‘There’s an element of figuring out a riddle’: Benicio del Toro, Mia Threapleton, and Michael Cera know the art of a Wes Anderson costume
The Phoenician Scheme is Wes Anderson’s latest film and it puts Benicio del Toro in a leading role! The adventure film has del Toro as Zsa-Zsa, a wealthy man determined to make his mission come true by recruiting millionaires to help.
In preparation for the film’s release, we spoke with del Toro, Michael Cera, and Mia Threapleton about the film and one of the most important parts of any Wes Anderson film: The costumes. The look of an Anderson film is part of why fans have loved his work for so long and with The Phoenician Scheme, it really gave audiences a glimpse into why his style works so well.
Whether it is the little details like a purse or binoculars or maybe a fur coat with a tennis dress, the look of a character means a lot to a Wes Anderson film. And out of all his work, I think that The Phoenician Scheme really highlights why the look of these characters are so important.
One of my own favorite parts of the film is how Zsa-Zsa keeps getting injured and has to deal with that while trying to make a deal. But filming that couldn’t be easy and during my interview, I asked del Toro about working with Zsa-Zsa’s injuries and how it worked throughout filming. According to him, it ended up being a little bit of a game of trying to figure out where he was hurt in that specific moment.
“There’s an element of figuring out a riddle because we don’t shoot in order,” del Toro said about the injuries. “So the makeup department and myself, we had a board just to see, ‘Okay, here we got this. Oh, the black eyes over here, but it’s smaller over here.’ So we had to keep, we have a control tower for the wounds.”
You can see our full interview here:
The Phoenician Scheme is in theaters now!
(featured image: Focus Features)
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