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A Conversation with Vicki Graef
(Costume Designer Season 1, Season 2 episodes 201-207) Pt. 1
Q: What are some of the unique demands of WITCHBLADE as far as costuming?
A: I'd have to say, well it's because it's urban and gritty and Ralph wants to keep it really dark, we have almost no bright colors. And so last season, in particular, the only color that I could sort of sneak in every once in a while was green. And on Yancy, which is such a stunning color, 'cause she has those green eyes. Except then we ran into problems with the green screen, which we use for the special effects and the computer graphics stuff, so I went, okay so I can't use green anymore. So I thought this season, now that this show's progressed a bit, I'm using red as Sara Pezzini sort of bonds with the Witchblade. And I'm incorporating shots of red to pick up the red in the stone. So almost subliminally she's starting to take on some of the persona of the Witchblade. So, just every once in a while you'll see her in a red shirt or a shot of red sunglasses or something -- just a little shot of it here and there. And I'm just working on beating up Ralph to get some more (LAUGHS).
Q: How did you strike upon that notion, that thematic tie in? Is that the kind of thing that just sort of hits you when you're working on a show?
A: I just kind of do that stuff. And we're always looking for other levels on the show and one in particular, Gabriel, is my favorite because Ralph also has all kinds of hidden things going on that nobody knows about. Like when he cast John Hensley and created this character Gabriel, the first thing I did was go to the Internet and start researching the archangel Gabriel. But this is typical Ralph. What I find out is that Gabriel is the patron saint of telecommunications. So there's always like little hidden things and I'm of course not gonna let Ralph get away with that (LAUGHTER). So I went even further and did some Old Testament research on the angel Gabriel. And during Passover when Gabriel came to Jerusalem and the sign was made on the foreheads of the Jews, it's the letter "tau", which is the letter that symbolizes Gabriel. And it's basically a T. So I've taken that T and it's like every once in a while I have it somewhere. It'll show up in a costume. So last season when Sara Pezzini was undercover and she had on a red baseball cap, it had the letter tau on the front. And it was hidden in the design but I've got it. I keep trying to sneak in these things every once in a while.
Q: That's fantastic.
A: So yeah, on every new character I always try and do something a little bit off-beat to make it a little more interesting 'cause I'm just not a shopper. We go to stores and use clothes out of the stores, but I'm constantly hacking up sleeves and recutting them and changing collars and I can't just leave it alone (LAUGHTER).
Q: In an interview that Will (Yun Lee) did with TNT last year, he talked about walking into the costume area and being drawn towards the costumes for Nottingham, though they were very different from what Danny would wear, and that represented this sort of yin and yang thing that Danny and Nottingham have going. Was that intentional?
A: Yeah it was. I didn't talk to the actors about it but Nottingham is all in black, head to toe. And last season poor Will was dead (LAUGHTER), so I kind of did the light side. So he was all in creams and pale grays and now this season, fortunately, Will gets to be alive, so we get to have a lot more fun with him. I'm taking him in a very different direction this season, where Ralph keeps worrying about me getting too fashiony, which is my tendency. I'm always going to want to push it 'cause I'm much more interested in setting a trend rather than following one. And generally speaking, if the clothes are in stores they're over.
Q: It's too late . . .
A: Yeah. So I try and I find a lot of my sort of gut instincts are sort of five years ahead of the market. So I do a lot of research and I go to the collections in New York and London and Milan, which I look at as part of my job. So Will, I've sort of done a cop thing but he's sort of his own cop. He wears suits. But I've got the hoodie under the suit instead of a shirt and tie. And he's got on kind of hip running shoes with it, rather than your basic dress shoe, which helps with the stunts and all the other stuff too. So I'm always trying to push it and find a new place to go. Now the James Dean research I'm getting ready to do today is I want to copy of a coat that James Dean wore in a famous photograph for Will. So I'm actually doing something horrible to a Dolce and Gabbana coat. I'm cutting the collar off and changing it (LAUGHTER). I know it's sort of sacrilegious, but. . .
Q: Do you do that yourself or do you have somebody create these clothes that you either see in your head or that you've been inspired about from a collection?
