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Bugonia with Costume Designer, Jennifer Johnson · The Art of Costume Podcast

• 0:06
  Hello, welcome to the Art of Costume podcast.
• 0:09
  I'm your host, Spencer Williams, and thank you so much for
• 0:12
  joining me for another special bonus episode.
• 0:16
  Hey costume nerds. So as you've probably figured
• 0:19
  out by now, today we are not releasing our highly anticipated
• 0:23
  True Blood episode because truthfully, we just need a bit
• 0:27
  more time to edit the episode because there's just so much to
• 0:30
  go over, so much crazy kooky stuff.
• 0:35
  But I'm excited to say they will be released this Friday on
• 0:39
  Halloween, which is kind of the perfect send off to ever hot
• 0:41
  vampire month. And I promise it'll be worth the
• 0:44
  wait because Elizabeth and I were joined by True Blood
• 0:47
  costume designer Audrey Fisher and it was such a fun
• 0:51
  conversation. You are all going to love it.
• 0:54
  It will be well worth the wait, but instead today we are having
• 0:58
  a very fun episode. I'll never leave you high and
• 1:00
  dry as we'll be diving into a brand new film hitting theaters
• 1:04
  this week called Begonia, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos.
• 1:09
  The same Yorgos that directed Poor Things, a fan favorite of
• 1:13
  the Art of Costume podcast. And we are so excited to be
• 1:16
  working with Focus Features and bringing to you a little teaser
• 1:19
  of this film. So of course, today we are
• 1:21
  joined by costume designer Jennifer Johnson to talk all
• 1:25
  about some of these characters and their costumes you will see
• 1:28
  in this film. Don't worry, we don't get into
• 1:30
  any spoilers though though. Oh Mitt, I so desperately want
• 1:33
  to because I promise you there's some great stuff in here that
• 1:37
  I'm dying to talk about. But you have to go see the film
• 1:39
  and maybe we'll talk about some of those costumes later on this
• 1:43
  year. So after a quick break, we will
• 1:46
  be joined by Jennifer Johnson to talk about working with Emma
• 1:49
  Stone, her fierce CEO attire, swarms of bees, and her
• 1:54
  collaboration with director Yoga Slanthimos right after this
• 1:57
  break. Hi, I'm Dan, who does all the
• 2:04
  magic behind the scenes. I wanted to say thank you.
• 2:07
  And if you want to support the show even farther, go to
• 2:10
  tpublic.com/user slash The Art of Costume, where you can buy a
• 2:16
  couple variations of our logo on T-shirts, mugs, and stickers.
• 2:22
  Also, be sure to leave a like comment and subscribe.
• 2:25
  And if you're an audio listener, leave us a Five Star Review and
• 2:28
  Apple Podcast. Now back to the show.
• 2:36
  I am so excited to be here once again with my friend, costume
• 2:39
  designer Jennifer Johnson. Hey, Jennifer, it's been awhile.
• 2:42
  Hi, nice to see you again. So good to see you.
• 2:45
  I just love talking with you about your films and your work
• 2:49
  and I cannot be more excited to talk about Begonia because I am
• 2:52
  truly obsessed with this film. It is such a good one.
• 2:55
  And what a great podcast you have and caring about costume
• 2:58
  design and inviting us to join in on your conversation.
• 3:02
  It's really lovely. Thank you.
• 3:03
  Well, thank you for being here. Well, so I believe this is your
• 3:06
  second film with director Yorgos Lanthimos, correct?
• 3:09
  Yes, I did kinds of kindness. I also did a short film with
• 3:14
  Yorgos called Nimic that Matt didn't use in.
• 3:17
  Which I, I love Kinds of Kindness, but so obviously
• 3:20
  something between the two of you really work.
• 3:22
  So tell me a little bit about this collaboration and why it
• 3:25
  just was kind of Kinsit that you guys would work on Begonia as
• 3:28
  well after the success of Kinds of Kindness?
