Take it from yours truly, a beauty editor who once pulled out all the stops to dress up as Pamela Anderson for Halloween: becoming her is a true endeavor. And I only did it for one night; a paltry task compared to five full months of shooting a biopic of epic proportions. This is all to say, I bow down to Lily James and the glam team that transformed her into the Baywatch star and activist for Hulu’s new Pam & Tommy series, out today. Surely by now you’ve seen the viral pictures of James’s turn as the singular blonde bombshell of the ’90s. The British’s actor’s uncanny resemblance to Anderson, in all of her platinum blonde, barbed wire-tattooed glory, has stunned fans and audiences alike. And amid the ’90s and Y2K revival, it’s also served as an aide-memoire of just how influential and impactful Anderson’s signature beauty was and remains.

While Anderson built on a sex symbol blueprint set by the likes of Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot, she introduced codes of beauty all her own—razor-thin brows, frosty overlined lips, and glossy peroxide lengths—that defined a decade. “As someone who grew up idolizing the beauty of women and the power that hair has to make a statement, Pam was always at the top of my list of icons,” explains Pam & Tommy lead hair designer Barry Lee Moe. “Everything about her look was effortlessly chaotic. She lived and breathed beauty and glamour and will forever be an icon in my eyes.” Special effects makeup designer Jason Collins is quick to agree: “The blonde hair, the eyebrows and her silhouette are a staple of what idolized American beauty was at that time and [why she’s] cemented into the zeitgeist of popular culture,” he explains. “She captured a moment in time and set beauty trends that many wanted to replicate. That’s why so many people are interested in her.”

Here, the Pam & Tommy glam team walk us through the design process for the hair, makeup, and prosthetics behind James’s mind-bending, four-hours-long metamorphosis into Anderson.

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The Blonde Bombshell Hair

“Whether she was protecting herself with a huge mane of voluminous curls to portray strength and confidence, or revealing her softer side with an effortless top knot for intimate moments with Tommy at home, she utilized her hair whenever possible and made it feel natural,” explains Moe of Anderson’s bottle blonde shield. To craft Anderson’s hair looks for the series, Moe worked with Beverly Hills-based wigmaker Rob Pickens on a quartet of custom lace front wigs for James.

“Pam was known for her bright, reflective platinum blonde hair,” says Moe. “It was extremely important to get the color right.” In his research, Moe came across interviews where Pam revealed that she’d been coloring her own hair for years using drugstore box color, which ultimately found him using four different shades of blonde to dye James’s wig for a DIY effect. Of course, a dark, shadowed root, achieved with help from Goldwell’s Topchic color line, was also an essential part of the color equation.

For styling, Anderson’s mainstay style hinged on height and an extended cascade of waves. “Pam always had the perfect, ultra textured, long-layer haircut with a dreamy curtain bang,” says Moe. “It’s a versatile cut that can be styled in a variety of ways.” The layers helped to support both the voluminous, “supermodel curls” for her iconic bombshell look, while enhancing and defining the texture for Pam’s beachier Baywatch look. To create Anderson’s Baywatch waves, Moe added texture to damp lengths with Unite Beach Day texturizing spray in tandem with Blonda Oil for heat protection/shine before diffusing with a Dyson Supersonic hair dryer. Once fully dry, he enhanced and defined the waves with the GHD Platinum Styler iron and the Hot Tools 24K Gold 1” Marcel iron.

For her trademark sexy mane, Moe tapped into the playbook of Anderson herself. “In true Pam Anderson fashion, I used classic velcro rollers to set the hair,” says Moe, who opted for different sizes—larger on top and medium through the sides and back. From there, he placed the wig in the dryer for 45 minutes to an hour on a medium heat setting, and once cooled, released the rollers and began backcombing at the root to create the ultimate “voluminous foundation.” After smoothing out the top and securing the height, he broke up the rest of the curls for further definition and bounce then “pieced out the bangs” with mists of Unite Go 365 hairspray for that unmistakable fringe, adding blasts of Unite Session Max spray and 7Seconds Glossing spray for a bulletproof combination of shine and hold.

The Maximalist ’90s Makeup

“A little paint will make you what you ain’t,” jokes makeup department head David Williams about harnessing the power of makeup to aid James’s visual journey for Pam & Tommy. For Williams, authenticity was the key to making the ’90s era-specific biopic successful. “Makeup choices need to enhance the overall look and not pull the audience out of the story or the actor out of their process,” explains Williams. “We remained authentic to the period by replicating the more natural brown, brick, and wine tones of the era.”

