The series finale of Nancy Drew airs this Wednesday night, culminating a years-long run on The CW. Originally based on Carolyn Keene’s massive book series, Nancy Drew took a spooky approach to its titular heroine and her group of friends, pitting them against an array of supernatural threats. Across its four seasons, the world of Nancy Drew was populated with a number of monsters, many of which were brought to life by the special effects character and makeup company MastersFX, whose work ranges from 2019’s Child’s Play reboot, to forthcoming projects like It Lives Inside, The Umbrella Academy, and The Boys. One recent addition to the show, the Sin Eater, even recently went viral on social media, with fans marveling at the practical behind-the-scenes approach to the macabre monster.
In celebration of Nancy Drew‘s series finale, ComicBook.com sat down with MastersFX’s Todd Masters and Chris Devitt, both of whom played a key part in bringing the show’s monsters to life. The duo spoke about that recent viral Sin Eater video, the in-depth approach to crafting these practical monsters, and their overall experience working on the series.
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Viral
ComicBook.com: What was your reaction to seeing the video of the Sin Eater go viral? Were there any responses to that that you particularly enjoyed?
Todd Masters: I just found out about that two seconds ago, so I was like, “Wow, that’s cool!”
Chris Devitt: Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised. I didn’t realize, like Todd, how big that had gotten. The video that I posted I saw had quite a few, a couple thousand views and shares and stuff. But [I heard] from friends, “Hey, I’m seeing this shared by a lot of people.” I didn’t honestly realize how big it had gotten. So that’s great. It was very, very flattering for all of us.
Nancy
I feel like most people hear the name “Nancy Drew” and they don’t necessarily assume that a live-action adaptation would have complex creature designs of this nature. Did that cultural juxtaposition add to the fun of working on the show, and creating these monsters?
Masters: Oh, totally. It did for me. I didn’t read the books. [I was] a Hardy Boys guy as a kid. So when the scripts came over I’m like, “Nancy Drew? What’s this going to be?” This was many years ago, and it just developed into being one of our favorite projects. It’s really stretched our creativity, and it’s been fun to work on.
Design Process
What is the design process of something like the Sin Eater? How do you not only decide that you want the monster to have this specific look, but that you want certain components of it to be practical?
Devitt: It usually starts with us all sitting down with production, and finding out what ideas they have rolling around. We take all that information, we throw our slices into that conversation, and then we usually go away. We produce, usually, a 2D concept design, bring that back to the table and say, “What about this?” On this show, everybody in my experience has been incredibly receptive. And a lot of times, as the process goes on, we’ll keep pushing it and tweaking it and trying to make things cooler and cooler. I think, usually, we try to do as much practical as possible. But if there is something that needs a little visual effects nudge, they can do that. But from what I’ve seen, it looks like they’re pretty much practical, at least the Sin Eater build.
Masters: Yeah. Oftentimes, they’ll come back and sweeten some of the work that we’re doing in digital effects. All these monsters, we always get a chance to offer some performers. So this time we pitched Twisty Troy, who’s a contortionist, who really added to whatever we could put on top of him. He moved in weird ways, and really became so much of this character.
Production
In terms of the production, how many iterations of the costume do you ultimately make?
Masters: It’s multiples, because the Sin Eater was a big makeup, as opposed to a suit. There were portions that were easy to put on — there was a crotch piece that was big, there’s feet and that stuff, but most of it’s a big prosthetic.
Devitt: All those pieces, at the end of the day, get destroyed when we remove them. So we always have to have a new set of prosthetics, which have all been hand-painted. It’s quite a large, pretty large process, but that’s how it goes.
Masters: Each day is a constant set of prosthetics, and the reason we decided to that is because we wanted the character to seem really slinky, really unencumbered by extra added pieces. So we tried to use the performer and his flexibility as much as possible. We’ve worked with Twisty Troy a few times, so we already knew going into it ‘Don’t cover him up here, don’t cover him up here,’ so he could really make maximum use of his interesting physiology.
