The Wheel of Time: Exclusive Look at High Lady Suroth's Impressive Headdress

Costumer designer Sharon Gilham crafts the impressive looks for The Wheel of Time world

By Brandon Davis - September 13, 2023 01:00 pm EDT

With the conclusion of The Wheel of Time's first season, audiences got a tease of what was coming in Season 2. The Seanchan were briefly introduced, before Season 2 came alone to truly explore the group fans of the novel by the show's same title have come to know. Originally created by Robert Jordan in those Wheel of Time books, the key characters of the Seanchan are being brought to life throughout Season 2 on Amazon's Prime Video, including the massively impressive High Lady Suroth who recently made her extravagant debut.

High Lady Suroth, portrayed by Karima McAdams, is not exactly at the top of the Seanchan empire's ranks but has been seen calling the shots for the group early on. The first impression of her heightened rank, apart from the title of "High Lady," of course, comes with her appearance. The Wheel of Time costume designer Sharon Gilham and the department's Rob Goodwin crafted an outfit which they are rightfully proud of, eagerly showing of Suroth's decadent head piece in an interview with ComicBook.com over Zoom. A clip showing off their work and description of it can be seen in the video above, with exclusive photos and additional insights below.

"The Seanchan was a new culture for season two, and they are a big feature in the whole of that season," Gilham explained. "The brief was to make something scary that you'd never seen before, create an army, create the whole social hierarchy in that world." From there, Gilham's starting point was to find the color palette, ultimately landing on, "rusted metal because they come from overseas, a cultural background or a cultural mix because all of the nations in The Wheel of Time are a mix of two different cultures, at least two, and this one is Meso American, so sort of Aztec-y, and Imperial Chinese."

(Photo: High Lady Suroth in Amazon's The Wheel of Time)

"She's got this kind of compound eye mask, which is this metal piece. We started talking about how to make the structure of something insect-like and fly-like," Gilham went on. "I found this piece of metal or a version of this piece of metal in the workshop where Rob was working downstairs, and we had the structure of this outside piece, and we put it inside in one of the meetings with the director, Thomas Napper, and Rob was there, and he just went, 'Oh my God, I've never seen anything like that before on camera,' and then, 'How am I going to film it?' But, anyway, the rest is history."

Goodwin has a background in shoes, which is why parts of Suroths headpiece which appear to be made of metal are actually crafted from leather. "I like to do as much as I can with just hand tools and old techniques that could have been from any era. So it's actually made of leather. I know some people thought it was metal. But I started out with shoe-making, so I like to use leather and to tool it so there's a lot of detail in there, which gives it a kind of reptilian... Yeah, the insect, reptilian idea was in there. We wanted it look like we didn't know really what it was. It was kind of a skeleton. Is it a gold skeleton? Is it bones? Is it a carob paste? So it ended up becoming this, and from the side you can see it's got a big spike, which was a bit like a prong or a stinger, and these mandible type things there and at the bottom as well."

High Lady Suroth is getting royal treatment in and out of The Wheel of Time's story. Only one finished version of this headpiece exists, prompting a thorough amount of extra care for it. In fact, the crew developed a large special box to transport it to the series' set.

The Wheel of Time bringing the Seanchan into play is the latest faction functioning in the show's complex world. Each comes with their own societal structure and classes, which falls on Gilham to convey visually. High Lady Suroth, as nored earlier, is above those we have seen around her, so far. However, she is not the ultimate top of the food chain for the Seanchan. "That is really important to me. I think because we are making a nation, it's not just a character or it's not just a king and queen, it's everybody, as you say, in the social hierarchy. That's really fun," Gilham explained. "The Seanchan, design-wise, started with the soldiers and the twisted leather that we've made on their costumes to try and make them look scary and weird and other and just taking that idea... All the other bits and pieces we were talking about earlier, you mix it all in, and it's really good fun to go, 'Where can we put that bit? Who's got the most of something?' So, for example, Suroth's got all these spikes. Turak, he's got a lot more going on. Actually, also, we did Suroth's, and we were like, 'Yeah, okay, we're really happy with that. She looks great, terrifying.' You never get all of the script at once. So, three episodes later, we were reading the script, and it's like, 'There's a king? What? I thought we'd gone as high as we could possibly go.'"

The Gilham and Goodwin duo seems to be one which collaborates impressively well, ultimately deferring to Gilham's lead at the end of the day. While Goodwin is quick to admit, all costume roads go through Gilham, Gilham will also admit that she is quick to work with the cast members who will be wearing her work and make sure they are confident in comfortable.

"It is a real collaboration, especially on something like this. I would never just say, 'You're putting that on,'" Gilham explained. "It's a conversation, and it's all very important because they have to do their performance, so it has to work for them. It has to be comfortable enough. Some actors are different. Some actors are very different. Some of them are really up for, 'I don't care how uncomfortable it is, I want to wear this thing,' and other actors are like, 'I cannot possibly wear those shoes because they're way too painful or they remind me of my dad or something.' So, yeah, it's a big collaboration."

At the end of the day, the costume team on Wheel of Time is poised to create work their colleagues and audiences are blown away by. "We like it when they cry and go, 'Wow, you're a genius.' That's the usual," Goodwin said, half-jokingly. "If they don't do that, we feel like we've failed."

Are you enjoying The Wheel of Time? Share your thoughts in the comment section! The Wheel of Time Season 2 is releasing new episodes on Amazon's Prime Video, with the Episode 5 slated to release on Friday, September 15.

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