To start, Williams set the stage with Anderon’s lit-from-within SoCal glow. “Pam was the quintessential, fresh-faced all-American girl (from Canada) the day she arrived in Los Angeles,” says Williams, who used a combination of ERA spray-on foundation, European Body Art performance makeup, and spray tans from Culver City-based Queen Bee salon to give James that sun-kissed color. In addition to prosthetics (more on that below), he used Make Up For Ever’s ​​HD Professional foundation palette to contour James’s face into Anderson’s, harnessing the face-sculpting powers of classic highlight and shadow techniques. A touch of Stila’s cream blush in dusty pink shades Peony and Petunia added a “touch of natural glow” to the cheeks.

Smoky eyes were often in the mix, with Tom Ford’s rich Cocoa Mirage browns and Make Up For Ever’s sooty black smudged into the lids and lashes enhanced with double stacks of Ardell strip lashes. Of course, nailing Anderson’s arched, pencil-thin power brows was a top priority: Taking execution to the next level, Williams used the Anastasia Beverly Hills Perfect Brow pencil to lightly draw the brow for placement before glueing on a set of delicate, hand-sewn lace brow pieces designed by special effects hair technician Sasha Camacho Van Dyke. The last clinching detail? Anderson’s plush, oft-overlined pout, which was most often a “natural beige rose,” says Williams, whose go-to shades included Charlotte Tilbury’s Pillow Talk and Tom Ford’s Forbidden Pink as a base with mid-’90s inspired lip pencils, like MAC’s iconic Spice shade, used “slightly overdrawn and visible to represent the lip style of the period.” For the frostier effect, Senna Lip Luster in raspberry pink Glint was topped off with a layer of creamy lipstick in iridescent shade Moonglow on top for shine.

The Face and Busty Body Prosthetics

Of course, to truly turn James into Anderson, custom face and body prosthetics were essential for the physical transformation. “The challenge is always daunting when you’re tasked to turn an actor into an iconic persona,” explains Collins, who worked diligently alongside Williams. The pair began by taking a forensic-like approach to getting to know Anderson’s features, collecting mid-’90s reference materials of the star from her early modeling career, films and television appearances, and candid paparazzi shots. They did the same for Lily James, using the latest technologies to map out a plan. “We cross compared [James and Anderson] and did some photoshop work to help lay the foundation,” explains Collins. “Once we completed this research, we knew we were going to have to build a few specific prosthetics to help zero in on a more exact likeness.” From the start, the biggest difference to contend with was the spatial difference between their respective brows and hairline, James’s being significantly smaller than that of Anderson’s. To solve this problem, Collins had his team sculpt a forehead appliance to match Pam’s forehead. This would allow hairstylist Moe to place one of the wigs on James’s head half an inch back from her normal hair line. This was also fruitful for skinny brow execution. “By blending the prosthetic above the eyelids, we were able to cover Lily’s beautiful thick brows and place finely-laced tie eyebrows that replicated the look of the early to mid 90’s tweezed arch brow,” explains Collins. Another crucial element for the face was engineering Anderson’s pearly, million dollar smile, which saw Collins’s team sculpting dentures that snapped over James’s teeth. “We were able to match Pam’s teeth to a tee and this helped to push Lily’s upper and lower lips out slightly providing the full and voluptuous lips Pam has,” explains Collins.

Photo: Erica Parise/Courtesy of Hulu

Last but certainly not least was the task of supplying James with ample cleavage. “By taking an impression of Lily’s torso we were able to sculpt breasts that were closer to Pam’s and create appliances out of silicone,” explains Collins, adding that James wore the breast appliances for the majority of the shoot as many of her outfits required either cleavage or side profile exposure. Ultimately, Collins and the rest of the glam team wanted to be sure they weren’t turning James into a caricature of Anderson. There was no need, after all: The real-life Pamela Anderson is a beauty icon for a reason. For each artist, transforming James was a career-defining challenge and dream project. As Collins puts it, “Being able to collaborate with my friends and colleagues who are all perfectionist and have a singular vision? It doesn’t happen all the time and when it does you need to treasure it.”

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Originally posted from “VOGUE” by Lauren Valenti