Asking a beauty professional—whether it’s a celebrity hairstylist, makeup artist, or Instagram influencer (hi, 2019)—for advice is always a safe bet. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find there are plenty of other women out there who are legitimate authorities in their own right. In our column, Unlikely Experts, they’ll give real reviews and recommendations. Whether it’s surfers on the best conditioners, bikers on the best cleansers, or ballerinas on the best foot creams, it’s fair to say these women know best.
Every Halloween around 3 million Americans willingly pay money to be scared shitless at a haunted house. No longer just a Halloween hobby, haunted attractions have evolved into a million-dollar industry and full-on experiences, including covering guests in blood, strapping them to hospital beds, or promising $20,000 to those who survive. While I personally will never understand handing over your hard-earned cash in exchange for being traumatized, there’s certainly an art to creating a truly terrifying experience. The set and scenery play a crucial role in creating the environment, of course, but the real scare factor is courtesy of the actors doing the lurking, grabbing, and spooking, all with a face of makeup that’s the stuff nightmares are made of.
Creating a successful monster goes beyond simply creating a horrifying look (although that’s definitely a huge part of it), but the makeup also must last through several hours of sweating and screaming, and be easy enough to remove at the end of the night. While some scare actors (as they’re called in the biz) do their own makeup, most large haunts have a whole team dedicated to creating dripping wounds, rotting flesh, and terrifying teeth night after night.
While scrolling through Instagram is a great way to get inspired, if you want to know what products really get the job done, turn to haunted houses. We spoke to six scare actors and makeup artists from the best haunted attractions in the country on the products they rely on season after season.
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Courtesy of Aryn Fox
“This a classic exorcist meets ghoul face that is the base of a lot of our more human looks,” says Aryn Fox, makeup manager and actor at The Dent Schoolhouse in Cincinnati, OH. Fox is a self-taught makeup artist who got her start playing with special effect makeup as a goth kid, but has being doing makeup at the Schoolhouse for 10 years now. For the above look, she uses Mehron Celebre Cream Color in alabaster for a “ghoulish base,” and she loves that it stays on through heavy sweating. For the veins and texture she mixes the European Body Art SFX Alcohol Palette with 99% alcohol, and to create the black drip she mixes Ben Nye Character Powder in charcoal with the alcohol to “mimic black ooze and blood.” To finish off the look she adds colored contacts and tooth color, “nothing makes me more ready to scare than some added tooth rot!”
The final season of Game of Thrones is fast approaching—mark your calendars for April 14. One thing that the series has delivered on since it premiered in 2011 has been the twists and turns in the story arcs of your favorite characters. These can get so extreme, it has inspired plenty of impassioned fan theories over the years. Even for the upcoming eighth season, which hasn’t even premiered, there are already plenty of predictions—about a statue of Jon Snow, about Sansa and Daenerys’ relationship, and more. And although we do know a bit about what to expected from the last six episodes, we’re still pretty much in the dark about who will claim the Iron Throne—and, of course, which of our favorite characters will emerge unscathed. As it turns out, fans aren’t the only ones who remain clueless on the latter front: The actors themselves don’t know, either.
Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark, told The Sunday Times that she and her mom wrote out who they thought would survive by the time the end credits rolled on the finale of the eight season. And apparently, neither of their brackets made it very far.
“I said, ‘Let’s predict the final series. You call who you think is going to be alive and who you think is going to be dead. So will I.’ And we did. And we were both wrong,” she said.
Joe Dempsie, who plays Gendry Baratheon, had a similar experience. “At the top of every script there is a cast list for every character involved in that episode. A few of us were tempted to check if we were in the last one,” he told The Sunday Times. Look, Gendry’s the last surviving blood Baratheon. He’s got to have a pretty strong claim. But I don’t even trust the fact that I have the answers in my brain. It feels like you’re walking around with a secret that the whole world wants to know.”
