Inside Elle Fanning’s Alien Alter Ego Transformation For 'Margo’s Got Money Troubles'

Few things visually represent the saying ‘all or nothing’ quite as well as the beauty choices within “Margo’s Got Money Troubles”. One minute, Margo (Elle Fanning) is an ordinary, new, single mom: exhausted and overwhelmed, with the chipped fingernails to prove it. The next, she’s a futuristic, Barbarella-inspired alien, enchanting her OnlyFans followers with her mesmerizing mint-green skin.

“Well, I always look at the costume first,” makeup department head Erin Ayanian tells The Set Set, when asked how she approached the project. So, Mirren Gordon-Crozier, the show’s costume designer, was naturally her first port of call. Then, she consulted with Fanning herself: “Elle and I have a funny little ‘twin speak’ at this point. We've been working together for so long, so I know her taste very well and she knows my taste. She always has great ideas and we just riff back and forth about what we might like to do. It's a pretty natural and easy process.”

Some actors might approach a role with a strict set of beauty rules in tow—use this specific foundation, only apply bronzer here, avoid that lipstick shade—but not Fanning. “She wants to explore the outer limits of what might be possible with the character,” explains Ayanian. “She's adventurous and she doesn't have a lot of vanity when it comes to making the character. She's willing to do what needs to be done in order to tell the story, which is amazing. You don't always get that.”

For Jaime Leigh McIntosh, the show’s hair department head, inspiration begins with the script as well as the costumes. But the trick is to be flexible: “Sometimes you can read something and have an idea of what you think it looks like and then it's completely different to what everyone else is thinking. So you have to stay really open-minded and kind of go with the flow and give your input where it's needed.” This, both McIntosh and Ayanian agree, is why references are so important. It’s about “getting what they have in their brain into yours,” says McIntosh. Despite this, both artists admit to eschewing traditional references for Margo’s mom scenes. Rather, they were inspired by “real life”.

Margo the Single Mom

“It's not a fantasy character or any kind of highly stylized character,” says Ayanian. “Margo’s an average college student in a sort of middle class community. So there weren't a lot of reference pictures, per se, for the makeup in her day-to-day context. It was just about making her look relatable and like a real person would look.” Ayanian’s idea of “real person” makeup meant making Margo look like she’d done it all by herself. Any hint of a professional makeup job was carefully hidden. “She's just like a regular kid and she had to look pretty, but also believable.” 

And while reference pictures were lacking, Ayanian took a trip to Fullerton (the college town where the show is set) before filming to catch the vibe. “I hung out on the college campus and went to a few little cafes down there and just saw what the local kids looked like.”

Ultimately, she left Margo looking pretty natural, with a tiny helping hand from a lipstick from Charlotte Tilbury in the shade Walk of No Shame to enliven her cheeks. “I mean, it really mostly is natural,” confirms Ayanian. “She has a child, she's not gonna be doing a four, five, six step routine.” The lipstick simply added a “glow” in the “perfect color that looks like blood” rushing to your cheeks. Ayanian also accentuated Fanning’s complexion with freckles—which looked phenomenally real during close-up shots—using a NYX eyebrow pen with the tip cut off “so it’s not so sharp” on the skin.

Otherwise, Fanning’s character only really needed a little extra sweat (oily lip balm topped with Evian spray), and a lick of eyeliner when going out. In an early scene, we see Shayanne (Michelle Pfeiffer) applying eyeliner on her to help bring out her eyes. Margo resists, but later when interviewing for a job, takes her mom’s advice. “She repeats that [eyeliner] shape when she's trying to look a little bit more put together, a little more presentable. We kind of riff on that. She's pulling away from mom and wanting to be her own person and have her own style, but you can't help but be influenced by your mother and what you've grown up around. It seeps out in little ways that you're maybe not even aware of.”

McIntosh approached Margo’s hair in a similar fashion, without bells and whistles. “I leaned into it being real and relatable, making sure it always looked like something she'd done herself,” she says. “There are moments before she falls pregnant where there's a freedom to her, when she doesn't have the weight of that world that's about to come down on her. So we used her natural texture and softness and kept it quite pretty.” At home, Margo’s hair is scraped back into a messy bun. At a job interview, her hair is pulled back into a tighter knot, smooth and slick with R+Co’s Blowout Balm, because it looks “put-together” but it’s quick and easy to do without using any time-consuming hair tools. When out with friends, McIntosh leaned into fun hairstyles like space buns, though kept these imperfect and homemade-looking.

Margo the Hungry Ghost

When Margo leans into her new revenue stream—working as an OnlyFans creator, things get exciting, aesthetically speaking. She transitions between an everyday mom and a sexy, colorful, Barbie-like alien. She begins by experimenting with a bit of glitter, and her hair is loose and tousled “so that she can flip it around and play with it depending on her poses for photos,” says McIntosh. As her online following grows, so does her commitment to the role of HungryGhost.

It took the makeup department two and a half hours to paint all of skin that would be visible on screen the unique shade seen in the finale. While it’s an out of this world look, Ayanian wanted to make it seem as if something Margo’s cosplaying roommate (Thaddea Graham) could have achieved. “It had to look like something that Susie could conceivably have done. We wanted it to have some charm and cuteness, but It couldn't look too artful or too sophisticated,” explains Ayanian. In reality, the look was created using an unconventional method: with a teeny-tiny tube of liquid eyeshadow that comes with a small lip gloss-like applicator. “This is so silly,” chuckles Ayanian, “because you could use an airbrush and find some greater colors and do it real quick with a spray. But I just wasn't finding the intensity of pigment and the depth of color that I wanted from those methods.” 

Instead, she estimates she gathered 100 of the About Face Matte Fluid Eye Paints in the shade Replicant, and banged the solid, non-squeezy tubes on a counter until all of the paint came out, before combining it with a thinning agent and painting it onto Fanning’s skin using brushes and as well as her hands. “I had myself and my two assistants just swathing her whole body in it and her face. It was a little tricky to work with because you can't really make a mistake and then fix it because it sets, but I do think that it got the best color result.” Next, Ayanian used Danessa Myricks Beauty Colorfix Liquid Metals in Silver to add a touch of sparkle atop Margo’s freshly painted skin. After that, she used her regular go-to makeup productions to create dimension on her face. The main difference being that she contoured Fanning’s face with a dark blue hue rather than your typical shade. The actress’s lips were left her natural pink, and her cheeks were topped with a rosy blush.

Inspired by characters like Barbarella and Barbie, as well as old shows like “Lost in Space” and AI creators like Bonita Louise Nichols, Ayanian wanted Margo to look pretty, like “a very little girl's idea of pretty,” even though Margo’s Hungry Ghost was very “green and literal.” Her pink wig came about simply because McIntosh liked the way it contrasted Margo’s green skin. “It's something that I just ordered online. I did nothing to it except cut the bangs on it. So it is very much out-of-the-bag. Something that is very believable that Margo would have done—just purchased and popped it on.”

Things get really surreal when Margo has a dream of her Hungry Ghost persona. Because the dream wasn’t real, Ayanian and McIntosh didn’t need to make her look so DIY. Here, McIntosh sewed three wigs together to create a ’60s-inspired, beehive masterpiece. Ayanian cut little strands of wig into individual lashes, topping them with celestial sequins. And Margo’s nails were long, sharp, and silver, pointing out of her gloves like antennae.