Professional wrestling has found its way back to Hollywood. A24’s latest picture, The Iron Claw, spotlights the Von Erich family, one of wrestling’s most famous pedigrees as well as one of the sport’s most infamous tragedies. Director Sean Durkin assembled a cast and crew from all walks of life, including actors with zero knowledge or fandom of wrestling to seasoned professional wrestlers themselves. That amalgamation of talent extended to the behind-the-scenes crew, specifically with The Iron Claw‘s design team of makeup department head Elle Favorule, costume designer Jennifer Starzyk, and hair department head Natalie Shea Rose.
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“I dabbled is what I like to say. I worked on a show called Lucha Underground for a few seasons,” Favorule said of her familiarity with wrestling prior to The Iron Claw. “That was kind of my first foray into wrestling and I was hooked. The athleticism, the theatrics, the costumes, everything that goes into something like that blew my mind. When I got this script, I was like, ‘Oh, I know this world. I want to dive into these characters.’”
“Not a zip. Nothing. Didn’t have any thoughts of it except for I think it happens out there and I have no idea how it happens,” Starzyk added. “Reading this script and looking at it as a costume designer and I’m like, let me read the script, beautiful script. It was probably a few weeks into our shooting schedule when I was like, ‘This is the coolest sport. Where have I been?’ This is live theater and this has costumes and persona and athleticism and cheering fans and a lot of energy. This is a blast.”
“I was a small wrestling fan back in the day. My brother and I were obsessed with Hulk Hogan,” Rose noted. “My background is in theater, so I kind of knew what I was getting into. I knew how much people look up to each of these people. It’s in their soul what each of these guys looks like because they were people’s actual heroes.”
Favorule’s experience on Lucha Underground also meant The Iron Claw reunited her with one particular face: Chavo Guerrero.
“I knew Chavo coming in. I didn’t know he was going to be on Iron Claw either!” Favorule said of Guerrero, who trained The Iron Claw actors to wrestle and had worked with Favorule on Lucha Underground in years past. “I saw him and I was like, ‘Oh my God! That was a fun little reunion.”
As hair department head, Rose’s role was fairly active throughout production. After the talent were fitted for their respective 1980s-style wigs, Rose regularly checked in in between in-ring scenes to ensure the wigs remained at appropriate length.
“[Ryan Nemeth] got his wig fit in the trailer and I wasn’t able to be there. When he got to set, I was like, ‘Oh no, that’s not right,’” Rose shared an anecdote about trimming Ryan Nemeth’s Gino Hernandez wig during production. “I pulled up my set chair and I pulled him off into the wing. They were still shooting and I was cutting his hair in a wing on the side of the stage.”
While Rose was monitoring the hair of The Iron Claw, Starzyk was tasked with the costumes themselves. For a biopic like this, Starzyk had plenty of reference points in the form of the actual gear that the Von Erichs and other wrestlers wore in the 1980s.
“I think when you looked at the boys then in 1980s ring gear, they are a little higher and a little wider on the side. It was very important to me to try to get the guys to wear them up higher with wider sides, but that was hit or miss with some of the cast,” Starzyk said. “Sometimes Zac [Efron] would be like, ‘No, I want to wear it down here.’ We custom made all of their trunks and I made sure everybody had their own pattern.
“We partnered with the wrestling vendor Highspots, and they kindly fit us into their schedule to make the trunks for us. Otherwise we couldn’t have done it with our team and time and schedule. Most people that we asked to do favors like that for us immediately said yes because of the Von Erichs. Everybody’s a fan. Everybody wanted to be a part of it.”
That presentation then went through the ringer when The Iron Claw‘s matches began. For Favorule, that meant maintaining the actors’ makeup while they were beating sweat inside the ring.
“They wrestled the whole time through those 9, 12-minute matches,” Favorule said. “Sometimes if there was something really specific that Sean [Durkin] wanted to cover, we would shoot coverage first. So then we’re establishing the amount of sweat that we think they’re going to get to while they’re actually wrestling. We were also kind of having little science experiments before we started. What layering of products can we use to make the sweat last? Let’s say they were going to shoot coverage like closeups, they still shot it all the way through, so there was no going in and touching them up. We need to establish what this is going to look like and then let them do their thing.
“It was a lot of maintenance, but they were all really patient and gracious with us to be able to do that. It was a large feat. It was all of us at all times. I think there might’ve been three sets of stairs around the ring and it was three hair and makeup people on this side and me. We were all just surrounding the boys, ‘Come over here, I need to spritz you.’ Then Natalie would be fixing something. It was just all hands on deck at all times.”
The Iron Claw is now in theaters.