The cast may be well aware of how everything wraps up now. Still, they admit it’s going to be an emotional experience for viewers.
“It was very, very bittersweet,” Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017. “The day where we had the final read-through for the final script, it was really bittersweet. It was hard. At the end of the very last script, they read aloud, ‘End of Game of Thrones.’ As soon as they read that out, pretty much everyone burst into tears. There was a standing ovation for [showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss]. We were all clapping and cheering. It was amazing.”
Whew. We’ll be getting the tissues ready—but at least we’re not alone in being completely off-base about some of our favorite characters’ fates.
But a new study from the San Diego State’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film reminds us that there’s more work to be done. The twenty-first annual Boxed In report found mixed gains when it comes to female representation and diversity on television. In particular, the study noted that Latina actresses are now in 7 percent of speaking roles on television—a record that, despite being an all-time high and up from 2016’s 5 percent, is depressing in the grand scheme of things.
The numbers are baffling when put into context: As The Hollywood Reporter notes, one in five American women identify as Latina, yet there’s still a huge disparity between how many Latinas are actually portrayed onscreen. That 7 percent also reflects only speaking roles for female characters; when Latina actresses are counted up among all roles running the gamut of cable, broadcast, and streaming network programming, they represent just 2.8 of roughly 4,833 characters.
Progress is slow but, hopefully, incremental as new shows have broadened the scope of what we see on TV. Gina Rodriguez has started an important dialogue about Latinx representation since starring as the lead on The CW’s breakout Jane the Virgin. “From European Latinos to Afro-Latinos, we come in all shapes and sizes and colors and backgrounds and political expressions, and I think it’s important for us to express and explore the complexities of the Latino demographic, because we are loyal consumers, and we deserve the same respect we give to all these industries,” she said at the 2018 Screen Actors Guild Awards.
PHOTO: Adam Rose/Netflix
Justina Machado, Isabella Gomez, Rita Moreno, and Marcel Ruiz on Netflix’s One Day at a Time
Meanwhile, on Netflix, One Day at a Time has brought nuanced Latinx stories into the spotlight with a cast that includes trailblazer Rita Moreno, the first Latina to win an EGOT. Starz has also expanded portrayals of Latinas with Vida from showrunner Tanya Saracho.
And there are more on the horizon: The Charmed reboot includes Latinx characters, and Rodriguez’s castmate and Orange Is the New Black veteran Diane Guerrero has reportedly been working on a show about her own experiences with immigration.
PHOTO: Frederick M. Brown / Getty Images
Melonie Diaz stars in the CW Charmed reboot.
While the data on Latina representation is at the very least a minuscule improvement, The Boxed In report revealed other disheartening declines for women in entertainment. The percentage of women both behind and in front of the camera dipped slightly, going from 42 percent to 40 percent for female speaking characters and from 28 to 27 percent for female creators, writers, directors, executive producers, producers, editors, and directors of photography.
In short, it’s a reminder that more narratives, faces, and experiences are needed across the board in Hollywood.
The 2018 Primetime Emmy Awards ceremony won’t be happening for another week, but four actors have already made history. They are Tiffany Haddish, Ron Cephas Jones, Samira Wiley, and Katt Williams, who swept the four guest actor categories during the Creative Arts Emmy Awards on Saturday. In addition to this being all four actors’ first Emmy wins, according to CNN, this marks the first time all four awards have been won by black actors.
The best guest actor and actress in a comedy series awards went to Katt Williams for his role as Uncle Willie in Atlanta and Tiffany Haddish for her Saturday Night Live episode last November, respectively, according to Complex. Meanwhile, the corresponding drama awards went to Samira Wiley for her performance as Moira in The Handmaid’s Tale and Ron Cephas Jones as William in This Is Us, according to Deadline.
