In Netflix’s It’s What’s Inside, the body-swapping sci-fi thriller directed by Greg Jardin, every frame is layered with visual clues—and the film’s makeup head, Claire Amadea was at the heart of that storytelling. Claire, whose other credits include Metal Lords and Pig) oversaw everything from hyper-detailed tattoos to prosthetic effects, bringing emotional nuance and technical precision to a genre-blending film that shifts under your feet. We sat down with Claire to talk about the art of invisible detail, the joy of sneaking personal signatures into their work, and what it takes to create character looks that hold up under the most intense cinematic scrutiny. It’s What’s Inside is available to stream on Netflix now.
Can you tell us about your work on It’s What’s Inside? What made this project special for you?
I ran the makeup department on It’s What’s Inside, overseeing three other makeup artists and overall design of the makeup looks on the show including special makeups like tattoos and two prosthetic makeups. I knew as soon as I saw the pitch deck and read the script it was going to be a really interesting project, but seeing how it’s blown up since its release has been really exciting. I haven’t seen anything quite like it before. I have to say collaborating with Greg Jardin and all the actors was really creatively fulfilling and fun, plus getting to see my team take this on in stride and really excel made me really proud. We made a really good-looking, creatively complex final product.
We heard you hid one of your own tattoos in Dennis’ look for It’s What’s Inside—do you often leave subtle personal signatures in your work?
I did. Hahaha. This was the show I started doing that on, because I found it funny and Gavin went a long with it, plus it’s so small you’d never know unless you hit the right freeze frame and really hunted for it. You always put something of yourself into the work, but I decided to take it literally, and there’s not a lot I won’t do for the bit. Now if there’s a character with tattoos, I definitely try to slip something in there because I’m committed to it, and it’s just fun knowing it’s there. I’m sure I’ll find a way to do it beyond tattoos soon, but that’s the easiest one.
What was the biggest technical challenge you faced on It’s What’s Inside, and how did you overcome it?
It’s probably a toss up between designing looks for regular lighting and color-saturated lighting or Dennis and Maya’s death scene which involved some prosthetic work. We didn’t have a ton of prep time, which isn’t too unusual. It meant we had to roll with the punches a little, but nothing went too haywire for us.
Photo Credit: Kevin Fletcher
For It’s What’s Inside you created looks that had to work under different lighting gels—can you walk us through your testing process to make sure everything read correctly?
We didn’t have an opportunity to test much beyond establishing what the primary looks were going to be, so I leaned on my existing knowledge of lighting and color theory to inform the choices we made. Color cancels itself out when it comes to lighting – red cancels red, green cancels green, and so forth whereas complimentary colors opposite on the color wheel don’t react the same way – which is the same mechanism the RGB art that features in the film works. Greg wanted to use the same concept to break the fourth wall to work as a key to tracking the body swaps via panes of colored glass, and we used corresponding lighting gels in red and green to create the effect. Overall, we didn’t have to adjust much, but sometimes we’d have to step in to bump something up if we saw it wasn’t working on monitor. This is one of the reasons it’s important to have enough staffing to have a makeup rep or two on set at all times – if we’re there, we can catch and correct things.
You also worked on Strange Darling. What exactly did you do for that film?
I did. I was the special effects makeup department head starring in prep, but left the show partway through before filming was complete. I established a large portion of the prosthetic makeups on the show – Willa’s ear prosthetic, the makeup on Ed Begley Jr. after he’s beaten to death and making his dead body dummy, Kyle Gallner’s death scene, and set up another makeup that didn’t end up being used – including the fabrication, with my key from It’s What’s Inside Sara Dickman. We worked on Strange Darling just a couple of months before It’s What’s Inside in fact.
Any fun stories you can share about Strange Darling?
I’m never going to forget Ed Begley Jr. giggling over the makeup we did on him. He was absolutely delighted to be put into the fairly extensive trauma makeup and he was very protective of the tattoo that the makeup department head put on him.
How do you approach the storytelling aspect of makeup? What’s your process for translating a character’s arc into visual details?
My design process has several components. I pull information from all sorts of areas from the most basic of what’s written explicitly in the script and collaborating with the director to detailed conversations with the actors about their thoughts on the character and their arc. I’m really granular and detail-oriented and I really like to plan things out. I draw on my life experiences, things I’ve studied (which gets really handy when it comes to believable injury makeups), and a lot of research to inform design decisions. For example, on It’s What’s Inside I was able to draw on a couple of decades of life experience in the tattoo community to make design and layout decisions for the extensive tattoo work. I studied emergency medicine for a short time in my late teens/early 20s, which I tap into whenever I need to do bruising or other injuries. I try to always keep learning as well.
Do you have a personal philosophy or aesthetic that guides your work across different genres?
Authenticity is my driving force creatively. It has to be real and based in reality and make sense in context. I do tailor everything to the specific project or genre – what I do on a sci-fi thriller doesn’t necessarily play well in a comedy. I also believe that less is more, and I’m happy to not put makeup on someone if it’s appropriate to the character, story, setting, and format. I find it distracting as a viewer when a character who’s not supposed to be wearing makeup clearly has a full face of foundation on, so I’m a big fan of minimal spot concealing and sheer matte creams whenever possible or necessary.
How has the increase in streaming content changed the type or volume of work you get?
For a while, the increase in streaming meant a lot of work for a lot of people in markets everywhere. It gave me my first union department head opportunity, and kept me steadily employed for several years. The Pacific Northwest has always had relatively frequent work – we had network shows like Grimm, Leverage, and The Librarians that went on for several seasons each, plus large scale movies – especially for a small market, but the streaming boom really kept us going for years. The contraction we’re seeing right now is really scary though, and I’ve never seen it this uncertain for this long. It feels really strange to be campaigning for an Emmy nomination in the middle of this globally massive industry drought and everything else that’s happening in the world right now.
What would you tell your younger self just starting out in the film makeup industry?
You’re actually really good at the technical aspect of special makeup effects and don’t listen to anyone who tells you otherwise. I had a shitty ex tell me that “girls aren’t good at mold making and the technical elements” (this was also long before I came out as non-binary) and it made me really insecure and unsure of my skills for the better part of a decade. Now I spend a decent amount of my work engineering practical effects rigs and fabricating and it turns out I’m pretty okay at it.
Thank you to Claire Amadea for taking the time for this interview.
