Behind Joey King’s Beauty Transformation For Hulu’s “The Princess”

King’s cascading red hair in “The Princess” may look effortless, but a lot of logistics went into the look. At the time of the shooting, Armstrong says that the actor’s real hair was cut into a bob just above her shoulders, and the team wanted to add lots of lengths. For the most realistic effect, Armstrong opted for extensions over a wig and sought out the longest option available, which turned out to be 30 inches.

“Some of them were sewn in – they had to be really strong because her hair gets pulled and gets caught in things,” she says. “I used the very fine ones around the edges but used more robust ones around the back.”

King’s princess hairstyle also features braids, which serve both a functional and narrative purpose. “There were two plaits at the side, which I kept most of the time because her hair was so long. If that had been completely [taken] down, she wouldn’t have been able to see what she was doing.”

The braids in the rest of her hair, however, gradually fall as the princess becomes more and more unkempt from battle, highlighting the character’s grit and determination. “She had smaller plaits that went down with little decorations,” Armstrong says. “At the beginning of the movie, we lose one of the decorations, then one of the plaits goes. So at the end of it, she’s only left with wild hair with the two wild plaits at the sides.”

To achieve King’s custom red tone, Armstrong first dyed King’s natural hair and then dyed the extensions before putting them in.

King had not one but two stunt doubles, both of whom needed wigs that looked identical to the star’s extensions. “It was tricky because we have to dye the wig exactly the same colour,” Armstrong says. “And sometimes working in another country makes everything quite difficult. So to find all these things in Bulgaria was quite hard. I had to get a lot of stuff shipped out from England.”

Needless to say, it was a lengthy preparation process but well worth it in the end. Because the wigs could be placed on as a single piece (rather than individually placing extensions), the hair team could cut down on the time it took to get the actors ready each day.

Because “The Princess” takes place in a made-up world, the creative team weren’t limited by the constraints of a traditional period piece. Rather, they took inspiration from a variety of cultures, one of which being director Kiet’s native Vietnam. Armstrong says the hair designs for The Princess’s mentor, Linh (played by Veronica Ngo), and Linh’s uncle Khai (Kristofer Kamiyasu) were dreamed up after researching Asian history.

“For Kristofer’s hair, I looked at a lot of sumo wrestlers and the way they did their hair in that time,” she says. “That’s where I came up with that idea of the lovely knot on the top of his head. That’s all his own hair. In the wedding scene, I actually made a little knot piece to put on top of his own hair as well.”

She continues: “With Veronica, I decided to make her slightly colorful. So she had a hair piece in as well because she’s got quite a lot of hair, but it’s very fine hair. And then I made loads of braids with different colors in them. We made her makeup quite simple but just beautiful. It was all about all these different colors in her hair and the way she tied it.”

The gore in “The Princess” might as well be its own character. Through seemingly countless fight sequences, King racks up quite a few cuts and bruises throughout the film. “The biggest challenge of all of that for me was that we didn’t shoot in continuity,” Armstrong says. “So you have to make sure this cut has happened then, and you have that cut there and you don’t have it before. Your continuity notes are massive.”

The hair and makeup team used a combination of prosthetics and makeup to create fake wounds for King and the rest of the cast. “Joey’s got one very big [cut] on her arm, and that’s a prosthetic,” Armstrong says. “Every day you put it on, and then you colour it and you blend it in.” The prosthetic moulds, she explains, take up to two days to dry, so the team would have to prep them in advance to make sure they had enough every day on set.

For bruising and more minor cuts, Armstrong used the Skin Illustrator FX Palette ($76), a favourite among makeup pros. “You use pure alcohol with it,” she says. “I use a little brush, and I literally just paint it on.”

Between hair, makeup, and fake injuries, Armstrong estimates that it took two hours to get King ready for shooting each day.

A Makeup Routine Fit For a Princess

For what Armstrong calls King’s “beauty makeup” (aka her base before all the cuts and bruises were added on), she mostly used foundation. Her top picks for buildable coverage were Charlotte Tilbury Light Wonder Foundation ($44), Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush Flawless Foundation ($44), and IT Cosmetics Your Skin but Better CC Cream ($42).

Rather than use separate products to contour and highlight, Armstrong would create dimensions with shades of foundation that were both darker and lighter than King’s skin tone. “I would maybe go darker in certain areas like [King’s] jaw and underneath her cheekbones and then blend it up to highlighting on her cheeks,” she says.

King’s dewy glow was courtesy of Glossier Futuredew ($26), which Armstrong used as a radiance-boosting primer before makeup. She also applied Glossier Cloud Paints ($20) for a flush of colour on the cheeks, mixing the pigments in with foundation for a softer effect.

With the help of hair and makeup, it’s easy to tell who the “evil” characters are in “The Princess.” Julius (aka The Princess’s betrothed, played by Dominic Cooper) and his right-hand henchwoman, Moira (Olga Kurylenko), have a distinct darkness about them that Armstrong says was intentional.

Moira’s jet-black hair and intricate updo were designed to look like the end of a whip, the character’s weapon of choice. To further amp up her evilness, Armstrong applied tons of smoky liner to her eyes. Her favourites were the Laura Mercier Inner Eye Definer ($26) and Bobbi Brown Ink Liner ($35).

Julius’ hairstyle, Armstrong says, is intended to be the man version of Moira’s, with the sides shaved down and the back of his hair coming to a point.

“They were more slightly on the Tudor-y side of medieval,” Armstrong says. “And Olga’s makeup was obviously much more modern as well. It was quite nice to be able to do that. Because it was fantasy, that was the whole idea.”