Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry presented Best Costume Design at the Oscars tonight and they absolutely committed to it. I mean really, is there anything else we can say? Look at these. Whoever designed those costumes deserves an award too. The Oscar for Best Costume Design went to Ruth Carter for Black Pahther. You can watch above, via ABC. [image via screengrab] Have a tip we should know? [email protected]<doc-sep>By now you already know that Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry earned the title of best-dressed Oscar presenters on Sunday as they announced the award, appropriately, for Best Costume Design. Their period-spanning, glee-inducing outfits combined elements from all of the category’s nominees: The Favourite, Mary Queen of Scots, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, Mary Poppins Returns, and winner Black Panther. What you don’t know, yet, is the backstory on how those ensembles came to be, as told by Katja Cahill, who has designed costumes for the Academy Awards for the past three years in a row. Slate spoke to Cahill, still recovering from a whirlwind weekend of sewing and bunny-affixing, about dressing McCarthy and Henry for the ceremony. This interview has been edited and condensed. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Slate: How did these costumes come together? Katja Cahill: It was, I want to say, 52 bunnies in 48 hours. Donna Gigliotti, who produced the show, came to me. She said, “I met with Melissa [McCarthy] at a luncheon, she has this amazing idea. Can you please call her?” We put the call in, we missed her, and I think the next morning I got her—it’s all such a blur. That must have been Friday morning. She said, “I loved The Favourite. I want to do the Queen Anne cloak. I want bunnies trailing behind me, just over-the-top, wild.” I think she actually talked to Sandy Powell, who was the designer on that movie specifically and said, “We have this idea, would you be offended?” And [Powell] said, “Oh my God, no, go do it.” Advertisement The bunny cloak concept was really in [McCarthy’s] heart, and the Margot Robbie hairpiece reveal for Mary Queen of Scots as well. Those were her two key elements. She said, “I want both of us to have elements of all [the nominees]. I’ll reveal the hat from Buster. I want to be part Black Panther. [Henry] should be part Black Panther, Mary Poppins, whatever, find a funny way to make it wild.” She said, “I’m going to be the queen,” and Brian’s like, “I’ll be Emma Stone!” I think he was a real fan of the movie, too. But then he said, “I have to have the Michael B. Jordan bangs.” I sat down and threw together these photo boards. I had Emma Stone from the neck down with Mary Poppins’ tie, and then I had Michael B. Jordan’s head there with Mary Poppins’ tilted hat. Advertisement Where did the bunnies come from? We wanted to make bunnies, but we really didn’t have the time to turn out 52 realistic-looking bunnies. There’s a place called Moskatels downtown, which is like a massive Michael’s basically. We started there and we just started picking up collections everywhere from there to CVS pharmacy. The toy stores only have so many. I had about five shoppers. I said to my mother at one point, “If you’re at CVS, see what’s in the Easter section. Call me, send me pictures.” Advertisement Advertisement We all came back with bags and bags. We wanted it to feel realistic but still silly. So we tried to put a variety of them. In The Favourite, she had so many different types, and they were her children. Some of them were pretty goofy. Some of them were dog toys! We were taking squeakers out of them. We thought the variety of having some standing, some sitting would feel like, “Oh, it’s her little court of bunnies.” What about those amazing wigs? I was like, “OK, we need this wig for Michael B. Jordan for Brian, and we need the Margot Robbie.” Now, that wig doesn’t exist, and that wig doesn’t happen synthetically, so our hairstylist came in. He had a long red wig, I think it was like a lace-front $2,000 wig or something crazy, and he cut, cut, cut, cut, cut. And he had Nair, he was Nair-ing the top. Advertisement How about the other elements of the costumes? First of all, Black Panther was my life. Those costumes were everything. I’m so glad [designer Ruth Carter] won, she really deserved it. We tried to do her justice, and we added the face paint to [Henry’s] costume because we were worried that maybe the hair wouldn’t hit right away, like people wouldn’t get it until later. Melissa was like, “I really have to rep Black Panther. It’s really important that both of us are repping both.” She actually didn’t have an element of Mary Poppins, but we thought that we did so much to Brian, between the cape and the hat, down to the polka dot gloves. Advertisement And then that hat from Buster Scruggs, we figured that piece was such a specific visual. She had spurs on and different things to kind of help, but that hat, we both agreed, it was going to get the first visual and you knew where it was from. Then, in the final fittings, she looked at us and said, “There has to be a bunny on the hat.” So we put that little guy. I mean, he was super-glued down. We were like, “Please, bunny, don’t fall off.” We called him Roadkill Bunny. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement What was it like getting McCarthy and Henry into the costumes during the actual show? I was told they’d bring Brian in early right from the carpet. We were looking at the schedule saying, “Oh my god, we have to be ready at the top of show.” Talk about anxiety attack! Usually you have three days on something like this. By the time they finally made it in the building, we did Brian’s first fitting, which was serious perfection. We just had to hem. And then Melissa, obviously being on the carpet everybody wanted to talk, we got her a little later. And then she ran in to hair and makeup right away. We got her, I would say 15 minutes before show. There were definitely bunnies with safety pins hidden at a certain point. She took her handpuppet, which I think really inspired her, and she walked. It was the first time she pulled this massive cloak. She said, “Oh my god, it’s heavy.” We built it with a little secret ingredient that let it glide on the stage because, truth be told, we never had rehearsal with it on that stage. My team sat in the back literally praying, “Please, don’t let it slip.” Advertisement Advertisement It was a big hit. Who knew? By the time we got downstairs there were memes and amazing articles. What was the secret ingredient you mentioned to help the cloak glide? We went back and forth—do we build a cardboard layer inside? We had to be so careful of the stage. There couldn’t be anything that could scratch or run, because there’s no time to fix. I just knew they would kill me if I did anything to ruin the stage. We got a very, very pliable soft plastic that held enough structure that sat on the bottom of the train, and then all of the bunnies that we adhered to the base, they were secured with glue and this and that, but they kind of became one with that costume piece through the fabric. We did a lot of testing. We had bunnies pulling up by their ears. We did not want to have a Gangs of New York dead rabbit situation. We wanted them to look alive and happy. Advertisement How many people did it take to bring this all together? It was 10 in house, and then Maggie Barry [another costume designer] and her house, because we didn’t have a huge work room at Dolby. We went to Gaspar Gloves to make the Mary Poppins gloves in [Henry’s] size, because ladies’ red gloves don’t exist in his size off rack. And then Baron Hats because you cannot find that hat, even at some of the most Western houses that you can rent from. In the end with all the individual glove people and whatever, it was a team of probably 20 people.<doc-sep>Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry stole the show as presenters for the Best Costume Design award tonight at the Academy Awards. In a parody mash-up of two Oscar-nominated films based on British royal history, McCarthy, donning the red hair of Mary Queen of Scots‘ Margot Robbie, flowed onto the Dolby Theatre stage in an elaborate gown adorned by as many rabbits as Olivia Colman had in The Favourite. “These artists create a pastiche of textiles with authenticity yet never distract from the story,” McCarthy deadpanned as she stroke her bunny rabbit puppet. “Costume designers construct the looks around a character to a particular time and place in the subtlest, subtlest of ways.“ “So true,” co-presenter Henry, agreed, dressed in a Mary Poppins Returns lacy look of his own. McCarthy initially struggled to open the Oscars envelope, due to her rabbit hand puppet, but she did announce Black Panther costume designer Ruth E. Carter as the winner. Carter became the first African American woman to win the best costume design Academy Award. The Favourite, Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Poppins Returns and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs were fellow nominees in the category.<doc-sep>
Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry rock our Favourite looks during the Oscars The Oscars type TV Show Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry delivered our Favourite looks of the night during the Oscars on Sunday. The two actors put on a fashion show when they came out to announce the category for Best Costume Design: McCarthy stepped out in a mash-up of The Favourite and Mary Queen of Scots in bunny rabbit couture, complete with a bunny hand puppet, while Henry rocked a Mary Poppins Returns look with lots of lace and dress to match. “Nuance and sophistication are just two qualities of the most effective costume design,” Henry said in contrast to his not-so nuanced look. McCarthy, decked out with as many rabbits as Olivia Coleman had in The Favourite and the red hair of Margot Robbie in Mary Queen of Scots, continued the gag by calling the point of costume design to create “a prestige of textiles with authenticity, yet never distract from the story,” as well as to “construct the looks that ground a character to a particular time and place in the subtlest — subtlest! — of ways.” Her rabbit puppet agreed. Melissa Mccarthy Oscars GIF by The Academy Awards - Find & Share on GIPHY Black Panther‘s Ruth E. Carter took home the award for Best Costume Design and made history as the first black woman to win that particular statuette. Her speech was moving, yet McCarthy and Henry had us rolling. Related content: