Xena's Warriors Of Make-Up Make Up Artist Special International Edition Issue 18 - April/May 1999 Make Up Artist Magazine Site   A television war wages in the primordial forests of New Zealand. Xena: Warrior Princess has emerged as the victor, surpassing Baywatch as the most viewed television program in the world. Meet the courageous New Zealand make-up artists who daily arm Xena and Gabrielle for battle. Xena: Warrior Princess is currently shooting its fourth season in and around Auckland, New Zealand. Set in a flexible time and culture, the "look" of the show can vary greatly in each episode, ranging from preHelenic to Indiana Jones-style 1940s, to ancient India. In addition to portraying queens, Indian goddesses, demons and-of-course-warriors, main characters Xena (Lucy Lawless) and her best friend, Gabrielle (Renee O'Connor) are often wounded, diseased,possessed or altered in some way. These looks are researched and created by a talented team of make-up artists and hair stylists led by Department Head Francia Smeets. Completing the rest of the team are Barbara Cope, Linda-Hal Couper, Vanessa Hurley and Debbie Watson (Main Unit), and Jane O'Kane and Ash Farahani (Second Unit). For this team, there is no job differentiation - they all do make-up, hair, special make-up effects, wigs and body make-up as required. Ideas often come with the scripts in the form of research notes and pointers from series creator and executive producer, Rob Tapert, who has the overall vision for the show. According to Francia, the show's producers are not afraid to be innovative and are always willing to push artistic boundaries, resulting in a broad spectrum for her and the team to exercise their artistic license. The fast pace of the production allows little preparation time for each episode, but the department works well together. Three of the four main artists have been with Francia throughout the entire duration of the show. The Xena make-up team. Clockwise from bottom:, center: Francia Smeets, Barbara (Barbie) Cope, Jane O'Kane, Debbie Watson, Linda HalCouper, Vanessa Hurley and Ash Farahani. The make-up department utilizes a wide range of products, and imports items such as RCMA and Temptu tattos from the Unites States. Francia and her team have their own laboratory in wich they make nine tipes of blood - normal, thin normal, congealed, blood with clots, crusty scab blodd edible blood, thick gel blood and gelatin blood - customized to work with the magenta filter the show is shot in. They also change the color of commercila body wash for specific purposes and make their own gel skin for wounds. because the make-up team is small and very busy, prosthetics are usually made by the New Zealand prosthetic house, Weta, freelancer Andrew Beattie or Los Angeles based shop KNB. Francia Smeets' additional credits include the original five Hercules telemovies starring Kevin Sorbo and Anthony Quinn, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys series (which she left in 1995 to do Xena), The Piano with Holly Hunter, The Bounty with Anthony Hopkins and Mel Gibson and the Stephen King miniseries, The Tommyknockers. Recently we spoke with Francia Smeets via telephone from the set of Xena: Warrior Princess: Foot note: Xena leg as Sidero. From episode "If the shoe fits". MA: One of the things we're doing with this issue, wich we have never done before, is having an all-internationalissue. I was wondering if there is anything you could tell me that's unique to New Zealand? Is there anything about the make-up community there or just about the different logistics of working in New Zealand? Is there anything that makes it geographically good for a filmmaker? FS: I suppose for many American companies, the greatest thing is the exchange rate. It's very favorable right now, although it has had sometimes when it's not been that fantastic. At the moment it's hovering close to two to one. A dollar of yours is two dollars in New Zeland. it's probably a little higher now, but at one stage it was even under that so it was even more favorable. The other thing would be geographically, although we are very far away. we have a really beautiful countryside and scenary that we offer and it is quite isolated. We have very diverse lush foliage because we're in a very temperate climate and it rains considerably. We have not quite a rain forest, but almost. it's really wondrful. When they first came here they were looking for that very primordial look, and they felt that they could capture that even quite close to the city. Many of our locations aren't far from the city. MA: Are there any deserts there? FS: Not as you would think of, like the outback of Australia, but we have areas in the central North Islands that are more Alpine and they look a little deserty. The South Island probably, too, has areas where you could certainly think that you were in the desert. They are quite barren. But then just down the road will be something incredibly diversly different - lush and green forestry. In New Zeland you can get a lot of locations in a very small distance to travel. MA: Have you always lived in New Zealand? FS: Yes, I have. Although I lived in Australia for a little while, about three and a half years. i worked there as a make-up artist as well. MA: How did you get your start as a make-up artist? Gabrielle's Henna Mehndi tattoo. From episode "Between the Lines". FS: I need to think way back. It was in 1980. I'd met a producer in Auckland, New Zealand who was making little co-productions with Germany and england and things like that. He said to me, "Would you like to do the make-up for it?" At that time there were very few make-up artists here, in fact, our film industry was really fledgling. It was just getting started. There were probably only two or three features made prior to 1980, maybe a few more, but it wasn't a lot. I was given the opportunity to get started. I had done a basic training prior to that and I had been working for two years. it was not really in the industry, but I was in beauty therapy related fields. From there on I just decided that this is what I love to do. i went freelance and worked with a lot of really fantastic make-up artists, some of whom came over from Australia. I worked with them a an assitant. That was the way people got experience in New Zealand. And that's how I came up into the whole area of make-up and hair. MA: I'm told that Xena is the most popular television show in the world now. FS: It is pretty big. It's hard for us to imagine that down here because it's not screened here often. They've screened it