Cruella’s Costume Designer Jenny Beavan Explains Why She Didn’t Pull Inspiration From Glenn Close

Curella is hitting theatres and Disney+ Premier Access in May and Disney fans are eager to see Emma Stone step into the role of the villain made famous by 101 Dalmatians in 1961. The first live-action version of the character came in 1996 when Glenn Close played the part. Curella, of course, is known for her lavish outfits. While Close did rock some amazing looks in the '90s movie, the costume designer for Cruella, Jenny Beavan, did not use her as inspiration when creating looks for Stone. During a recent Cruella press conference, Beavan explained her reasoning and revealed she did use the classic animated movie when creating looks for Jasper and Horace.

"Not really," Beavan replied when asked if she took inspiration from Close's Cruella. "Because it's an origin movie and those two are where our film sort of ends up, but probably 10 years after because that was set in the '90s and we were '70s, so even later, in 20 years. So, no, other than the fact that, you know, the Cruella character does seem to be defined by black and white, and obviously, there's a bit of red that comes in and the Dalmatians are an important part of it. But no, I didn't really."

She added, "I did look at Jasper and Horace, particularly in the animation, and felt that there was something lovely about the way they were drawn and their colors. So, I slightly brought that into Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser's costumes. But they were probably the most influenced in any way by the animation. I just wanted to sort of make sure that you could believe that, eventually, [Emma Stone] could become Glenn Close. That was about as far as my influence went."

While Beavan did share that working on Cruella was a "massive undertaking," she did admit that her biggest challenge to date remains Mad Mad: Fury Road, which won her an Oscar back in 2016.

"I don't think it was my biggest challenge," Beavan said of Cruella. "I would say Mad Max was because that was so out of my comfort zone, but it also opened up a virtually a whole new career for me because having done a huge amount of lovely but, you know, period dramas of particularly English sort of Victorian ages regency, I think people were slightly surprised that I could tackle the post-apocalyptic world in a rather disgusting way."

Cruella will be released in theaters and on Disney+ Premier Access on May 28th.