A: I end up dealing with showrooms a lot and I sketch, so I design a lot. I have a full time tailor on the show, so we also build a lot of stuff. The Elizabeth Bronte clothing last season I designed and built all of that, including the hat and everything. So it's fun when I get to do that sort of stuff. And the only constriction that I have with the show is really the time, the turnaround. If I could turn it around in two days, then it's a beautiful thing, and I can do do stuff. And then also it's finding the fabric. I've painted fabrics and I have been actually for a while interested in graffiti art. So I'm working on doing a line of t-shirts for the show based on graffiti art. So we'll see. Anyway, we'll see how far Ralph let's me go (LAUGHS).
Q: Is he pretty receptive if you suggest that a character needs to go in a certain direction. Let's try to brighten this up or darken this down?
A: Yeah he's really good. I've trained him well, my Ralph (LAUGHTER). So, no, he's actually one of my all-time favorites to work with because he's such a team player. And he's so interested in the weird stuff that we come to him with that we can pretty much walk in his office anytime and I'm constantly throwing pictures from European fashion magazines at him or walking in with, last season I think I brought him a book on Magritte the surrealist painter. I think we need to use these colors (LAUGHTER). There's always something and films I've been at, I'm constantly giving him references to films. You know, this is reminding me of this. So this episode that we're getting ready to shoot with Iron's hand in the jar. . .My first job as costume designer was on Evil Dead II. And so I'm reading (LAUGHTER) the script when Ralph is ripping off Sam Raimi. And not only that but I hate repeating myself: don't make me go here again. He goes, 'oh cool. I'm gonna have to get the movie. I'll look at it again.' Oh my god. Oh he'll have me matching stains again (LAUGHTER).
Q: You have your regular characters, the core cast - and they're a palette you've worked with a number of times. Then this season there a lot more guest stars.
A: Yeah.
Q: How do you approach them when you meet them for the first time in the script? What steps do you have to go through to kind of figure out what on Earth would this person be wearing?
A: Well, usually I sort of start off with an initial meeting. I mean I will pull pages from magazines and, again, do film references or like James Dean or if we're doing something really elegant I'll do Carey Grant or something.
And I kind of start there and then I go to Ralph and say, okay this is what I'm thinking. Am I on Mars (LAUGHS) or is this working for you? And then he'll either steer me, go, 'no no no. It's too elegant. I want it a little more street and what about instead of James Dean let's go Ice-T or something?' You know it's like he will pull me sometimes in another direction or sometimes I'll talk him into something like this Dalack character. It was all really cast contingent. Because initially, reading the script, I'd seen David Bowie, you know, Mick Jagger -- way over the top, flamboyant. And the clothes that I put together in my head for him had these fabulous drapey cuts with big fur collars, you know, really wild stuff. And then he cast Curry (Graham) who just didn't work with that look. So I went a completely different direction. Went very high end and kind of sleek, but a little twisted. And I did him all black and white. In this particular episode there's almost no color at all.'Cause the story is very bleak and the color is so important and you can tell such a story just with color alone. That when a story is very subdued, to go and put in kind of perky colors just kind of makes it a little too happy. So there's only one shot of color I think in the whole episode and that's on ah Mija Woo's shirt when she's with Sara Pezzini. And other than that there's none. So I kept Dalack as this killer who's just totally black and white. But I think he has one shirt that's a very dark purplely with gray stripes in it or something, but that's it. So the next episode I'm hoping to push it some more 'cause I get bored just doing black and white (LAUGHTER).
Q: How did you approach costuming Joe Butler, Yancy's father, when he guest starred in the Season 2 premiere?
A: . . . Actually Joe started out even, I think, before he was in the Lovin' Spoonful as an actor. So he was originally trained as an actor and I just completely approached it just as if he was another actor. So even though I called him a scumbag musician a few times (LAUGHTER), he was fabulous. He brought a lot, I think, because he was concerned about not having acted for so long, he brought so much more to the table than most actors do. . .He was fabulous. I loved him. So he's visited on set a couple a times too. And Yancy's mom is a close friend of mine.
Q: Would you say that, compared to other projects you've worked on, WITCHBLADE allows for more thematic color than others?
A: It's different. I've never done a television series before. I've always only worked in features. So it's a very different sensibility 'cause so much of television is really talking heads. It's always, stop worrying about the shoes. We're never gonna see 'em, which drives me nuts. Because the minute I don't worry about the shoes it's a shot that ends up on the feet. So the color palette and the look of the show is really very much dependent on the tone of the story. I did a movie called Focus, based on the Arthur Miller short story, a couple of years ago with Laura Dern and William H. Macy. And that was actually almost the opposite of what we're doing on WITCHBLADE, where it's a very dark story, set in suburbia in the '40s during the war, in New York or Brooklyn I think. And because this story was so dark and depressing the director and production designer decided that we should do the exact opposite and almost do like a Pleasantville thing where the colors are really bright and perky and in your face, which made the story almost more shocking because it was so dark. So there's somehow a balance, but because WITCHBLADE is so dark and so gothic that color just doesn't feel right for the series. And Ralph's images are very much. . .it's that black and gray gargoyle gritty urban thing, which color just doesn't work for me too much on the series. I mean I'll put in little shots here and there, but I'm really very careful where I use it and very conscious of it every time I use it. We spend a lot of time over-dying stuff too. Make it bleak (LAUGHTER).
Q: Now do you work a lot with the director of photography (David Moxness) to determine whether or not the way he's lighting the sets is going to make the color jump the way it needs to?
A: Yeah, well, because we shoot on high definition video, certain colors really pop. And it's a big fight that I'm constantly having with that stupid camera (LAUGHTER). Because it really picks up blue. So especially like blue, which unfortunately is one of the best colors to put on most people. So I have to be very careful of how I how I use blues. If it's too much brighter than denim I'm pretty much screwed. Of course I immediately went to Ralph last season when when Danny Woo was dead, and I said this would be so cool if all of his clothes were glowing every time we saw him. He said nice (LAUGHTER) but it's not the Danny Woo dead story. So sometimes I can push it in. Sometimes I can't. And it's also the same thing with patterns. I have to be really careful about patterns and stripes. So that gets a little tricky. There is this hooded zip front sweatshirt that I found a couple of days ago that I loved. That had this really interesting texture in it. And I took it to set and David the DP said it's gonna vibrate all over the place. How about over-dying. (LAUGHTER) Nice try. No.
Q: What are some other interesting approaches you take to your work on WITCHBLADE?
A: I'd have to say I spend more time doing research than I do anything else. And especially my favorite thing is doing historical. I mean everybody in wardrobe loves doing period pieces. So I think pushing Ralph to get me more Elizabeth Bronte and then I keep pushing Ralph also to do more women. I mean, what the hell happened to Sara Pezzini's mother?
Q: Yes, we're all dying to know! (LAUGHTER)
A: So I don't know. Even when I have a contemporary story, I'm always going to be feeding in some period pieces. So each character, they all come with a personal history. Like Iron's ring is one that Anthony and I went shopping for in this antique jewelry store. And the woman who owned the store said that she bought it from this little man who was from Transylvania. So it's a one-of-a-kind piece, and I love putting these kind of weird little eccentric historical pieces in too. It gives a certain texture to the visuals of the show that you don't get shopping in stores and the mall.
Q: And what about for extras and other more peripheral characters, like Lazar, for instance. Who everyone, including myself, is endlessly fascinated by.
A: Bizarre Lazar (LAUGHTER). Another thing that we started last season and I'm continuing it -- I'll stick it in every once in a while -- was there was a whole snake thing. There was an episode with the snake and I used a lot of snake imagery. There was a skirt. I was actually driving up through the garment district here in town and in the window of the store was this summer wraparound skirt and there was this snake on the front of it. I went oh my god, I've gotta get that skirt, and pulled over and grabbed the skirt and threw it on an extra. So there's all these snake things going through, snakes and dragons. And the Ouroboros is the snake biting its tail. It's an ancient mythological symbol. So Ralph started on that and so I started finding snakes. And a lot of Lazar's stuff has snakes and dragons on it. He'll have a t-shirt with a snake on it under another shirt. So Lazar's kind of the red herring. None of us really know what he's there for (LAUGHTER). Actually a couple of times I've said, Ralph, Lazar's not in this episode. He goes, 'oh my god, I forgot about Lazar!' And all of a sudden, the next set of rewrites, Lazar's in there, walking through the scene.
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