufacturing Managers to defend Scarselli from being blacklisted, writing “Frédérique Arguello and Marilyne Scarselli each held the place of Head Hairdresser on the movie ‘The Substance.’ Frédérique intervened extra in preparation for the seek for seems and through a part of the taking pictures. Marilyne took care of the primary actresses extra, along side the Particular Make-up Results crew.”
The particular make-up results are, in some ways, the black coronary heart and shriveled, self-hating soul of “The Substance.” On an episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, Fargeat spoke about how the large prosthetics knowledgeable the leaps that Demi Moore’s Elizabeth makes because the movie goes on.
“You possibly can’t check it, you possibly can’t put it on in rehearsal every week earlier than to strive the physique language, to strive every thing. Mainly, it’s going to be on the day,” Fargeat stated. “[Those] had been essentially the most difficult taking pictures days as a result of it was possibly six to seven hours of make-up to get to the ultimate stage of the character after which we possibly had two or three hours left to seek out the efficiency.”
Splitting the contributions of Arguello and Scarselli misses the evolution within the make-up and hair design that finally ends up making the movie so visceral, pun supposed. The fallout, very like “The Substance” itself, maybe demonstrates that the Academy wants to recollect ‘you’re one.’