Fallout proved to be a huge hit when it released earlier this year, once again showing that we are in the age of very solid video game adaptations (even if we still get the odd Borderlands here and there). A lot of effort went into bringing the Wasteland into live-action, but apparently, one character stood out as quite the pain according to make-up artist Michael Harvey.
Speaking with PC Gamer, Harvey outlined that Lucy – played by Ella Purnell – was the cause of two major issues on the show. Nothing to do with Purnell as a person, but the make-up team did have to spend a surprising amount of effort on her.
“The one thing that a lot of people don’t know unless you’ve done a lot of research on Ella Purnell, she’s covered in tattoos,” said Harvey. “Head to toe, covered in tattoos. And for pretty much all of episode one, she’s running around in a wedding dress… So every day for at least a month, I’m sitting there covering tattoos… anytime her vault suit is down, I’m covering tattoos.”
Harvey also ran into more work when the writers decided Purnell’s finger would be cut off and replaced by a corpse’s finger in episode 4. “It was such a chore, every day, I had to paint her finger,” Harvey said. “She’d pick up something, she’d put it in her pocket. She’d go wash her hands. Oop, gotta paint her finger.”
The finger hasn’t yet healed, and so in Season 2 Harvey will likely be painting it all over again. Still, even if it is a chore, it helps to keep us grounded in the world Amazon has created. And it’s probably one of the small but meaningful reasons why the show is so beloved.