“I’d like to thank my higher power because without her I wouldn’t be here,” Wiley said during her acceptance speech, according to Deadline. She also thanked her wife, Lauren Morelli, who “every day shows me what real passion is for your work and every hour gives me a reason to bring it,” and gave a shout-out to costar Elisabeth Moss, a.k.a. “the most amazing scene partner a girl could ask for.”
Meanwhile, Cephas Jones thanked his daughter, agent, and This Is Us cast in his acceptance speech, as well as This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman “for giving me the opportunity and being in the room where it happens,” per Deadline. “God bless my mother,” he added. “I know you’re looking down on me.” According to Deadline, backstage, he talked about researching the works of August Wilson and James Baldwin to inspire his performance as William, whom he described as a “flawed man with a checkered past.” “It would have been difficult,” he said when asked if a character like William could have existed “years ago,” according to Deadline. “We are moving forward and moving ahead.”
According to Deadline, neither Haddish nor Williams were present to pick up their awards.
A few weeks ago, a friend texted me about dim sum using only Chinese characters. “Oh no, you’re fake Asian. Hold on,” he continued before he translated his order into English for me. “Fried dough, scallion pancakes with egg, and soy milk.”
“You mean you tiao, but okay,” I replied. “My family only eats it with juk.” I speak very little Cantonese—I’m talking 20 words at most—but when it comes to dim sum, I know how to order.
We’ve been friends for years, and while I can usually put up with his antagonistic brand of teasing, it’s been getting to me lately. I’m “only” half-Asian, something the world feels the need to remind me of at every turn, like when the guy at dim sum hands me a fork and I hear my dad say my name as he’s speaking Cantonese to my Nainai. But I’m also Italian, which for some reason didn’t come up when the popular girl in seventh grade called me a chink, and when everyone—at the coffee shop, in the cab—plays the “but where are you really from?” game. I might be made up of two ethnicities, but I don’t really count as either.
That’s why I’m probably more offended than most at the “controversy” surrounding some of the cast members of Crazy Rich Asians and why, conversely, their inclusion is so legitimizing to me. Henry Golding, the male lead, and supporting actress Sonoya Mizuno are both half-Asian—and thus, according to some critics, not Asian enough to star in the movie. Actress Jamie Chung referred to Golding’s casting as “bullshit” in an interview. (She later apologized.) One op-ed about Golding had the candid title, “We’d Love to See a Full Asian Lead for Once.”
PHOTO: Sanja Bucko
I understand the frustration at the constant whitewashing in Hollywood. (See: Scarlett Johanssen playing a Japanese character in Ghost in the Shell, Emma Stone starring as a woman of Hawaiian descent in Aloha, and Matt Damon somehow playing the hero in a movie literally entitled The Great Wall, as if we haven’t been defending that shit for centuries.) It’s so rampant that a producer even suggested casting a white woman for the lead to Crazy Rich Asians author Kevin Kwan—who, of course, gave it a hard no.
But to impose whitewashing narratives onto biracial people feels like erasure of half of who I am. And, for me, it’s not “whitewashing,” anyway. It’s more like “whatwashing”: What are you? What’s your background? It’s what so many mixed-race people who don’t pass as white have to contend with on a daily basis.
Since when does being more than one thing cancel the other out? According to Golding, who’s Malaysian and English, some people implied he won the role because he’s half-white, as if being biracial comes with special perks. Please. Science, for what it’s worth, backs me up here. (See how Asian I am?) A 2008 study from UC Davis found that Asian-Caucasian mixes are twice as likely to suffer from psychological disorders, like depression, anxiety, and substance abuse, than full Asians. Lauren Berger, one of the authors, surmises that a lower or conflicting ethnic identity—that is, the extent to which someone ascribes to one identity over another—may contribute to it.
It’s hard to establish any sort of ethnic identity when I keep receiving conflicting messages about what that identity is. I’m too white for my Chinese friends to consider me a “real” Asian, but still Asian enough to catch the occasional slur. And I don’t understand why other people are slicing and dicing my ethnicity in the first place, something both Golding and Mizuno have called out. “If I can’t play that [Asian] part, what can I play?” Mizuno asked in an interview earlier this month. “A part that’s half Japanese, a quarter English, and a quarter Argentinean? How many parts are there for that?”