• 3:30
  Yeah, I think Jorgos is really great at finding like minded
• 3:38
  group of people that he can rely on and not have to micromanage.
• 3:44
  He's he loves to put together people that are nice and who are
• 3:49
  brave and not afraid to make fun of themselves or make a fool of
• 3:53
  themselves. He really enjoys like taking
• 3:57
  risks and he likes that kind of personality that's collaborative
• 4:01
  and kind and and has a sense of humor.
• 4:05
  So, you know, Robbie Ryan, the cinematographer and James Price
• 4:12
  and Torsten Witty. We all had known each other
• 4:15
  prior and just a really great group of people.
• 4:20
  Yeah, it was good to get you all in the same room.
• 4:22
  But then you also have some returning casts as well.
• 4:24
  So I'm very excited to talk about some of these characters.
• 4:27
  I'm very excited, Excited to start with Emma Stone's
• 4:29
  character, Michelle, who is a pharmaceutical CEO.
• 4:34
  She has a closet full of like some good McQueen suits and
• 4:37
  Louboutin shoes, the Saint-laurent bag.
• 4:40
  She looks great. But there is something to me
• 4:42
  that's a little bit eerie about her.
• 4:43
  Also, though, because it feels like Michelle is also putting on
• 4:47
  a costume as much as you are putting a costume on her.
• 4:50
  I mean, there's this moment that I I was laughing as a costume
• 4:54
  person where she throws on this big, incredible coat and she
• 4:57
  wears it from the building to the car and then takes it off
• 4:59
  immediately. I just thought I was like,
• 5:01
  that's really interesting. Very odd of this character.
• 5:04
  So tell me about working with Michelle.
• 5:07
  That's a really astute observation.
• 5:11
  Usually as a costume designer, I like to approach characters
• 5:15
  that, you know, the costumes, not wearing them.
• 5:18
  But I think in the case of Michelle, it is because he is
• 5:21
  playing a character and that we later which is later revealed.
• 5:29
  So it was very clear to me that she needed to wear the same
• 5:36
  thing, that she has one set of clothes and multiples and that
• 5:40
  perhaps she gave a list to her assistant like please make me
• 5:45
  look like Aceo. And what are those things?
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  And so, you know, the the overcoat, the power overcoat,
• 5:53
  which is her kind of protective armor, and the McQueen jacket,
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  the sort of list of like very iconic business shapes that also
• 6:04
  read a little scary, a bit vampirish.
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  And so everything actually in her costume is custom, except
• 6:17
  for the McQueen jacket and the Louboutin shoes and the
• 6:21
  Saint-laurent bag and the Celine sunglasses and the Cartier tank
• 6:27
  watch. It's it's it's spooky.
• 6:29
  It is spooky. It is a little vampirish, but I
• 6:31
  mean, at the same time you're like, well, she does look good
• 6:33
  though. So clearly the assistant, yeah,
• 6:35
  killed it. Yeah, yeah.
• 6:39
  And I think it was just keeping her color palette very
• 6:42
  restrictive. But with the overcoat, you know,
• 6:45
  with that trench, it was, it's tying in that, you know,
• 6:49
  Burgundy's her is the color of blood.
• 6:54
  Right. And you know, working with Emma
• 6:57
  Stone as an actress on this film, she doesn't have too many
• 7:01
  costumes, so you really kind of have to, I'm guessing you must
• 7:04
  have had the work of her to really identify how this
• 7:07
  character is going to evolve throughout Begonia.
• 7:09
  Yeah. And I have been brought on by
• 7:12
  Yorgos kind of unofficially and maybe 8 months before we started
• 7:17
  production. And which is great, having a
• 7:21
  shorthand with him and knowing him, you know, being friends
• 7:25
  with him outside of work, we were able to just start
• 7:28
  brainstorming ideas on what she might be, what Teddy might be.
