The Meaning Behind The Makeup in Netflix’s The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

As the makeup department head for The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Candice Stafford-Bridge’s duties in the trailer run the gamut. Some days she’s applying a distinctive mark called the Devil’s Claw (“his physical manifestation of his grip on your soul”) to the skin of affected witches and warlocks, on others, she’s dolling them up for the high school sweethearts dance or a racy pagan feast.

Based on the Archie comic, developed by Riverdale’s Robert Aguirre-Sacasa, and filmed in Vancouver,  Netflix’s hit supernatural horror drama calls upon a variety of references. “There’s so much that we sample from on the show; it’s like a Picasso when we put all of it together!” says Stafford-Bridge. Yet the goal for the characters is ultimately a timeless quality. “We always want the women to look beautiful, but besides the Weird Sisters, none of them sit in front of a mirror for twelve hours,” she says. “They look how they look. We don’t want them to come across as trendy.”

The B.C. native’s credits range from The Flash and The A-Team to 80s throwback Hot Tub Time Machine and says she draws on everything from her vintage Vogue collection to her ‘old-school’ special effects skills as a graduate of the Blanche Macdonald makeup school for both the glam and the damned. “And there’s no little [makeup] bags on our show,” she adds, referring to the sheer volume of premium cosmetics chosen for each character’s signature style. “We us a lot of Bite Beauty, Make Up For Ever, Charlotte Tilbury, ILIA and Tom Ford.”

In the gallery below, Stafford-Bridges explains the meaning behind character makeup choices, and why a good skin care ritual is as important as demonic rituals.

Prev

Next

1/9

Sabrina Spellman (Kiernan Shipka)

The titular half mortal, half witch of the series still straddles two worlds, between the path of light at Baxter High with her friends and studying the path of night at the The Academy of Unseen Arts. “Sabrina goes on a bit of a journey and starts honing her powers, exploring what is the darker side of witchcraft,” says Stafford-Bridge. “Because she’s 16 in the show and is still in high school, we didn’t get too crazy with the makeup.” The inner shift is signaled through intense lipsticks like Christian Louboutin Velvet Matte Lip Colour in ‘Very Privé'. “We went darker because that’s still something a 16-year-old would attempt herself.” It’s all the more dramatic now that she’s signed her name in the Book of the Beast in Part 2 and her hair has gone from blonde to the signature ash white of her comic book character. Since she’s often pulled in opposite directions, so is her beauty look and she still has an angelic glow: “I use MAC Eyeshadow in ‘Shroom’ on her lids—it has a bit of a kick to it. And then in the inner corner and underneath, an light cream Anastasia Bevely Hills highlighting pencil. That white light is also somewhat virginal and true to the mortal side of her.”