from time to time, but now we're starting season five and I think the last one (screened) here was season three. It's very behind. MA: How many episodes a season do you shoot? FS: Between 22 and 24. MA: being that this is a one-hour episodic television show, I would imagine you're working 60 or 70 hours a week. FS: It's a 60-hour week. Make-up sort of varies, but it's always around 65, sometimes more. MA: We recieved some wonderful photos from the show showing the different looks that you've done with lucy and Gabrielle. It's such a wide variety of looks that are very interesting. Looking at what you have, it looks like you've got things divided up by character. FS: Yes, we do. Jane O'Kane and Ash Farahani are the two that work on second unit. I usually have three episodes on the go at once. We've got the episode that we're shooting now, we've got the episode before that the second unit is doing, and then I'm preparing the episode ahead. So quite often there is sort of three things on the go for me to keep up with. When the show first started I did Lucy's make up because I did her on Hercules, but I found that with running the department and preparing the shows it was impossible to do both. MA: That is quite a bit. you're running the department and having to be in the administrative side of it. FS: Yes. MA: Who takes care of the guest stars? Who is doing Lucy and Gabrielle? FS: Vanessa Hurley does Lucy. Barbie Cope does Gabrielle. Then LInda (Hal-Couper) and Debbie Watson alternate with the guest artists. MA: One thing you alluded to in your information is that you get a lot of materials from Naimie's. Gabrielle in Henna Paste (raised) prosthetic. From "Between the Lines" episode set in India. FS: Actually not as much now. In the beginning we did, but the industry is growing quite a bit in New Zealand. Trish Cohen started up a company here and she opened a full-time shop as well. She worked on Xena for awhile. She is a wig and make-up artist as well, which is great. So she is getting her store together and getiing lots of great products in. She brings in a lot of stuff from all over like Kryolan and Ben Nye. One thing she doesn't have is RCMA. We get that from Naimie's. MA: What's the name of this store? FS: It's called Facemakers. I still really like dealing with Naimie's, so I call George three times a yaer during the season to say hi and get a bit of stuff from them. We used to get supplies from other areas as well but we have narrowed it down just to Naimie's and Facemakers. MA: Temptu is one of the products you mentioned several times in the information you sent. You seem to have and appreciation for their products and a relationship with them. How did you find out about their products? FS: Actually, through a magazine. And through people talking about it and everything. That is how I came into contact with them. given the amount of painting we had to do on each person, we realized that doing transfers would be the most efficient for us, considering we are always under a time constraint in the morning. The decision was based on that. We had to do it quickly. We had to have lots of them because we didn't know how many repeats and how many doubles we'd have to do. So we ordered two hunderd of some of them to cover ourselves, and a few of them we actually ran out of, so our guess was really accurate there. MA: With all the people that you have, there must be more than one make-up trailer to deal with all of this. On second unit, they are probably have to make up people in another location. FS: Yes, they usually are. They're usually in the locations that we've been to. They have a bus which is half wardrobe and half make-up, which has two stations. We have a really fantastic what you'd call a semi trailer. A great big huge sort of truck. You go up the stairs sort of in the middle and it's got a lovely end that's got two stations, one for Lucy and one for Renee. That privately shuts off so they can do their own thing in there in the morning. The other end has three stations, which is where myself, Deb and Linda work. It's spacious and comfortable. We're extremely lucky that we have it. We worked out of a much smaller vehicle for the first three years and then finally had this fantastic trailer built just for us, which helped to design as well. The unit person from our team built it for us to rent to the company. We're very fortunate. It's very luxurious and brand new. We love it. MA: Is that something very unusual for New Zealand to have? Would you say it's the cutting edge or are there other trailers like that one there? FS: There are probably a few others coming in now, but we never had anything as large as that before because, really, I think this is probably one of the biggest teams of people that have worked on a long term basis, as in having five and two make-up artists on one show. Hercules probably has something similar, and Young Hercules as well, so this has sort of introduced a whole new thing here where you had to create a vehicle to cope with that many people. MA: There's something good to be said for having good working conditions to be able to create in. I'm glad they appreciate you enough to take care of you on that. FS: I agree. Somebody once asked me what would be the most difficult thing to face with a production like this, and my reply was time. We're always under so much pressure. We work so fast that ime is often our greatest enemy. I suppose we could say. The only other thing I wanted to mention was how much we all love Lucy and Renee and how wonderful they are to be on our show. They're such giving people. They love all the wonderful things we get to do. They love all the changes and all the exciting looks that they get. so for us, it's really wonderful to have two such wonderful people at the head of our whole show. MA: They're obviously very good sports. I'm glad you're having a good time on the show and are enjoying its success. FS: Just one more thing - please could you acknowledge my gratitude to my make-up department. My attitude is that you can only be as good as the people that surround you, and I know that they all do the very best work that they can do. They are incredibly supportive of my position, as well as being supportive to one another. Other pictures in this article: Gabrielle's make-up:    Every day Gabrielle    Turning into a Bacchi    As a Devi    Contemporary    Cut and bruised    In the 1940's Xena's make-up:    Young Xena    Possessed    Contemporary    Demoness Kali    In the 40's    A badly beaten Xena    Lucy Lawless as Xena in the episode "Destiny"