How ‘iZombie’ Makeup Turns Rose McIver Into the Undead

On iZombie, the undead look less like half-rotten bloody corpses in tattered rags and more like super-pale (and almost vampiric) folks in regular clothes. But transforming the fair-skinned Rose McIver into the crime-solving (and brain-eating) Liv Moore requires more than just trying to stay out of the sun. Makeup artist Amber Trudeau goes behind-the-scenes to reveal her secrets for giving McIver the right look for all stages of zombie mode. (Tried your own version of the iZombie look? Tweet us a photo @tvinsider.)

“First we have to get her wig cap on. I apply everything to her face and then put the wig on carefully so it doesn’t smudge any of the makeup. Last, we make sure all the colors blend. We’ve got the whole process down to about 45 minutes.”

“We wanted to make sure that Liv embraced her inner zombie and wasn’t trying to cover it, so I use about five different pale and iridescent colors. Everyone has a different undertone in their skin, and the makeup changes in different light.”

“We like to keep the eyes a little bit dark. To do that, I applied some browns and purple tones and blended them into the pale skin [makeup]. Her eyes can also look a lot darker in the morgue, so it took about six episodes to really get the look as perfect as we could in every atmosphere we were shooting.”

“When Liv is in full-on zombie mode, she looks more badass and definitely scarier. To achieve that, we aim for very sunken eyes with a lot of reds and purples. Then I add some veins in. We tried red contact lenses in the pilot, but it gave Rose watery eyes, so now they use CGI to make her eyes go extra red. It looks like she’s going to bite your head off and eat your brains.”

“David Anders [who plays fellow zombie Blaine DeBeers] bleached his hair, and that definitely made the process easier because we didn’t have to worry about wigs. But David has a much more red undertone in his skin, so I had to use many different primers on him to keep that from showing. We went through a couple of tests with David’s beautiful eyes, added a little bit of guy-liner, and blended it into the white makeup. That made everything pop and gave him that really sexy zombie look.”

Tried your own version of the iZombie look? Tweet us a photo @tvinsider.

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