Golding concisely summed it up in an interview with Glamour: “It was quite strange that people were saying I wasn’t Asian enough. It’s like, ‘Oh, you’re not Asian enough to play an Asian role.’ So what does that mean for people who come from mixed heritage? I grew up in Asia; I’m Malaysian. You can try to justify how Asian you are, but you’re never going to make everybody happy … When does the point come that these stereotypes are thrown to the wind? Making something the norm is the only way of not making it a talking point.”
However, I think one reason for it may be my own doing. I refer to myself as “half”: I’m half-Asian, or, if I’m feeling generous, half-Chinese and half-Italian. I’ve been saying it for as long as I can remember, mostly because it’s succinct and typically satisfies whoever’s rude enough to ask. And it’s accurate (although recent results from 23andMe suggest that there’s some Mongolian and North African mixed in there).
PHOTO: Courtesy of Deanna Pai
But maybe I should start to replace the word “half” with “both.” I am both Chinese and Italian. One doesn’t have to negate, or overpower, or defer to the other. It’s like how my comfort food is fried rice with lap ceung, but I’m also freakishly good at making dragged pastas like cavatelli. Both can be true.
In a new interview, Golding described this ownership over identity in a way that made me tear up. “There was always a struggle with being Asian and not being Asian enough. It’s going to be down to me to own my race,” he said. “Once you’re secure with yourself, it doesn’t matter who the fuck says whatever.”
It’s validating to see people like me confront similar feelings in real time. They get it! And better yet, they’re talking about it. Sure, the haters will hate. They’ll say we’re fake Asians, that we’re not Asian enough, that we’re watered down. But that won’t make it true.
Deanna Pai is a writer and editor currently based in New York.
UPDATE July 6, 2018 at 10:35 A.M. ET:Scarlett Johansson‘s recent casting as a transgender man in the upcoming film Rub & Tug has re-sparked the debate about whether cisgender actors should play transgender characters. Many aren’t happy with Johansson’s involvement, including Trace Lysette and Jamie Clayton, two trans actors who discussed the issue on Twitter.
“I wouldn’t be upset if I was getting in the same rooms as Jennifer Lawrence and Scarlett for cis roles, but we know that’s not the case. A mess,” Lysette tweeted.
“Actors who are trans never even get to audition for anything other than roles of trans characters. That’s the real issue. We can’t even get in the room,” Clayton echoed.
In response to the criticism, Johansson’s rep gave this message to Bustle: “Tell them that they can be directed to Jeffrey Tambor, Jared Leto, and Felicity Huffman’s reps for comment.” (Those three are all cisgender actors who received critical praise for playing trans people.)
The Internet, naturally, is buzzing about this—as it was last year, when news broke Elle Fanning would be playing a trans man in the movie Three Generations. That’s what prompted the conversation below:
ORIGINAL STORY: In college my family was my group of queer friends, and we existed harmoniously 99.9 percent of the time. There’s only one disagreement I clearly remember—and it was about the 2013 movie Dallas Buyers Club. In the film Jared Leto, a cisgender man, plays a transgender woman, a casting decision that was polarizing both with critics and with two friends in my college squad: Caleb, who identifies as gender queer, and Jensen, who identifies as a trans man.
Jensen took the affirmative: He thought Leto’s casting was completely fine if he was the best actor who auditioned. Caleb, on the other hand, said a cis actor shouldn’t have even been considered for the role. No one really “won” the argument: Both Caleb and Jensen made excellent points.
Which is why their debate was the first thing I thought of when I heard Elle Fanning, a cis woman, is playing a trans man in the new film Three Generations. GLAAD president and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis released a statement approving the film’s message (it centers on a teen’s transition from female to male), but what about the casting? Should cisgender actors be allowed to play transgender roles? The question rages on four years after Dallas Buyers Club.
