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When news broke that Isabelle Fuhrman would be reprising her role as Esther in a surprise prequel to the 2009 film Orphan, many were skeptical that the now 23 year old actress would be able to convincingly play a young child. At just ten years old, Fuhrman shocked audiences with her terrifying performance as a malevolent 30-something woman masquerading as an innocent little girl in Jaume Collet-Serra’s original film. As the title implies, William Brent Bell’s prequel Orphan: First Kill follows Esther (originally known as Leena) and her murderous adventures before being adopted by the Coleman family, including her bloody escape from the Saarne institute and her affinity for blacklight painting.
Concerns about Fuhrman passing for a child proved to be unfounded and she once again turned in a fantastic performance as the baby-faced killer. Fuhrman does look remarkably young, but even the accomplished actress couldn’t pull off such a bold transformation without a little help. Crucial to the verisimilitude of Orphan: First Kill’s outlandish premise is makeup effects artist Doug Morrow. The veteran MUA has been working in the industry for more than three decades and boasts impressive credits such as The X-Files, Capote, Godzilla, Hunter Hunter, Channel Zero, and Station Eleven. As makeup department head for Orphan: First Kill, Morrow painstakingly crafted a design to transform the mature actress into a believable child.
Bloody Disgusting sat down with the talented artist to talk about how he pulled off such an impressive metamorphosis.
Bloody Disgusting: It’s no easy feat to essentially turn an adult actress into a 9 year old girl. How did you approach the makeup design for Esther’s character?
Doug Morrow: Well, it all started several months before we started shooting. I met with Brent, the director, and he really wanted to try and use Isabelle. Of course I’d seen the original movie so I knew she had to be at least 20 years old by then. So we came up with an idea of doing what we call a proof of concept test. We took an actress here where I am in Winnipeg, someone I had worked with before who I knew was probably around the same age. I didn’t find out till later she was actually in her early 30s, but she looked quite young. She looked like she could be 23 or 24. I had worked with her before and had a lifecast of her so I just quickly created what we call appliances, pieces that you glue on to make her face look more rounded. I think I might have made some dentures for her too because little kids’ teeth they’re kind of less teeth and more gum. We got a photographer here in my studio and did the zoom thing with Brent. We shot a whole bunch of “before” photographs from all kinds of different angles and different lighting. Then I went away for two hours and made her up. Brent came back on zoom and we shot a whole bunch of “afters” in the makeup with different lighting and different angles. Then they took all those pictures and created a storyboard kind of template of how we would approach this with Isabelle.
Once the go ahead was then given to try it with Isabelle, I had her face and her teeth cast in L.A. Then I did the same thing. I built some appliances for her, some dentures. This was during Covid so I couldn’t actually go to L.A. to do the test. I had a friend of mine in L.A. do the test and I think they built a little set. She shot some scenes. They kind of edited that together and that was given the go-ahead to use Isabelle. This was over several months. Then there were more tests. I built some smaller things around her mouth to kind of make it a little more rounded. Isabelle has such a youthful countenance. What I ended up doing was just traditional highlight and shadow beauty techniques. We also used the dentures. Brent’s great idea was to have contact lenses made that made her eyes look bigger. The eyes you’re born with are the same size throughout your life and your whole body catches up to your eyes so that’s why little kids look like they have such big eyes. We had these contact lenses made that made her irises look bigger. That helped too with making her look younger. And then of course there was great lighting and all the angles to help sell the whole thing.
BD: How much of a collaboration was it working with William Brent Bell once filming began?
DM: It was a big collaboration. Once we got past the whole makeup, costume, and hair process it was more lighting and camera angles to give the illusion that she was still nine or ten. It was always a collaboration and that was what was great about working with Brent. He is a great collaborator and that doesn’t always happen on every movie. He’s just a terrific person to work with.
BD: It’s interesting because in the first film we’re watching a child actress who is supposed to be in her thirties and in this film it’s the reverse, an adult actress playing a little girl. How much of the look of the first film did you use for inspiration?
DM: We pretty much just went with Isabelle’s own features. We did borrow significantly with things like her adult teeth. I created dentures that I tried to match as closely as possible to what they did in the first film. We also had an effect where you see Isabelle taking out her little kid teeth and you see her adult teeth underneath. That was an interesting makeup chore to create because you had to have a special set of dentures that would fit on top of the other dentures without making it look like she has a hockey mouth guard in her mouth. [Laughs] Isabelle performed it perfectly. She made it look like it was just a natural thing that she did every day. But yeah, we didn’t borrow too much from what they did in the first movie. It was more just trying to keep Isabelle looking fresh-faced and rounded like a little girl.
BD: How long was the transformation process for a day of filming?
DM: We boiled it down to probably 35-40 minutes at the most. As you do a makeup look more and more every day you get faster so it was probably about half an hour give or take. Then there’s always touch ups during the day so it’s constant maintenance
BD: What was it like working with Isabelle Fuhrman?
