How the Jules makeup team hand-created its 'genderless, angelic' alien
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When a UFO crashes into the backyard of Milton's (Ben Kingsley) home, destroying his bird bath and carefully tended flowers, he doesn't react with the kind of panic one might expect. And when an alien emerges, weak and stranded, Milton does the unthinkable, inviting the extraterrestrial into his home.
That heart and goodwill is at the center of Jules, the new feature from Marc Turtletaub, which opened in limited release this weekend. Jules is the name given to the visitor by Milton and two of his neighbors, Joyce (Jane Curtin) and Sandy (Harriet Sansom Harris) — and together they protect the alien from government agencies searching for the downed UFO while helping it regain strength and fix its damaged spacecraft.
Linda Kallerus/Bleecker Street Jane Curtin, Harriet Sansom Harris, Ben Kingsley, and Jade Quon in 'Jules'
They may not have been so welcoming of an alien that looked like something out of, well, Alien or Cloverfield. Jules had to have a gentle, unassuming look. Enter prosthetic makeup department head Joshua Turi and his team, which created a full-body creature — from a design by Turtletaub and writer Gavin Steckler — comprised of 11 individual prosthetics attached to actress Jade Quon's body. No CGI here.
"Jules has such a presence in this that I don't know if it would've worked better as a fully digital character," Turi explains to EW about having the chance to craft this character with practical makeup. "Having her alive there in the makeup, doing this and that, it just works. It's what we needed."
Turi says they were tasked with creating an alien that was "genderless, angelic," and "friendly." After a few rounds of design, they had what they were looking for — from mobility to structure.
Linda Kallerus/Bleecker Street Ben Kingsley and Jade Quon in 'Jules'
"We started with something a little more anatomical. There was some bone structure," Turi recalls. "The first one also had a little bit more of a butt. We ended up getting rid of the butt, getting rid of the ribs, and literally getting to a point that it was just smooth."
Quon, a stunt artist, had to work against all of her natural instincts as a performer, as she explains in the exclusive behind-the-scenes video above — trading action for stillness for four hours each day as the team completely covered her body. (In some scenes Jules is wearing a T-shirt, so that cut the time down to two hours.) The original plan, Turi says, was for Quon to get into makeup 12, maybe 15 times; it ended up being 30. And none of the pieces were reusable, meaning Turi's team constantly made new ones.
"This is probably one of the most difficult makeups we've done," admits Turi, whose many credits include Men in Black 3, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Saturday Night Live, where he worked for 15 years and won three Emmys. "There's not a wrinkle, there's not a scratch, there's not a hair; there's nothing... I'll say that this was probably the toughest makeup we've ever done. There's other jobs that are tougher builds. This was a tough build, don't get me wrong — it's a lot of different pieces of scope, a lot of different pieces of mold. So, I'm putting Jules right up there."
Linda Kallerus/Bleecker Street Behind the scenes of 'Jules'
And like so many superhero actors have talked about through the years regarding their own costumes, Turi's team had a more complicated job by ensuring Quon could easily go to the bathroom — which they figured out after a few redesigns.
"I can design a makeup that is just the most torturous thing on the planet," Turi says, "but you have to remember, there's a person wearing it."
You can watch Turi and his team at work transforming Quon in the video above. Jules is in theaters now.
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