The Batman’s Makeup Designer Breaks Down Robert Pattinson’s “Smokey Eye”

When images of Robert Pattinson as Batman first hit the Internet, many people were pleased that The Batman seemed to be taking a realistic approach with Batman’s eye makeup. In past iterations, fans have wondered what happens to Batman’s eye makeup once the cowl comes off, but the new movie leans more into the realism of what it’s like using a lot of eyeliner. Recently, The Batman‘s makeup designer, Naomi Donne, had a chat with Polygon and talked all about Pattinson’s “smokey eye” in the new film. 

“Matt [Reeves] was really keen that there were remains of [the eye makeup] when he took his cowl off,” Donne explained. “So we pushed that. We actually took the cowl off and looked at what was left, and we used that. It’s really hard to get black eye makeup off, and we used that.” Polygon explains that Batman’s “perfectly calibrated emo look” was a mixture of “pigment, a creamy eyeliner, pencil, and a liquid paint makeup.” 

“And then,” Donne added, “to brighten it up, we used this lightly sparkly pigment to give it a bit of light, so that it reflected lights in the same way his Batsuit would’ve.” She also spoke about how Kurt Cobain served as inspiration for Pattinson’s look, which is no surprise considering Nirvana’s music is featured in the movie. 

“I loved that at times it was very smudged and running down his face, and at times it was just a smokey eye. But at all times it was never clean. It always came from the remains of the cowl,” Donne explained. “It was the way of Batman lingering in Bruce Wayne after he’s taken his costume off.” She added, “It also looked dead sexy. Men in black eye makeup look really good.”

Previously, Reeves has spoken about Cobain’s influence on Pattinson’s Batman.

“When I write, I listen to music, and as I was writing the first act, I put on Nirvana’s ‘Something In The Way’,” Reeves told Empire. “That’s when it came to me that, rather than make Bruce Wayne the playboy version we’ve seen before, there’s another version who had gone through a great tragedy and become a recluse. So I started making this connection to Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, and the idea of this fictionalized version of Kurt Cobain being in this kind of decaying manor.”

The Batman is now playing in theaters.