Interview: Paul Tazewell Weaves Connection and Camp Into His Costumes for Death Becomes Her and Wicked

Paul Tazewell is no stranger to making magic on stage and screen, but the last few months have been especially enchanting for the Oscar-nominated (West Side Story) and Tony-winning (Hamilton) costume designer. His work can currently be seen on Broadway in the musical adaptation of Death Becomes Her, as well as in the long-awaited film incarnation of Wicked, for which he received another Oscar nod.

Both are about friendships between formidable leading ladies brought together by a little magic. Tazewell says the timing of their arrivals (Death opened the same weekend that Wicked flew into theaters) is coincidental, but he approached the two projects with the same ethos: honoring the source material while also charting his own vision to support the characters and emotional arc of the story.

TheaterMania spoke with Tazewell about dressing for the high camp of Death Becomes Her and creating the Ozian fantasy world of Wicked.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

For Death Becomes Her, where did you begin?
The challenge is creating a theatrical world for a piece that has already been conceived, so working closely with [director] Christopher Gattelli in figuring out how he’s planning on interpreting the story was very paramount. Knowing that we were setting up the world starting with Viola (Michelle Williams) and the ensemble that surrounds her, I wanted to figure out what would be the defining visual for that group. This world of beautiful people, the idea of celebrity, and how our culture has been defined by youth and luxury. I really leaned into amethyst and violet, and also sparkle, the idea of crystals — which is the defining image of the elixir, and what would be our youth serum. So when Michelle comes up in that black cocoon coat, with all of these sparkly geodes springing out of the neckline and collar, that’s our first image of what this world is going to be.

And then when we meet Madeline (Megan Hilty) and Helen (Jennifer Simard), we immediately see that they’re complete opposites. Walk me through how you built out those character stories with their costumes, and how they evolve.
It really was setting Madeline up as this very glamorous icon, Helen as a much more dowdy introvert. For Helen, it was going after that monochromatic camel color palette, where her shoes and her coat and her skirt and blouse all match together so that what you might see is stylish, but it’s also kind of boring. And then by contrast, we set up Madeline with this multi-change extravaganza with her “For the Gaze” [number].

When you’ve got Madeline at her lowest—in her blue suit at the book signing—and then you have Helen coming into the room in this fabulous red dress, they still balance each other. And their finale dresses—the big, beaded dresses that they both end up in—are reflective of the twisted neck on Madeline, with the way that it sweeps around in an asymmetrical way, and the beading pattern that we have on Helen’s dress is in the same place where her torso hole is. It was a lot of fun to give them presence and have it be true to where they are within the story.

The 1992 film broke a lot of ground with its special effects, and the musical gets to re-create those moments on stage. What went into that from a costumes perspective?
With this, it was really starting with, how does Chris want to create that over-the-top stair fall? And then once Madeline’s at the bottom of the stairs, what has happened to her body and how do we show that? When Madeline then appears from behind the couch, and indeed, her neck is twisted, we have to support that with the clothing. There’s an illusion that is created, so we need to then dress her so it can do what it needs to do. Same for the hole in the dress. After you see Helen get shot across the stage, it really ended up being on the costume department to figure out how that was going to [work] best.

And then for Wicked, you have the iconic costumes of The Wizard of Oz, and also the stage musical. How much did you draw from those elements as you created your vision for the film?

Because I grew up watching The Wizard of Oz, that’s a part of my visual memory bank. And because I’ve also designed about four productions of The Wiz, I’ve investigated those characters in different forms. So I’ve been managing that as a story for quite a long time. What I really latched onto was the 1939 Wizard of Oz film as a point of reference, and I went about having many meetings with Jon and looking at different images, images that started in an abstract way, that just felt like emotional responses to how I saw this new world of Oz. Then I went deeper trying to figure out who Elphaba is, what defines her character, and the same with Glinda. I dipped into the world of nature for Elphaba, because of her connection to the animals, and I was looking at images of things that have a quality of being airborne with Glinda, and then also really adopting the idea of Glinda in the pink dress from the movie.

I don’t know if your work on Wicked and Death Becomes Her overlapped at all, but did one inform the other in any way? What did you take away from these two experiences?
I was working on the beginnings of the design for Death Becomes Her as I was finishing out Wicked. I don’t know that I was consciously thinking about both of them [together], I think that there’s a coincidence in the overlap of these stories about these two pairings of friendship. What I carry into that is opening my heart to what that story is, whether it’s going to be set in a fantasy world or some high camp theatrical world, I need to get to the root of what that real emotional connection is. What I’m about is creating beautiful presentations of stories and hopefully, especially in this world of uncertainty that we’re in right now, just doing my part to create joy.