When doing Kristen's make up for Welcome to the Rileys, had there always been a specific look you wanted to incorporate into the film?

Jake is very visually creative. He’s also an artist. (It’s actually his hands you see when Lois is painting in the movie). He had this beautiful photograph of a young European girl he found. She was sad but had much depth in her eyes. I put it up on the wall of the make-up trailer as reference for what Mallory would look like. Of course the look of the character developed further as Kristen and I worked on it. She had to learn how to pole dance for the role and had been practicing every day before we started shooting, and as a result, was covered in huge bruises. Because that’s what really happened from her pole dancing, of course we wanted to keep it in the movie. People forget that we shoot movies “out of sequence” of real life, so I had to re-create the bruises everyday to make them look the same once they had faded.

The other huge influence for Mallory’s look was the real strippers in New Orleans that worked at the club where Mallory was supposed to work. This was no high end club by any means. (It’s the real club that you see in the movie but we actually cleaned it up a bit for the shoot!) The girls that worked there are rough, really rough. They are real prostitutes, runaways, transvestites. Kristen and I (separately) both spent time with these girls researching them. I took my key make-up artist with me and we just hung out in those clubs for a few nights in a row. I had to tip the girls for most of them to talk to me at first because they were not giving anything up for free, even time just talking about themselves. After they got to know me, they told me their stories, told me about their pimps; they let me take photos of them, their tattoos, etc. It was amazing research, and it showed us just how far we had to go to make Mallory realistic, exactly how rough we had to make her look. As you can see we made her look as though she never ate properly, made her look dirty and as though she never washed her make-up off, just piled more on top. I added acne, a rash around her lips, circles under her eyes, old cutting scars on her arms, and of course those bruises.

How involved were Kristen and Jake and the other actors with the creation of the looks?

100% involved. For Mallory, Kristen came up with some of the ideas, Jake contributed some, and I came up with some, but we all bounced the ideas off one another other and decided upon the final look together.

The same goes for the other characters in the film. Melissa’s character of Lois really makes a life changing transition in the film and Jake really wanted that to show physically. Lois’ make-up in the film actually had a story line and character arc all of its own. It really did!

During Make-up tests, we played around with Jim/ Doug having a moustache or a goatee. We tested different shapes, but in the end, decided to go without facial hair.

How did you become involved with Welcome to the Rileys?

I interviewed with Jake in Los Angeles. I had worked for his commercial/ music video company before, but had never met him. He’s a wonderful man. His 4 dogs were there at his office too and I think they were interviewing me also. I’m sure I passed the doggie’s interview as I am a HUGE animal lover! I sat for about an hour and a half and played with the dogs and chatted with Jake about all kinds of stuff, the world in general, whatever, not just about the movie. It was very low key and comfortable. Of course Jim Gandolphini and I had worked together before and we’re good friends and I had worked with Kristen previously too, on Into the Wild.

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