And the answer is still unclear—well, at least according to the recent conversation I had with Caleb and Jensen. The three of us chatted about Fanning’s casting, and while Jensen and Caleb still have the same opposing viewpoints, they see eye to eye on one issue: The need for better trans representation, overall, in Hollywood.
Read our full, unfiltered discussion, below:
Chris: I remember our group of friends getting into a debate about cisgender actors playing trans roles after Jared Leto in Dallas Buyers Club. It’s happening again with Elle Fanning in the new film Three Generations. She plays a female assigned at birth who wants to transition to male. So I’m curious: What do you two think about this? Is it OK for cisgender actors to play transgender roles? Why or why not?
Caleb: My usual feelings about cis actors playing trans roles is that it’s almost done in a way to make fun of the trans character or invalidate their identity. For instance, in Dallas Buyers Club with [Leto’s] character Rayon: It almost seems as though they went out of their way to make her look bad and trashy in most scenes and almost leaned into the “man in a wig” narrative. And I wouldn’t have an issue with a trans person looking “not so good” in Dallas Buyers Club if that [narrative] wasn’t a normal thing. Trans people sometimes do look bad. We’re people, but in almost every movie where a trans woman is played by a [cis] man, there seems to be little effort in feminizing her. That’s not to say that trans women need to be femme or that having a beard makes her less of a woman, but it’s one side of trans-ness that we’ve been fed over and over again in sort of a tragic way. Much like 70 years ago in pulp fiction novels [where] gay men and lesbian women had to be murdered or convert to straight by the end of the book, trans people usually end up in the roles of someone living with HIV/AIDS, a prostitute, or the butt of the joke.
Jensen: My position is that the actor who fits the role best and has the most skill should play it. I don’t think that just because someone’s trans that they should be handed the role if they can’t act. I find it exciting that our stories are finally being told—of course, there’s always going to be room for improvement in telling minority stories, but the fact that they’re being told at all is progress. As a trans man, I’m not bothered by Elle Fanning playing the role of a trans man if she was the most skilled actor who auditioned.
Chris: Caleb, to your point about cisgender portrayals often invalidating trans identities: Do you think it’s possible for a cisgender actor to understand a trans character’s full complexity? Or are all the roles better suited for trans actors?
Caleb: Oh, cis people can’t ever comprehend trans-ness—not to say that trans-ness is some otherworldly thing that no one could ever understand, but trans people are still working out what trans-ness is and how we interact with our own and what we want our community to be. If we’re still working it out and living it every day, I really don’t think that an actor, even a talented one, can really understand all the sides of the identity he or she is playing. For where we are right now in our culture and in time, I think only trans actors should play trans roles.
Jensen: I will agree with [your] single point, Caleb: I think that there needs to be a wider variety of storylines about trans people, especially trans women, but I still don’t think making the roles solely for trans actors is the way to go. I think we also have to keep in mind reaching a wide audience when trying to gain some understanding from cis people, and that comes with names that have large box office pull. Right now there’s only a handful of trans actresses who have large pull with their names, and they might not fit every single storyline they are presented. And to answer the question about complexity and fully understanding: I don’t think, unless you are trans, that anyone could ever fully understand what we go through, but I also think that cis actors understand the weight that comes with taking such a role. I believe that anyone who would take on such a role would do so with an open heart toward our community and want to help us reach people and open minds.
Chris: The box office conversation is interesting. Caleb, what are your thoughts on that?
Caleb: I understand the temptation for a director or casting company to want to cast big names in trans roles. Dallas Buyers Club wouldn’t have had the pull it had if it didn’t have Leto. I think there are [better] examples of cis people playing trans roles more successfully than Dallas Buyers Club, but I hate that [they] get some sort of “bravery badge” for doing so. But back to the box office point: I think the movies want the money boost, so they put cis actors in these roles so that people kind of think, I want to see Leto playing a trans woman. I think it’s exploitative, especially with the narratives that we’re fed in these roles.
