Lily-Rose Depp delivered a standout performance as the possessed Ellen in Nosferatu — but how much makeup and effects went into helping her bring the character’s most haunting moments to life?
The Robert Eggers-directed film, which hit theaters last month, follows Depp’s Ellen as she is taken — both literally and metaphysically — by the ancient vampire Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). While Depp contorts and contracts her body most impressively throughout the film, a particularly memorable scene shows Ellen being entirely taken over by evil, causing her tongue to extend to an unusual degree — and leaving audiences questioning if it was real or a prosthetic.
“No, that’s her. All her,” Traci Loader, the film’s lead makeup designer, told Us Weekly in an exclusive interview, setting the record straight.
As far as how the team — who are nominated for Best Makeup and Hairstyling at the 2025 Academy Awards — pulled the scene off, Nosferatu’s hair department lead, Suzanne Stokes-Munton, gave some insight, telling Us there was a “lot of collaboration and resetting” to ensure the moment resonated as viscerally as possible.
“I didn’t want hair all over her face when she ends up. So, I had to be mindful that it would be out of the way. So, there was [a] discussion with the movement coach,” she recalled. “Lily did that 17 times and they must have rehearsed it for a good hour before that. So, it was a lot of times.”
During the scene, Loader had to keep cleaning up Depp’s face because the actress was producing so much saliva.
“For me, because she would slobber or whatever just naturally happened, it was just kind of cleaning it up and I tried to stay out of her space as much as I could because it’s such a mindset to do something like that,” Loader explained. “So, we tried to be very mindful [and] do what we had to do.”
“They just went and did their thing, and she just stayed in her focus,” she continued. “We just did what we had to do together and then stepped away.”
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Stokes-Munton also praised Depp’s willingness to be a team player among the creative team. “She was very professional,” she recalled. “You get a sense with your artists that if they trust you, you can go in. They don’t even know you’re there because they know what you’re doing is necessary. So, it was kind of a bit of a symbiotic thing.”
Loader describes the collaboration as being “like a dance.”
Depp’s hair changes throughout the film to match her character’s journey. Stokes-Munton called it a “subtler reflex of [the character’s] emotional journey.” By the end, her hairstyle evolves, and its dull, black color matches her fate.
“I don’t really like my hair to sort of impose or anything, so it goes along with [the character’s journey]; the wig doesn’t get paid to act, she does,” Stokes-Munton quipped. “So, it just enhances those emotions. It’s very subtle.”
Nosferatu is currently in theaters.
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