Jenna Ortega is a dead ringer for Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice — but that was not intentional.
“We had to be very respectful of the original film,” Christine Blundell, the film’s hair and makeup designer, exclusively told Us Weekly on Friday, September 6. “What we wanted with Jenna’s character was different than the Lydia child [in the original].”
While Ortega, 21, plays Astrid Deetz, the daughter of Lydia Deetz, in the Beetlejuice sequel, the characters are nothing alike. It was Blundell’s job to make the audience see that.
“The Lydia child was engrossed in the whole [thing] — she could see the dead people and she was never against it,” Blundell explained to Us. “Whereas Jenna’s character was kind of almost like, ‘Mum, you’re being daft, I don’t believe you.’ They were very different children growing up because Jenna’s character, Astrid, was very anti what her mum was about and didn’t believe in the afterlife at all.”
To reflect that attitude, the team kept Ortega looking “as normal looking as possible” with barely any makeup.
“She wore the tiniest little bit of concealer, should she need it,” Blundell recalled. “But other than that, it was all about a bit of lip balm, coming in for a cup of tea in the morning and having a chat [while] really putting up her hair as scruffy as we could do it. For her character, it just looked like she wasn’t really bothered.”
With Ryder, 52, the challenge was keeping Lydia’s look the same, only aged up. Blundell explained that the film’s director, Tim Burton, was “very specific” that he wanted Ryder to look similar to how she did for Beetlejuice in 1988.
“He wanted to discuss it when [the actors] were sitting in the chair with us. It was a collaboration between us,” the makeup artist recalled. “Once Winona started, we played about a few different looks and worked out that … we had to give a nod to that fringe. I think I’d have been literally blasted by the fans if she didn’t still have an essence of grown-up goth about her. We definitely decided to sort of stay in that area.”
For Ryder’s makeup specifically, Blundell made it look like “it had been done a few hours before,” because Lydia’s life is “too mad to keep going in and make her look precise.”
At one point in the movie, Blundell decided to “overexaggerate the fringe” for Ryder’s look.
“Almost take it back to as close to the original as possible,” she said. “That was where we gave the nod to the original.”
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is in theaters now.
