Since Netflix released the first four episodes of Wednesday season two, the world’s most stoic goth icon has been even more mesmerizing than before. The braids are sharper, the glares are colder, and, of course, there is a haunting new detail that instantly transfixed us all: her black tears.
Previously, Wednesday said she doesn’t “do tears” because “emotions are a gateway trait.” But in season two, we are privy to tears galore — even if not the emotional kind. Wednesday’s tears are a side effect of psychic exhaustion, according to her mother, and they are fittingly dramatic and black, perfectly suiting Jenna Ortega’s portrayal of the sardonic character. And no, they are not CGI.
Speaking to Teen Vogue, Emmy award-winning hair and makeup artist Nirvana Jalalvand breaks down the specifics on the creative chaos in bringing Wednesday’s black tears to life, including product testing everything from eye blood to water-based paints, and a last-minute custom creation from Paris.
A whole year before the cameras even rolled on season two, the Teen Vogue team was already getting their hands dirty (or face, actually) alongside Jalalvand, with yours truly acting as a test subject for the creation of black tears — a.k.a getting you a BTS of the BTS.
Beyond the full breakdown on the tears, we also got Jalalvand to dish on the details of her custom-blended lip pot and the changes needed to take Wednesday from season one to season two in terms of glam. Come for the black tears, but stay for behind-the-scenes details and a deeper look at the dedication, ingenuity, and sheer talent of the HMUA that makes Wednesday’s world so flawlessly dark and captivating.
Nirvana Jalalvand: When you are reading a script, at least for me, I’m always waiting for a note about something hair and makeup related, because [as an HMUA] that’s what really gets you excited. Immediately, within the first couple of pages, I saw the “black tears fall from Wednesday’s eyes.” And I was like, “Okay, that’s really cool, [but] they’ll probably wanna do it in visual effects.” And then I remembered, no, this is Tim Burton, we’re gonna be doing this for real, so you better start thinking about how you’re gonna make her cry black.
I was worrying, because the minute you are messing around with eyes, you have to be really careful. So I pulled every black product I have in my kit and started pouring it down my face, but nothing was quite right, so I needed a test model to start figuring this out. I literally had two or three weeks max to sort this out.
I came along with a few different products. There was a black eye blood from Kryolan; I tried that. We tried some water-based face paint and different ways of applying it to the skin. We did hand-painted with the thought that maybe digital effects could pipe in and make it so it pours down our eyes using my markers as trackers. But nothing was quite right.
We watered down different eye bloods, and there were moments when we thought it could work, but it just wasn’t a hundred percent right. Then, later that night, I had this idea: I knew of this product that is a cream, and the minute water hits it, it starts bleeding — but it starts bleeding red. I thought that could work if it bled black, so I brought it along to my test.
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