The Great's hair and makeup team gets to have its cake and eat it, too

Indiewire

The Hulu comedy's hair and makeup designer, Louise Coles, says it's fun to tackle so many genres. “Things just turn and we go from a quite shocking or dark comic moment to quiet, loving emotive moments,” says Coles. “So in terms of aesthetic, you can’t be one or the other… It’s a real treat, actually, the writing, because I’m doing loads of different genres at once.” As Indiewire's Sarah Shachat puts it: "Because one of the abiding themes of the show is progress versus traditionalism, the wigs of those characters 21st-century audiences might find most sympathetic (such as Catherine and her mostly devoted confidante Marial) are more naturalistic, lace-front ones, with extensions deployed in the way they are worn today. Meanwhile, the more antagonistic ladies of the court are coiffed in hard-fronted wigs, closer to an actual 18th-century style. This allows The Great to have its cake and eat it, too, presenting a detailed, decadent world shot through by a modern sensibility."