• 7:32
  Let's talk about Jesse Plum's character, Teddy, who actually
• 7:36
  to me is terrifying. I think that he's such a
• 7:39
  brilliant actor, but it was giving me signs of the Lamb's
• 7:41
  vibes a little bit. He's a bit stuck in time, I have
• 7:44
  to say, which I love. But then my fair part about his
• 7:47
  costume is the subtle use of metallics and silvers.
• 7:50
  To me, it feels like a little bit like a nod to the classic
• 7:54
  alien lore of the aluminum hat. Was I catching on to something
• 7:58
  here? Yeah.
• 7:59
  Thank you. Thanks for noticing all these
• 8:00
  things. Well, so Teddy is a conspiracy
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  theorist, although I've seen the movie twice now and you know,
• 8:07
  it's, it's interesting how similar him and Michelle are
• 8:10
  actually. Like they're such an interesting
• 8:12
  duality of characters. But yes, the silver is really
• 8:17
  important to Teddy because that's his electromagnetic
• 8:20
  frequency, EMF protective gear. And you know, he's, he would be
• 8:26
  somebody very worried about not only alien radiation, but also
• 8:31
  all the radiation that he perceives himself to be
• 8:34
  surrounded by like 5G and, you know, different observational
• 8:42
  rays that are emanating through his daily life.
• 8:48
  And so he can't EMF clothing is, is, is available.
• 8:53
  There's a, a company, for instance, in Holland where you
• 8:57
  can buy radiation boiler suits that are $3000 and they're made
• 9:04
  out of silver. And Teddy doesn't quite have
• 9:07
  that budget. So it was trying to dig into
• 9:11
  things that he could find or make, but without falling into
• 9:17
  the silliness or tropes of like tin foil on the head, like how
• 9:21
  to make that feel more sincere and genuine.
• 9:25
  And so the silver jacket was something really, I think
• 9:30
  important kind of gives him like a slight, I don't want to say
• 9:34
  comic book, but gives him sort of like a a bit of a heroic, you
• 9:39
  know, he has like Cape that he goes out and saves the world.
• 9:43
  And then when the kidnapping suits, then that's like more
• 9:47
  leaning into their awareness of immediate radiation.
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  So, you know, I got a spool of plumbers tape and, and, and
• 9:55
  applied that to the to the little jumpsuits.
• 10:00
  And then the balaclava is actually like a real EMF piece,
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  or so they say. They're found on the weird web
• 10:09
  of Amazon, but that's supposedly something that protects your
• 10:13
  brain from for real. Yeah, no, I love it because I
• 10:16
  mean, he at the end of the day, Teddy is a smart guy though, so
• 10:19
  it's not like he's not gonna be walking around with the aluminum
• 10:22
  hat because he he's doing his homework as much as you want to
• 10:27
  say about him. He's a professional.
• 10:29
  Yeah, yeah. But we also do see Teddy in his
• 10:32
  everyday life, though. I mean, you could kind of really
• 10:35
  tell that before this film took place that he's lived entire
• 10:38
  life up to this moment. See him working.
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  There's a very kind of real authentic feel to that kind of
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  mirrors I how I view, you know, people working hard today.
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  Yeah, it was really important that, you know, he have
• 10:52
  authenticity and that the movie's humorous.
• 10:55
  But I find in every project I work on, I don't want to make
• 10:59
  fun of any of my characters. And and and like you said, I
• 11:03
  think Michelle's the only one wearing the costume
• 11:05
  intentionally, right. But for Teddy and Don that they
• 11:08
  should feel like that they really, the movie takes place in
• 11:11
  Georgia and that it, you know, it's rural and they live on a
• 11:16
  big piece of land. And he's an aprist.
• 11:19
  He takes care of bees. And to my surprise, I had a
• 11:26
  neighbor who's a a costume assistant and that lives across
• 11:30
  the street and she had a swarm of bees in her wall.
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  And I was prepping the movie in the very early stages.