Jensen: I will agree that the narratives surrounding the trans community need to be better. 100 percent. But I will also say those producers aren’t looking for just a “trans actress.” Characters have a specific age and race and Laverne Cox, Jamie Clayton, Alexandra Billings, Candis Cayne, Jen Richards, Calpernica Addams, Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, or some of the other relatively few out trans actresses might not fit the part.
Caleb: And that’s fine, but why not cast more trans people than that? Why not bring in new talent? Because I know that more trans people than that are auditioning and not getting roles—roles that are often given to cis people. Specifically for trans women, these roles are often handed to men. I’ve even been happier to see cis women playing the roles of trans women because at least a woman is playing the role rather than someone who is completely removed from both trans-ness and womanhood.
Jensen: I’m not personally a casting director or producer, so I can’t answer those questions. If I was, trust me: I would be pushing for more new faces. I’m sure that there are people who are talented and being overlooked, but I also still stand by my statement that we need to be able to reach people when telling our stories. We need to have cis people show up to the theater, and that means big names. I also will say that in the average person’s mind, when they think of great acting, they think of an actor playing a role that she or he is not comfortable with, that tests their skills as an actor. A straight person playing a nonstraight role, be it gay, bi, or transgender, is just a testament to their ability to act—if they perform exceptionally well. And yes, maybe we should be moving more toward cis women [playing trans roles] than men since it creates so many issues. I even enjoyed Felicity Huffman playing a trans waitress in Transamerica. Maybe if we can’t have trans women playing trans roles, then at least cis women will help stop some of the “man in a wig” portrayals you stated earlier.
Caleb: I disagree. I don’t think we should be OK with queer roles being seen as a test of a cis-het [cisgender, heterosexual] actor’s skills, especially not when we’re trying so hard to work on problems in the representation department and show the mainstream world the wide variety of queer people that exist. We need to showcase more queer talent and let trans people tell these stories and take more input from trans people about these stories and roles to make sure that, in this crucial time of transgender stories being new and educating the public, we get these stories right and showcase a [variety] of trans voices.
Chris: Actors tend to get the brunt of the criticism when these casting decisions happen, but there’s an entire system behind why they’re cast. It’s an agent who puts the actor up for the role, a studio that backs the decision, casting directors who filter who gets to audition, and a patriarchal entertainment industry that prioritizes male talent. Do actors deserve criticism for simply accepting a role? Or should the outrage be directed elsewhere?
Caleb: I think we can certainly hold the entire system accountable. Everyone involved in making a movie that features queer, trans, or gender-nonconforming people needs to be educated on those topics and issues and should know that representation is a huge issue for us right now. Getting our stories right matters so much. I want to have movies about my community and trans people, but I want it done right. I want a [variety] of stories with complex characters who are imperfect and human, who love and are lovable, who aren’t always sex workers, who aren’t the butt of the joke, and who are more than just their transition. I want those movies and the people responsible for making them [to be] just that: responsible. And if the actors and actresses playing these roles win awards and thank “God” but don’t thank the trans people who live authentically and bravely every day, then yes, they should be roasted.
Jensen: Hollywood has a serious problem highlighting trans talent. The industry itself needs to learn and evolve faster on how to improve the way it tells trans stories. I don’t think it’s the actors who should be criticized. They are trying to tell stories, make art, and do what they love, which is perform to the best of their ability. If anything, I think most of the actors do thank the trans community. Case in point: Jeffrey Tambor, who, when accepting his last Emmy, said [to] give trans talent a chance and [that he] hopes [he’s the] last cis actor to play a trans woman. I think that the actors and actresses themselves try to take as much care and research as possible from our community and listen to us. But I think we’ve got a long way to go when it comes to the entire system.
