‘The Crown’ Hair & Makeup Designer Cate Hall On Evolving The Period By Cycling “Through The Eras, Even Within One Season” – Production Value

As the hair and makeup designer of The Crown for four seasons, Cate Hall has seen her work evolve over the course of the series. “We really consciously cycled through the eras, even within one season,” she says. “We were almost modern by the end of season 6, so as we were going along, you’re seeing development in hairdressing techniques, cosmetics, chemicals, technology… all of that stuff was having a huge impact on what people looked like.”

Netflix’s The Crown follows the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth II, with the final season taking place between just before the tragic death of Princess Diana (Elizabeth Debicki) to the wedding of Prince Charles (Dominic West) and Camilla Parker Bowles (Olivia Williams). This season, Diana had a more relaxed approach as she was on a holiday with her sons. “Diana was really bronzed, she was really tanned,” says Hall. “We saw a lot of really relaxed Diana for the first time which was lovely.”

Similar to Diana in previous seasons, Hall says that the introduction of Kate Middleton (Meg Ballamy) brought new stylistic changes to the world of the royals. “The royals are really set, they have a look and they stick to it for decades,” she says. “But then the people who marry into the family… are the people who come in and set the era and really show you what’s going on in the world of fashion.” In this case, there was an evolution in makeup techniques. “Foundation was way less kind of drying and cloggy. It was much finer, more translucent, more reflective.”

The eighth episode of the season, “Ritz”, held a special place for Hall, as she says it contained “every single thing you could want as a hair and makeup designer.” The episode focuses on Princess Margaret (Lesley Manville), as she suffers her first stroke and her health begins to rapidly decline. “We were set with telling this story of Margaret’s demise over a couple of years, as she goes from being the life and soul of the party, and this beautiful, charming woman, to being completely diminished by strokes and that facial paralysis,” says Hall. “It affected her speech, she could hardly walk, she went blind eventually.” 

One of the largest challenges for Hall was actually scheduling, as “Ritz” was filmed alongside another episode where Margaret needed to be her usual, vivacious self. “It’s a really technical challenge when it’s like, actually you’ve got a maximum of 20 minutes to take the actress Lesley Manville, who is a glorious looking lady, to near death and then it’s got to come straight off again and she’s got to go back to Margaret in all her glory,” she says. “I think we managed to use some really cool little techniques to show that demise… and I feel like we helped to build that character together. And add to that, that she had these burns on her ankles from the horrendous bath accident, and then there’s all of the wonderful flashbacks to 1945, so it’s also kind of creating this dialogue between her and her younger self, and that’s all beautiful period makeup.”

Click the video above to watch the full interview.