• 11:36
  And I could see the some bee action going on across the
• 11:39
  street and called her and she put me in touch with the aprist
• 11:44
  and I became friends with him and I and Jesse became friends
• 11:48
  with him and I bought all of his bees because there is a level
• 11:54
  of, of, of patina on the bee suit itself that is impossible
• 12:01
  to really experience in a photograph.
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  So they smoke the bees, you know, they which imbues this
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  amazing, beautiful charcoal patina that goes through the
• 12:13
  layers of mesh of the costume or it's not a costume of the bee
• 12:17
  suit and honey and you know, pollen and all this like gunky
• 12:23
  stuff. And so these guys are quite
• 12:25
  dirty actually. So that that was my first
• 12:30
  costume that I received that really inspired me to dig, lean
• 12:35
  into Teddy's grubbiness, and then that helped informed how
• 12:40
  grubby the set became. Wow, that's fascinating.
• 12:43
  We're the chances of having a costume assistant friend, we
• 12:47
  happen to have a swarm of bees. That is fascinating.
• 12:50
  But that kind of leads into something I want to ask you
• 12:52
  about too. I mean, it's the the bee uniform
• 12:55
  is very, like you said, grubby. It feels very real.
• 12:59
  But then there's also just a lot of dirt and gore and all sorts
• 13:03
  of things that end up happening in this house without getting
• 13:06
  into it. So tell me a little bit about
• 13:08
  the aging and dying process and how integral it was to Begonia.
• 13:13
  It's for me, aging, dying, patina, all of that is so
• 13:18
  important that the costume not feel plastic and straight from
• 13:22
  the shelf, straight from the package.
• 13:24
  We had a lot of multiples, a lot of stunts, a lot of violence in
• 13:27
  the movie. So it was really important that
• 13:30
  the costumes that we produce, that we made, you know, in house
• 13:35
  or that we purchase feel really authentic.
• 13:39
  And Teddy being a conspiracy theorist, he's extremely
• 13:43
  intelligent and he's not thinking about bathing that day
• 13:47
  or no. Not only is his work that does
• 13:50
  on the farm dirty, but you know his hunting of people is a
• 13:56
  little dirty too. Yeah, of.
• 13:58
  Certain types of people. And so I, I think and also it's
• 14:04
  a very sad. Teddy's very sad, you know, you
• 14:06
  really feel for him, sense that, yeah, there's a sadness to him.
• 14:12
  And I thought it was important to show that sort of depression
• 14:14
  in his clothing. Yeah, I feel like the costumes
• 14:17
  really kind of lent to that too. It helps the audience kind of
• 14:20
  take a second, be like, I don't know, maybe he is on to
• 14:23
  something here. Like he really believes this,
• 14:24
  but I could tell that he is very sad.
• 14:27
  So which is why he's in the pursuit of finding these
• 14:29
  answers. And the costumes really led to
• 14:31
  that, along with everything else.
• 14:33
  You know who worked on? And we had a really amazing
• 14:36
  breakdown art textile artist in, we made the movie in London,
• 14:41
  believe it or not. And Rafaela Buck, who did such a
• 14:46
  good job and she had a a lot of things to do, yeah.
• 14:50
  That's one way to put it, but another thing I love about this
• 14:55
  film is how costumes of characters we really don't get
• 14:59
  the scene of film play such a big role as well.
• 15:02
  In the story of Begonia, Teddy and Don sport some pretty
• 15:06
  stylish suits. When I go down to speak with
• 15:08
  Michelle and the assumption that she is potentially an alien
• 15:12
  emperor, and also Michelle's given some clothes at some
• 15:16
  point, that's aren't exactly her typical McQueen ensemble.
• 15:20
  So talk about working with these clothes that, you know,
• 15:23
  represent characters that we don't really get to see some of
• 15:27
  them at all. Yeah.
• 15:28
  The suit, the suiting was really important.
