In the new Halloween episode of Elsbeth, the fan-favorite detective celebrates the holiday by channeling Eliza Doolittle, the “loverly” protagonist of My Fair Lady. As she investigates her latest case, Elsbeth dons several costumes from the musical, in looks varying from Eliza’s outfit as a Cockney street vendor to her iconic Ascot gown.
BroadwayWorld caught up with Costume Designer extraordinaire Daniel Lawson, who broke down the different pieces and shared how he worked to create the iconic looks for actress Carrie Preston.
In the episode, titled “Ick, a Bod,” Elsbeth must separate trick from treat in Sleepy Hollow when a rivalry reaches a ghoulish climax on Halloween night after a suburban housewife (Tony Award-winner Annaleigh Ashford) butts heads with a new neighbor. Meanwhile, Captain Wagner makes a frightening discovery about his daughter. The new episode of the CBS detective series is now streaming on Paramount+.
This interview has been condensed for clarity and length.
This Halloween episode is such a blast. I know you didn’t write the episode, but I’m curious if you know how the idea first came about. Was it something originally in the script, or did it evolve as you began thinking about costumes for the episode?
Last year, Elsbeth was Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which started our journey down the path with Audrey Hepburn and Elsbeth dressing in costumes from a particular movie. It was in the script, but I found out about this before we even started shooting the season. The producer, Gail Barringer, called me and said, “Hey, we’ve got something coming up down the road and I think you might want to jump on it.” So we immediately looked into it and started budgeting to make sure we could do it. I contacted John Kristiansen costumes in New York about building everything. If we were going to do it, I really wanted to build it. I didn’t want to just rent costumes. I wanted it to look beautiful on Carrie, and be exquisite fits on her. I was very excited that they allowed us to do it and we had plenty of time to get it done. It wasn’t a big rush, and all four of those looks were specifically in the script.
Costumes are something that are always present, but when you have an episode where costumes are spotlighted, does that amp the pressure up?
It does. I will say that costumes seem to be one of the things that the show is known for, which is great. I already feel a little bit of pressure because of that. I already feel that people are looking, but definitely getting a script where it really revolves all around the costumes definitely amps up the pressure, but also excitement.
Jonathan Tollins, who writes the show, gives me a pretty wide berth to do what I want to do with the costumes. There’s a beautiful trust between the writers and me and our producers and the actors, and it’s actually a terrific show to work on because of that. There’s just such good energy everywhere on the show, on set in the prep room, in the costume room. The writers are particularly wonderful to work with. They care so much and they’re so talented. It really has been great on this particular episode to have it all be all about the costumes and Carrie was such a good sport about it. I mean, that gigantic hat she had to wear. She was so great about it, so I was so relieved.
For the costumes here, did you look at Cecil Beaton’s original designs for My Fair Lady?
We took a lot of liberties with fabric choices and that sort of thing. We had to walk a line because, on one hand, we had to have our audience be able to look at the costume and know immediately what it was, what show it’s from, and all that. But, at the same time, we needed to deviate enough so that we weren’t recreating it due to legal reasons and things like that. We did a lot of research, and John Kristiansen also did a lot of research on the creation of the costumes. And of course, we had a lot of unique requirements on the show. When you watch, for example, the Ascot [scene], Audrey Hepburn moves very carefully. It’s not a lot of movement. And I knew, in our show, Carrie was going to be going through a maze doing lots of shenanigans. So there were a lot of challenges that this show presented that I needed to address in the fitting room with Carrie and in the construction with John Kristiansen.
It’s also fascinating to think about where Elsbeth may get these materials and recreate the dress herself.
It’s funny you say that, because in the fitting room, Carrie was like, “Would Elsbeth really have been able to find these things?” Maybe we pushed it a little bit. One of the other big things, too, that sounds like a small thing, but it really wasn’t, is that we shot this in the summer, so it was hot. We needed to be prepared for Carrie to be cool under all those long-sleeved fabrics. We tried to go with lighter-weight fabrics than what they were. Even with the flower saleswoman, we tried to go with lighter-weight fabrics to try to help keep her as cool as possible on set where we were shooting. We were right by the Bay in Queens, and every day was beautiful and sunny.
I’m curious about the fabrics and materials that you chose. It sounds like there were considerations for the weather, but how did you figure out what to use and what wouldn’t work as well?
We actually created the lace that we used on the Ascot dress. John Kristiansen showed me lace samples, and nothing seemed to be working quite right or having the hand or the drape that we wanted. They actually cut out all those little shapes of lace and then sewed them onto another lightweight fabric. All of that yardage was created by John Kristiansen, which allowed us to manipulate the fabric the way we wanted to. We created our own ribbons, sewing ribbons on top of each other to create the striping. The pink dress was just yards and yards of fabric. Again, we needed it to be lightweight. I wanted to be really fluffy like a confection and so we were very concerned about that. And then we also had to have the durability. She was wearing some of these dresses for 12 hours a day. We knew she’d be sweating. We knew she’d be walking around in a yard and a maze, and there was hay everywhere and sharp implements and all that. We had to be careful about the fabrics that we chose. Even for the footwear, we had to be careful that what we had worked well on her foot, that it was comfortable, gave her the stability she needed, and, at the same time, looked appropriate with the costume.
Elsbeth’s Eliza Doolittle costumes serve as such a contrast to the darker atmosphere of Sleepy Hollow. Was that contrast intentional from a visual perspective to help her stick out more?
Absolutely. We always try to have our Elsbeth pop. Even last year, when she was dressed like Holly Golightly and she was all in black, we had as many people around her as possible in brighter colors so that she was the one who stood out. We always try to single her out in the crowd. We want her to be like a child looking around at New York City, always sort of not quite belonging and looking up at everybody. In fact, a lot of times when they cast the extras or cops around her, they cast taller people so that she looks a little dwarfed and is always looking up at everybody and everything.
She has a real child’s wonder of the city. And I think that her character, versus when she was on The Good Wife and The Good Fight in Chicago, I felt like she sort of can let her freak flag fly a little stronger in New York. I think when she got here she was like, “I can be exactly who I am and who I want to be.” And so we’re able to embrace the bright colors and the textures and competing patterns and all of that.
We were so thrilled to have Annaleigh Ashford on the episode as our murderess. I’ve worked with her for several years now, and she’s so talented and just a wonderful person on top of being so talented. I was just sorry she didn’t really get to sing at all in the episode!
If you could dress up as a musical theater character for Halloween, who would it be?
How can you not dress up like King George in Hamilton? It’s so glamorous. And if I could even think, for five seconds, that I could look like Jonathan Groff- score!
Photo Credit: Michael Parmelee/CBS