Performers
Do you either have a favorite monster, or scene involving one of your monsters, across Nancy Drew?
Devitt: Aglaeca, that was fun. That was a really fun build.
Masters: Who is another one of our performers, Jenaya Ross. She’s another one that we use quite a bit, and really brings a lot to it. That was-
Devitt: She played 90% of the characters on the show, actually.
Masters: Pretty much, yeah. She’s played every one of them except for Sin Eater, as far as I can remember. Jenaya is also a special actor [and] performer. She’s quite young, we’ve only been working with her for a few years, and she’s just been amazing. We’ve used her in a variety of things, and she has great energy, and [an] amazing ability to create these weird beings. So Aglaeca was cool.
Devitt: I was going to say, both these guys, Twisty Troy and Jenaya, taught us [a lot]. Great energy, and positive people, and patient. That’s what you need in the mix to be able to perform these types of characters, because you’re looking at anywhere from a four to seven-hour makeup sometimes, for an application. Then, usually, an hour or two to get them out, at the end of the day. So you really need somebody who you’re going to be able to go through that torture with.
Masters: And then have enough energy to really bring it in front of camera. It’s not for everybody.
Surprises
What would you say surprised you the most about the experience of working on these Nancy Drew monsters?
Masters: That they could be so cool.
Devitt: I was just surprised that Nancy Drew would wind up being so badass. I’ve had so many people say to me like, “Wow, Nancy Drew goes hard, eh?” Then, when they see the creatures, they’re like, “Wow, this was Nancy Drew? This was crazy.”
Masters: Yeah, it wasn’t the books that I remember.
Devitt: No, no. It’s been a pleasure working with production. They’ve been just so receptive, and I just feel like we’ve always been on the same page. They’ve let us do what we do best, and I think [that] shows in the end result.
Takeaways
As Nancy Drew airs its finale this week, what do you hope fans take away from the show as a whole? Even if it’s just that your monsters are awesome.
Masters: [laughs] Well, that’s first and foremost. I hope we work with these people again. I think the show has been a real standout, not just for the network, but for MastersFX. I’m not saying this just to be press friendly, but the client, the producers, the directors, everybody’s been top-notch on this. We’ve really enjoyed working with the makeup artists and everybody on this. So it’s sad to see it go.
Devitt: Yeah, I second that. I couldn’t have said it better.
Practical
Do you have any advice for someone who has watched Nancy Drew and loved your work, and wants to pursue this field?
Masters: Go practical! We’re a practical effects company that also mixes in computer graphics and visual effects, but a lot of our art is led by great practical artists like Chris and so many others at the company. We love the fact that people respond to our creatures in a way that’s usually unique from how they respond to digital stuff. It’s slightly different. As Chris was saying, we get people coming out of the woodwork noticing some stuff that we’ve done. We forgot about it at that point, we’ve moved on to something else, and they say this stuff, and we’re like, “Oh, that’s really cool.” We love that it resonates like it does, and we just hope to keep doing cool stuff.
Devitt: A lot of the comments that I read were, “Wow, when I first saw this I thought it was digital, but it’s amazing to see this was practically done.” That seemed to be across the board again and again, they kept saying how excited they were to see a practical makeup like that, that it was almost unbelievable that it wasn’t digital.
DCU
Todd, I know you worked with James Gunn in the past. One of the biggest comments that I saw with the Sin Eater video was people saying that if you painted it purple, it would look exactly like the Superman villain Parasite. If either of you got the opportunity to work with James Gunn in the new DC universe that he’s doing, would you take that opportunity?
Masters: Oh, of course! We love James. James is a nut and he’s part of our family actually, in a really weird way. We’ve done a ton of stuff with James over the years, including some stuff he probably doesn’t want to talk about. But we love James, he and the whole Gunn family, and of course we know Sean very well. We’ve always enjoyed his whole creativity and world, so absolutely.
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The series finale of Nancy Drew airs Wednesday, August 23rd at 8/7c on The CW.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
