Sharon Gilham (‘The Wheel of Time’ costume designer) on how Elizabeth Taylor inspired the look for Lady Suroth [Exclusive Video Interview]
“I had never worked on a show of this scale before, so the whole things was a big exciting project for me,” shares Sharon Gilham about her role as costume designer on the massive Prime Video fantasy series “The Wheel of Time.” She joined the show for its second season and as she was prepping for those episodes, the team was “finishing off Season 1.” Though the universe of the series makes it “such a big project,” the designer says she “was just determined to enjoy it.” Gold Derby spoke to Gilham as part of our “Meet the Experts” TV costume design panel. Watch our exclusive video interview above.
Gilham’s first order of business for the second season was to create the Seanchan army, who are aligned with the series’ evil force called the Dark One. The show’s creator Rafe Judkins tasked the costumer with creating “an army like no one’s ever seen before.” She says she feels “lucky to have a showrunner who was so open to experimentation,” and it was her intention to “push the boundaries” and “have some fun” with this huge task. She began by turning to the series of books by Robert Jordan, which are “very, very specific about these different cultures,” so the costumer had “loads of source material to work from.”
WATCH our exclusive video interview with Rafe Judkins, ‘The Wheel of Time’ Season 1
The world of “The Wheel of Time” is vast and complex, so much so that Gilham says she and her team “have a map of ‘The Wheel of Time’ on our wall in our office” upon which they outline how “each nation within this map is a mix of two cultures from our world.” The designer says of this blending of cultures such as French and Japanese, “You mix it together and you very respectfully, without any cultural appropriation, you create your own look for a whole entire world and that is really, really incredibly exciting to work with.” The most important element to keep in mind during this process is that “everything has to look as if it was made before the Industrial Revolution.” With all of these factors, the costumer says she has an “amazing melting pot of ideas, references, places you could go” as she designs the wardrobe.
For the Seanchan in Season 2, Gilham drew from two very distinct sources. “The Seanchan world is a mix of Mesoamerican and Chinese, imperial Chinese” styles, explains the designer. The novels describes them as looking “like insects,” so she ran with that idea and “extended that into reptilian textiles and textures.” As for the color palette, the costumer notes that they “come from the sea,” and she therefore “used this idea of rust metal as the colors of their entire culture.”
WATCH our exclusive video interview with Matt Skelding, ‘The Wheel of Time’ Season 1
One of the central figures of the Seanchan who is introduced in Season 2 is Lady Suroth, a noblewoman played by Karima McAdams. The character first appears in the second episode of the season, called “Strangers and Friends,” and director Thomas Napper had a helpful directive for the costume designer on how to approach the new addition to the cast. “His reference was Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra from a film from the 60s,” explains the designer, saying that what was so important about this reference was that it takes “seven minutes of screen time” for her to make her arrival, which speaks to the level of anticipation about the reveal. Once she appears on screen, Lady Suroth is adorned with “this big mask headdress with mandibles and a stinger coming out the front.” The style references one of the most important facets of the character, which is “the power of the voice… how you use your voice to intimidate people.”
The Seanchan also control and leash women who can channel magic and then become know as the “damane.” For the damane, Gilham “put this gold stopper in their mouth,” a touch that she says was inspired by “a Mesoamerican pre-Aztec image” that she encountered. She loves this flourish in the costume design because “it’s about who speaks, what power they have, and taking away the power of speech and what that does to a person.”
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