by Arguably one of the biggest TV debuts of the year, “Stranger Things 4” hit 1 billion views in less than a month after its debut and resonated with viewers for its story, ’80s nostalgia and beauty looks that fans still ask about. makeup artist Amy L. Forsythe about, she said.
“I feel like our characters are so lovable that people get attached to them,” she said of the show’s popularity. “People are like, ‘What lipstick did you wear on so-and-so? Which eyeshadow? There are also people in cosplay and they look for every little detail. Like, “How big are Eddie’s tattoos?” They’re just hungry for information, which is really fun.”
Forsythe, who has worked on the hit Netflix show since its first season, satisfies that hunger through her Instagram account, where she posts in-depth looks at specific beauty moments that fans ask about.
One character that resonated the most is Eddie Munson, played by Joseph Quinn, who joined the cast this season. Forsythe has posted several photos on his Instagram showing detailed images of the character’s tattoos for fans looking to recreate the style.
Forsythe believes the looks resonated so much with fans for their authenticity and range of looks from the mid-to-late 1980s.
“I’ve gotten so many calls from colleagues and people saying, ‘I lived in the ’80s and this was really good,'” she said. “They’re like, ‘I used that makeup and my friend is like [character].’ I feel like people really resonated with that. And the people who weren’t there then, I feel like they can still feel that authenticity when they see it, and it just looks so cohesive.”
Forsythe’s approach to beauty in “Stranger Things 4” is different from the norm. Instead of focusing on the main characters’ beauty, Forsythe focused more on the background characters. This approach was to maintain the authenticity and personality of the show’s established characters, but also set the distinct settings of the fictional Hawkins, Ind., and Lenora, California.
While the characters in Hawkins are more bare and traditional, the characters in Lenora embrace the graphic colors and retro-inspired trends that were prevalent in 1986.
“[The beauty] paints a picture of who these people are and where they come from,” she said. “I think you can really tell the difference between someone who lives in Hawkins and someone who lives in California. They’re two completely different worlds, and I think that’s a really cool thing to remember. Like, just because something is ‘in’ in one area, it might not be ‘in’ in another area. But that’s the show — it shows you different types of people from different places, and I think that’s the beauty of it really.”
Forsythe stated that one of the scenes that really stood out for her is the roller rink scene from the beginning of the season, because she got to play with ’80s beauty trends, especially for the bully characters.
A still from “Stranger Things 4”.
Courtesy of Netflix
“California [scenes] I would say it was so much fun because you really got to show that this is 80s cinema, Forsythe said. “Like, this is the makeup you see when you go back and watch ’80s movies. The background is a character in our show, so I feel like with the bullies we specifically added things to them [replicated] 80s icons. You’ve got the glittery eye shadow, you’ve got a lot of blush, you’ve got the pink lip gloss and all these things that you can’t necessarily put on one of the main actors without it being distracting.”
While sticking to a simpler beauty approach for the main characters, Forsythe said the character she thinks had the most striking moment of beauty in “Stranger Things 4” is Robin Buckley, played by Maya Hawke.
Towards the end of the season, her character eschews her girlish aesthetic to impress a male psychiatric doctor. The character gets a makeover from Nancy Wheeler, played by Natalia Dyer, who Forsythe said replicated makeup on Robin that she had seen on her mother.
“We have never seen [Robin] in a beauty makeup look,” Forsythe said. “When we see her go to [the] Pennhurst [Mental Hospital], we see her out of her element, and when Nancy sees her mother doing her makeup. It’s kind of a fish out of water, but I thought it was a lot of fun.”
Overall, Forsythe said the most fun part of “Stranger Things 4” was the season’s larger scope of characters and how it gave her the opportunity to experiment with her look.
“It was a lot of fun this season because the world got a little bit bigger, so you get to introduce a little bit more of that ’80s stereotypical vibe through the characters,” she said. “We have Dungeons & Dragons [characters]we have the jocks and the bullies in California, so you can really start to tap into all these things that you hadn’t really been able to showcase before.”
