The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain but the Elsbeth costumes are blooms that exhume styles from ballrooms. We tried, okay!
While not all of Elsbeth’s costumes make sense for ballrooms, the outfits in the Season 3 Halloween episode, “Ick, a Bod,” which sees the titular character played by Carrie Preston wearing some of her best Eliza Doolittle fits, absolutely do.
Chatting with DECIDER about the episode, Emmy-nominated costume director Daniel Lawson opened up about pulling together the lavish and layered (literally and metaphorically) looks to turn Preston into one of Audrey Hepburn‘s most iconic characters for a week.
“We built everything. The headwear was built, the underpinnings were built, the corsets were built, the jewelry was built,” he explained of each look from “Ick, a Bod,” adding that his team only had a few weeks heads up to get everything prepared, and had to also consider the practicality of each ensemble. In the new episode, Elsbeth is headed to Sleepy Hollow, New York around the time of Halloween to investigate a crime that brings her face-to-face with a suburban mom (Annaleigh Ashford) who may be hiding a secret. In true Elsbeth Tascioni fashion, though, one costume for such a big holiday could never be enough, hence a rotation of My Fair Lady looks.
According to Lawson, he was told by executive producers before prep even began on Season 3 to start thinking about My Fair Lady costumes, a whole slate of them, no matter the cost. “It’s the Halloween episode, let’s make it about the costumes,” he said, “So that’s what we did.”
To Lawson, who previously worked with executive producers Robert and Michelle King on Evil, The Good Wife, and The Good Fight, getting to work on the bright and colorful series set in New York is always a dream, but pulling off these specific costumes for Halloween — filmed in the dead-heat of summer, by the way –was a particular delight and challenge. Not only did they have to make the costumes
“We knew she was going to be walking a lot and running at times, we knew we needed to keep them off the floor in front so that she wouldn’t step on the dress and pull herself down as she walked,” Lawson explained of the care and attention that went into each look. At one point, they even had to make a pocket on set out of ribbon for Elsbeth to put her phone in, as she was without her trusty set of tote bags.
Another challenge came in the form of the headwear, including Eliza’s Elsbeth’s oversized white hat, which they fully attached to Preston’s head for feasibility. While it may have worked in an early fitting, the costume designer said things quickly had to be adjusted in order to keep Preston’s neck in an upright position.
“The first time that Carrie put it on, she’s like, ‘This is great!’ and then and then a few minutes later, she said, ‘Dan, I’m worried it’s going to be too heavy.’ So it was like a sinking ship and we were throwing the barrels off and stuff,” Lawson said with a laugh. The costume designer ultimately took it back to the dress and hat maker, John Kristiansen, who redesigned it to work for days of filming. “It became sort of effortless for her to wear,” he said of the second version.
“It seems like actors are so glamorous and it’s so fun and they have such a good time and stuff. I’m telling you, Carrie works really, really, really hard. And it is hard to be in costumes like that,” he said praisingly. “Carrie had to wear that outfit 12 hours a day… It’s hard work. Luckily, on this show, everybody is such a trooper and just goes the extra mile.”
The extra mile is right. While Lawson said that he came in expecting to have favorites out of the rotation, he and his entire team ended up putting so much into the garb in every scene that choosing a jewel out of the bunch would be impossible, as “each one is my child.” CBS has only released two of the looks from the episode, so fans will simply have to tune in to see the rest.
The Elsbeth Halloween episode airs Thursday, October 30 at 10 p.m. on CBS. Episodes stream the next day on Paramount+.