• 15:32
  That's Teddy's attempt to be, like, official and taking
• 15:37
  seriously. And he kind of reverses roles of
• 15:40
  Michelle. So she comes in with her suit,
• 15:43
  and then she loses part of her suit in the basement.
• 15:46
  And her overcoat becomes kind of like, I sort of loved how she's
• 15:52
  a bit like Nosferatu with the white maker, you know, and her
• 15:56
  collar. But she's sort of, you know,
• 15:59
  it's this tennis match between the two of like, who's gaining
• 16:02
  power? And Teddy comes down in his
• 16:05
  father's suit, and he puts Dawn in his father's suit.
• 16:08
  We never meet the father, but we assumed that perhaps because the
• 16:12
  house at one time was nice, we assumed that he had a job and
• 16:17
  probably worked in business or maybe it was a car salesman.
• 16:22
  And those kind of suits are hard to they used to be sort of
• 16:25
  easier to shop for those suits, but now when you need multiples,
• 16:29
  you really need to produce them. So we I found vintage fabric
• 16:36
  with a wonderful suit maker in London, Adrian at Academy, who
• 16:43
  knew like how to make a really frumpy suit.
• 16:46
  So, you know, I told him to break down the shoulder pads
• 16:49
  and, and really make it feel deflated and, and not like eager
• 16:56
  to do business. But Teddy puts on the best show
• 17:00
  show he can of being an adult. But it was important that
• 17:05
  everyone have that contrast. So Michelle have the contrast
• 17:08
  between her being so put together and so Immaculate to
• 17:13
  then like being losing footing in her power once Teddy takes
• 17:18
  over and once the interrogation begins, and then then completely
• 17:23
  being stripped of that when she's putting his mother's
• 17:25
  dress. And so they're sort of like
• 17:29
  interesting themes of just with the clothing of with a costume
• 17:33
  of the back and forth volleying that they're doing kind of who,
• 17:37
  who's who's, who had the ball on their court, which is really the
• 17:42
  the, which is a great scene on the in the dinner at the table.
• 17:46
  It's one of my favorites. It's a very powerful and just,
• 17:48
  there's a lot of things happening without getting into
• 17:51
  it too deeply, but it's a good one.
• 17:53
  Yeah. Well, Jennifer, this has been.
• 17:54
  I'm so glad I got to talk to you.
• 17:56
  I've been dying to talk to you ever since I saw this film a
• 17:58
  couple weeks ago. But by the time this episode
• 18:02
  comes out, Begonia will be out in the world in Los Angeles and
• 18:06
  anywhere you could see it in theaters.
• 18:08
  What are you excited about the audience to see?
• 18:09
  I mean, people are already rushing to the theaters with
• 18:12
  these interesting, fun screenings.
• 18:14
  So I really feel like this film's gonna it's gonna take
• 18:17
  over here. I'm excited for people to see a
• 18:22
  real big movie with a huge score and shot on Vista Vision.
• 18:26
  And it's a beautifully made movie by Yorba Flanthamos.
• 18:30
  It's an interesting, wonderful script.
• 18:33
  But also the Vista Vision allows you to really luxuriate in the
• 18:36
  costumes. You can see all the detail
• 18:38
  really clearly. Please go see this on the big
• 18:40
  screen and I can't wait for you to see the end of the movie.
• 18:43
  Yeah. Yes.
• 18:44
  I was going to say we can't talk about today, but I'm going to
• 18:47
  have you back in a couple months when we could talk about it
• 18:50
  because I have a lot of questions.
• 18:52
  Yeah, there's some real fun facts and fun little statistics
• 18:56
  on that one. Well, costume designer Jennifer
• 18:59
  Johnson, thank you so much for talking with me.
• 19:00
  I can't wait for I Want to See Begonia.
• 19:02
  And congratulations to you and the crew that made this happen,
• 19:05
  because it really worked well. Thank you.
• 19:09
  Thank you, Jennifer. Bye.