DM: Isabelle was a great person to work with and a great collaborator. She had good ideas and was up for whatever was needed to create the illusion. She never complained about anything and was just a joy to work with. I’ve been doing this for 33 years now and whenever you work with an actor you always hope that it’s a good working relationship. You’re working really closely with someone, but I never assume that we’ve created a friendship. If that happens that’s great and she’s one of the people that a friendship developed. We keep in touch now. She actually worked with another actress who I became friends with. They did a movie four or five months ago in the tropics somewhere and figured out that they had both worked with me. So they texted me and were emailing me that they were working together. She’s a consummate professional and I think just did an amazing job. That was a very difficult thing to pull off and I think she did it incredibly.
BD: What was the biggest challenge that you had on the film?
DM: Well the biggest challenge was trying to make her look as young as possible. [Laughs] It wasn’t that difficult because she was only 23 and has a really youthful countenance on top of that. We also had some blood effects. There’s the big fight at the end where Julia (Stiles) and Isabelle get all bloody. Sometimes actors don’t like to be covered in blood but they both loved it and again approached it as total professionals. It took several days to film all that and we gave them both what we call sclera contact lenses to make them look like they have broken blood vessels in their eyes. Those aren’t just simple contacts you can pop in, these are big. They cover the front of your eyeball. We had a contact lens tech, but they both did it really well. They were just great collaborators and didn’t mind [Laughs] at least in my presence didn’t mind too much being covered in blood.
BD: There are so many scenes that I love, but my favorite is when Esther has stolen the car from Tricia. She’s riding down the road and she’s kind of kicking back. [Laughs] What was it like to be able to style her as an adult for a change or was most of that transformation her in the scene?
DM: Most of it was her in the scene because she’s putting on lipstick and she has sunglasses. For me it was really interesting because as we’re watching the shoot she’s portraying herself as this little girl. When we shot that scene it was actually really weird because it was like, “oh yeah she is an adult and she is an adult in the story.” [Laughs] So it was weird to see that character become an adult but it didn’t look like it was a forced kind of thing. That was her natural state and she was like, “oh yeah, I can finally be myself for a few minutes.” It was just fun to watch. I seem to remember Isabelle and I collaborating and conferring on the color of lipstick with Brent.
BD: Well, red lipstick is not easy to pull off, especially not when you’re driving. [Laughs]
DM: No, definitely not. [Laughs] I think we chose one that was kind of a burgundy red because that kind of color can make you look more mature. And Isabelle pulled it off really well.
BD: I want to back up a little bit and ask what made you want to become a makeup artist?
DM: I’ve loved movies ever since I can remember. I was born in the late ‘60s so I loved all the old universal horror movies like Dracula and The Wolfman and Frankenstein. I don’t know why, but I was just drawn to the makeup aspect of it. In 1973 I saw the original Planet of the Apes and that just blew my mind. And that was it. I had to know how they did it and I wanted to do that. I was a little kid so I just wanted to work on Planet of the Apes movies until I got a bit older [Laughs] but I had to understand the process. It took years because back then we didn’t have YouTube and the internet and phones that you could use to look stuff up. It was quite a laborious task especially for a kid who was eight or nine going to the library trying to figure this out. There weren’t a lot of materials out there that showed how to do it. That’s how it started for me. I was always kind of experimenting with it and messing my face up.
I had great parents who were very supportive. I remember once when I was probably about ten or eleven, there used to be a product called Derma Wax which was like a nose putty you could put on your face and make a new nose or something. In our basement I noticed my parents had these bricks of something called Paraffin Wax and I figured, “oh it’s gotta be the same thing. They’re both wax.” [Laughs] So my mom melted a brick of the Paraffin Wax in a double boiler and I took it up to the bathroom and proceeded to put it on my face and make myself look like I was the melting man. [Laughs] I had this like molten brick of wax that I probably easily could have burnt myself. [Laughs] As I got older, I just experimented more and more. I was born and raised in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and they didn’t make movies here when I was a kid. They only made movies in Hollywood. I was about twenty when I finally told my parents I wanted to try and do this for a living. I don’t know how I’m gonna do it but I want to try. They were very supportive. And here we are! [Laughs]
BD: Looking over your career, you’ve done a lot of work in the horror genre. What is it about horror that you love and what are the biggest challenges?
DM: Well, I’ve always loved horror. One of my all time favorite movies is The Exorcist. I’m not really a blood and guts kind of guy. When I was younger I went through that phase and I still do movies that require that kind of stuff, but the appealing part about that aspect of horror is the technical issues in dealing with how you make it look like somebody’s throat is cut and blood shoots out. My real love though is more character makeup, making someone look old or like making Isabelle look younger. You can create an alien or a wolfman and people are gonna think that’s awesome, but they’re not gonna tell you that’s not what it looks like. But if you do old age makeup on somebody, everyone sees old people every day. We know what’s right and what’s wrong. So to be able to achieve that and make it look real is a great artistic feat which I find quite satisfying. That being said, of course, working on horror movies, you have more or less a lot of freedom to create neat characters. I did a movie in the spring where I got to create this really interesting character that you’ll see next year. And hey, there’s nothing more fun than putting blood on people and making them look like they’ve had their necks sliced or their heads chopped off. [Laughs]
BD: What’s your favorite example of makeup effects and what’s your favorite transformation from your own career?
DM: I’ve never really done a movie like The Lord of the Rings. Or there was a movie that came out in 1985 called Legend with Tom Cruise that had these incredibly amazing characters created by Rob Bottin. I’ve never done something that fantastical which I think would be a lot of fun. As far as my most favorite thing that I’ve ever created myself, I did a Canadian TV movie about a very well-known politician by the name of Jack Layton who passed away at age 61 from cancer. He was a beloved politician and had a lot of impact on Canada. I had to take this actor through different stages of his life and not only make him look like Jack Layton, but when he was younger he was heavier. Then he gets older and then he gets sick so there were a lot of technical and artistic challenges. It’s the only project I’ve ever worked on that when I watch it now I don’t think about how he’s got makeup on. I just watch it for the story and it never crosses my mind that he’s covered in prosthetics and shaved his head, he’s got a wig and fake mustache and contact lenses and dentures. So that’s the one that I’m most proud of.
BD: Are there any monsters, villains, horror characters, or franchises on your bucket list that you would like to work with in the future?
DM: Well now that they do Planet of the Apes all digital that’s gone. So that’s too bad. [Laughs] I’m just content working on projects where hopefully I can create more interesting characters. My greatest joy is doing aging makeup so if I can just keep doing those that would be great. Last year I did four projects that required aging stuff and I think I have another one that I’ll find out about today. But in terms of franchises, I mean it would be neat to work on a James Bond movie. Or something like “The Lord of the Rings” would be fun. I wouldn’t want to be in charge of a project that huge though. I think that would be too stressful. [Laughs.] Yeah I can’t really think of anything now. If I was back in the 70s, it would be Planet of the Apes! I would pay you to work on a Planet of the Apes movie. [Laughs]
BD: You’ve got a lot of really exciting projects in post-production right now like Painkiller, with Uzo Aduba and Matthew Broderick. And this is the one that really caught my eye: Violent Night with David Harbour as Santa Claus! Is there anything you can tell us about these or anything else exciting that you have coming up?
DM: Painkiller, that was a lot of fun. It was kind of a last minute thing. They needed aging makeup for an actor so I quickly built it and went to Toronto and worked on that. And I loved it. Violent Night was a hard movie. There were a lot of makeup effects, a lot of blood effects and then turning David into Santa Clause. I was the prosthetic makeup designer but Kristy Greig was the makeup department head. She did David most times. Sometimes I would help and then Kristy got Covid at the end of the shoot so I did David for the last week. It was crazy. It was a lot of work but it was a lot of fun. I think when that movie comes out people are just gonna be blown away by it. Nothing like this has come out that I can think of in a long time and it’s just so different and so fun.
BD: I am very excited about it! [Laughs] But you mentioned something that caught my ear. You were the makeup department head on “Orphan: First Kill.” How much more challenging is it to be the head of that department or do you prefer to be more specialized like when you mentioned working on David’s look?
DM: For years when I first got in the business all I wanted to do was glue rubber onto people. [Laughs] and that was pretty much what I did for the first seven or eight years. I lived in Vancouver my first seven years because they didn’t make movies in Winnipeg. Then we moved back to Winnipeg and started having kids and all the family was here. What happened was the year we moved back, we got a film tax credit and they started bringing movies here. The first few years I traveled a bit but I realized that if I wanted to continue making a living as a makeup artist I had to do the regular makeup. When I was younger, it didn’t interest me but when I lived in Vancouver, people kept telling me if you want to work all the time you should learn to do beauty makeup. And I did. So when I moved back to Winnipeg I started getting jobs as what we call the Makeup Department Head which means you’re in charge of looking after all of the actors and their looks. It’s a lot of work. It’s a big job because you have to deal with a lot of personalities. The director, the producers, and the actors all have input. Sometimes it’s a great experience and sometimes it’s not so great and can be quite stressful.
So I did that for years and years. Then more movies started coming to Winnipeg that required more effects stuff so a lot of the time I was doing both jobs. I was doing the regular makeup and I was also building and applying whatever prosthetics makeup stuff would be required. A few years ago I did it on a TV series called Channel Zero. I did all of the seasons but the first season I did both Department Head, the regular makeup, all the prosthetic stuff, and all the prep leading up to shooting. I was working seven days a week because I’d have to be on set every single day. We were continually building stuff plus I would have to work on the weekends and it was just way too much. It also made me realize that why I really got into this business was because of movies like Planet of the Apes and The Exorcist. I don’t want to say more of the creative stuff but, I mean frankly I rather glue a rubber nose on somebody than do their blush nowadays. [Laughs] So I’ve kind of slowly segued from doing that to just doing special makeup work. For instance on Violent Night, I’m just there for the makeup effects. I’m just there doing all of David Harbour’s injuries and blood and the effects from all the fights. I’m building all the appliances required for that kind of stuff and then supervising that on set. And that’s the place that I really want to be.
It’s a different kind of stress but to me it’s just a more artistically satisfying stress.
Orphan: First Kill is now available on Digital and Paramount+.
