Designing - Bill Ferny

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In initial meetings with Charlie he had explained that he wanted to base the character of Bill Ferny loosely on the character of Grima Wormtongue from 'The Two Towers' as he was meant to be quite noticeably evil. For me, this translated as having lank, greasy, long hair and a sickly pallor, which I thought could work quite well. Charlie briefly considered the option of dying Liam (the actor playing Bill)'s blonde hair darker but eventually decided that keeping it a dirty blond would allow him to become a slightly alternative villain, rather than conforming to the usual dark stereotype. Unfortunately, before the designing process had even begun, a spanner was thrown into the works when Liam spontaneously cut off his long hair. With this being a problem with a number of the actor's I was seriously beginning to wonder whether Charlie would be getting any of the hairstyles that he had hoped for as I had already made it clear to him that Paige and I did not have enough time, a large enough team, or enough budget to start making wigs for actors who cut off their hair against Charlie's wishes. In the case of Bill Ferny, however, we were saved by the costume department who explained that they had already designed Bill's costume to incorporate a heavy hood that would shadow his face, and therefore, the majority of his hair would not be visible. Charlie suggested in this case that we simply slick back Liam's hair so that it still looked greasy and the length could not actually be seen, which seemed like the best solution.

Keeping with the idea of an unhealthy pallor I planned to incorporate a number of grey/green/ash tones to Liam's makeup and create some heavy darkening under the eyes - something that I noticed was done with Grima's makeup using a similar colour palette rather than the traditional blue/purple/grey tones. The only concern that I did have after seeing Grace's designs for Bill was whether or not any of his face would be visible on camera at all. The hood of the cloak was going to contain a large amount of dirty sheep's wool, which, from the looks of the design would be obscuring a lot of the upper face. This was something which would need to be arranged in later costume fitting dates before a final makeup was agreed upon.