Emmy-nominated artist Mackinnon describes the challenges of creating makeup for Star Trek: Picard

"Absolute Candor" -- Episode #104 -- Pictured: Sir Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard of the the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: PICARD. Photo Cr: Trae Patton/CBS ©2019 CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

It’s Emmy season and James Robert Mackinnon, the department head for special makeup effects on Star Trek: Picard, has plenty of reason to be excited. He and his team have been nominated in the category of Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup for a Series, Limited Series, Movie or Special for the Star Trek: Picard episode “Absolute Candor”. In a recent interview with Gold Derby, Mackinnon described the logistical and technical challenges faced by the makeup team on Picard, which just might shed some light on why they deserve all of those Emmy nods.

The conversation opened with a discussion about the impact of technology on the makeup team. As filming techniques have changed and the clarity of television screens has gotten better, the makeup team on Picard has to be able to rise to the challenge of added scrutiny. “With those 4K, 8K, 12K huge televisions that we’re all watching at home now, which are almost the size of screens at a movie theater, our detail has to refine,” he explains. “You see every little speckle, every little spatter that to your eye looks like color or skin, but the camera picks it up as paint.” 

Mackinnon went on to describe how an episode like “Absolute Candor” - which features a Romulan colony and plenty of pointy-eared extras - is one of the biggest challenges for the team. “Everything was very skin colored,” Mackinnon said. “As an artist, you can hide a lot with painting veins and all that kind of stuff, to hide all that…but with Romulans [being] flesh colored, it’s really the hardest thing.” Referring to Picard actress Peyton List, Mackinnon said “Putting prosthetic ears, eyebrow blockers, eyebrows on a woman with such beautiful skin, as an artist we have to step up our abilities because you’ve got to hide that with no place to go...We had to step up our game quite a bit on that show.”

The makeup department rose to another challenge, filming two episodes at the same time - the Vashti scene from “Absolute Candor” and scenes from the episode “Stardust City Rag”. “At two o’clock in the morning,” Mackinnon explained, “we had 107 artists sitting at Universal Stage 26 with their boxes of prosthetics, with their correct ear size, forehead size, the color of the actress or actor […] their eyebrows were all set up in front of them. That was a feat on its own.” “Stardust City Rag” was also nominated for two Emmys in the categories of Outstanding Period and/or Character Hairstyling and Outstanding Period and/or Character Makeup (Non-Prosthetic).

You can find the full video interview with Mackinnon on GoldDerby.com and of course, be sure to check out for yourself the Emmy-nominated makeup in Star Trek: Picard, streaming now on CBS All Access.