How a makeup designer meticulously created those eye-popping looks for ‘The Substance’

Demi Moore was a trouper. Her full concentration was always on the process, according to prosthetic makeup designer Pierre Olivier Persin, speaking from Paris about his work on “The Substance,” Moore’s much-lauded body-horror movie. That’s when I really got the full size of the project.” After that reading, “It’s like, ‘Oh, God, yeah, she wants tons of stuff to be done.’” That stuff included using a silicone base in the multiple face masks he made and sculpted with paint for Moore and co-star Margaret Qualley. “And then on top of that, we add all the little freckles and redness and veins and whatnot, just to give the final touch.” The designer stresses that although a prosthetic makeup designer does all that they can to make an actor feel as comfortable as possible — such as finding a really good chair and “playing nice music or finding out if they want to chat or be left alone” — poking at the “canvas,” i.e., the actor’s face and body, is not ideal. “Even the best suit in the world, when you are inside as a performer, it’s really hard, buried alive in a really steamy, hot, sweaty, disgusting thing,” says Persin, recalling that Qualley had only one eye visible while in a body suit.