How Puppetry Transformed Josh Groban Into ‘The Beast’

When costume designer Marina Toybina was tasked with building the Beast costume for ABC’s live action “Beauty and the Beast” broadcast, she looked beyond what Disney and the Broadway show had previously done. Instead, she found inspiration in puppetry.

Josh Groban, who played the enchanted prince-turned-Beast, would not be relying on prosthetics and makeup for his transformation. Toybina instead built a hollowed-out puppet that stood at around 10 feet tall. Within that, she ensured there was enough mobility for Groban, and with the aid of rods, he would be able to move the arms and feet, all built via a backpack structure. Says Toybina of the contraption, “I wanted to lean into the narrative that there’s this prince trapped inside of a beast.”

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Getting the Beast’s head right proved to be a trial and error process for “The Masked Singer” costume designer. “How do we get the eye level right? Gaby (H.E.R.) was 5 foot, 7 inches in her shoes, and you’ve got a 10-foot Beast,” explains Toybina.

The December 2022 live-action 30th anniversary special featured sets and costumes inspired by the 1992 Disney film, while Toybina created over 400 original outfits that pay homage to the animated feature but with a more 21st century touch.

When it came to the Beast’s costume texture, Toybina says, “There’s an animalistic take to it. You see a little bit of the hair and the fur. I wanted to create this enchanted and entrapment texture to him where his body is like decayed wood branches.

We shaved into every part of the foam, to create this look [of]growing roots.”

Toybina steered clear of the traditional brown, so she played with different shades of gray. “I tried bringing coppers into black, seeing what we could do with color tones and finally ended up on this interesting take of this kind of iridescent copper gray tone that then was coated over with pure silver. And it gave us this gradient of grayscale, which created almost like a shadow effect of the beast.”

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