How Do You Dress a Killer Doll?
The It girl everyone can’t stop talking about isn’t a socialite or an actress—it’s M3GAN, the animatronic doll with a taste for blood, her own eponymous Hollywood slasher film, as well as viral dance moves. (Side note: We’d love to see M3GAN and Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams compete in a dance-off.)
There’s a long, rich tradition of spooky-as-hell doll movies in Hollywood, but M3GAN has already forged her own visual identity in the canon. She doesn’t have the overtly macabre look of Annabelle or the campy carrottop hairdo of Chucky. Instead, M3GAN sits in the heart of what cultural critics call the “uncanny valley”—the idea of something that looks nearly human, but also not quite, creating an unsettling effect. Of course, that unsettling effect comes from her lifelike face and unusual eyes, but it also has a lot to do with her costume: a perverse and drab babydoll dress; flattened, enormous grosgrain pussy bow; skintight striped T-shirt; and white cotton tights.
We catch up with the film’s costume designer, Daniel Cruden—whose credits include Avatar: The Way of Water, Outlander, and The Hobbit films—to learn more about creating a creepy doll aesthetic for the 21st century, and which pieces one or two of the actors may or may not have stolen from set.
There are so many creepy doll movies out there already. Tell me about your research process for M3GAN.
Gerard [Johnstone], our director, had a very clear idea of what he wanted for M3GAN. I put together a pretty comprehensive reference board, but a lot of it came from his references and having a very specific idea of what he wanted to create.
The first thing I see when I see M3GAN’s costume is the babydoll dress. It started as lingerie, then became popular as a cocktail dress in the mid-20th century. How did you land on using a babydoll dress?
That’s right, babydolls were originally lingerie. Then, they became this hybrid of lingerie and daywear. We made a few tweaks like the sleeves, the high Peter Pan collar, so M3GAN’s babydoll would look less hot and more innocent, which enhances the creepiness. It’s unexpected that this doll would become such an evil creature, because she doesn’t look it. And it’s important in the context of the film that M3GAN was very much designed by the character of Gemma, so it’s her aesthetic we see coming through.
How did you make her babydoll dress feel so creepy?
It’s a neutral color, which enhances the creepiness. You don’t immediately look at her and associate her with anything in particular, either good or evil. It’s unexpected for a doll, because we usually expect dolls to be dressed in bright, approachable colors, but M3GAN is very much a sophisticated doll.
The dress is made from silk sateen, this fabric that’s very unforgiving. But I think what makes her so creepy is the combination of everything: the dress, the shirt, the leggings, the bow. It’s this camel-colored sateen with those innocent puffy shoulders and these childlike Mary Janes. There’s something about the combination that just isn’t quite right, and you can’t help but look at it and feel creeped out.
Was it difficult to make a dress for a robot?
So in filming this movie, to capture all the scenes and actions that M3GAN’s character has to do, we had three versions of M3GAN: an animatronic, robotic M3GAN; a mannequin, lifelike M3GAN; and we would also have an actress dressed like M3GAN. So what we designed had to work across all those versions of her.
We knew that she had to get down on all fours and run, we knew she would have to be killing people, and the babydoll ended up being great, because it doesn’t restrict movement. And the T-shirt she wears layered under the dress ended up being great as well, because it covers up the arms—because obviously an actress with human arms doesn’t have the same articulated metallic arms of a robot, so there’s great continuity onscreen as we switched between filming on the robot, the mannequin, and the actress.
Tell me about the pussy bow M3GAN wears. How did you land on that fabrication, on that shape?
We worked with simpler, longer, more hanging necktie pieces; less rigid bows; everything. There was a lot of testing, but ultimately we landed on the version you see in the film, because it was what Gerard had in his mind as a statement piece.
Historically, the pussy bow is a feminist statement in a way, because it was worn by women in male-dominated environments. Again, Gemma as a roboticist created this bow, and she is working in a very male-dominated environment, so she’s making a statement about how she’s dressing this doll. And by the end of the film, through the final action sequences, we see the pussy bow look less structured and make it look more drab, make it hang more as if M3GAN had been through something physically. So this bow tells a story of that action.
You’ve mentioned M3GAN’s creator, Gemma, a few times. What can you tell us about her style?
Gemma’s house is very 50s, very midcentury modern, and we see Gemma’s aesthetic playing out in her creation of M3GAN. Gemma herself is actually quite androgynous in her styling. She wears a lot of oversized shirts. She wears a lot of J.Crew basics, Citizens of Humanity jeans—kind of high-street, mainstream brands, nothing of a designer level. Gemma puts all her energy into creating toys. The only thing we custom-made that was special to Gemma were some silk-screened T-shirts that were pretty androgynous, from robotics or scientific conferences, the kind of promo T-shirt you get for attending an event.
I ask every costume designer this. Was there anything from set that your actors tried to steal?
We did have a couple of M3GAN dresses disappear off our inventory. We started with around 25, and then our inventory diminished. Not to point fingers or anything, but there’s only so many actresses on set who could fit into those dresses. Just saying.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
You Might Also Like
