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Costume designer Tammy Joe, makeup department head Krista Young and hair department head Julie McHaffie reveal the meticulous creative process behind Mike Flanagan’s adaptation of Carrie, from the character’s evolving identity to the extraordinary challenges of recreating its iconic prom sequence.
Bringing Stephen King’s Carrie to television requires more than recreating the novel’s most recognizable moments. For the creative team behind Prime Video’s adaptation, the challenge was finding a visual language that could communicate the emotional transformations of its characters through even the smallest details of their appearances.
Costume designer Tammy Joe, makeup department head Krista Young and hair department head Julie McHaffie discussed their collaborative approach to Mike Flanagan’s series, revealing how costume, hair and makeup work together to chart Carrie’s journey from isolation to self-discovery, while also capturing the psychological unraveling of the characters around her. Their work culminates in the series’ elaborate prom sequence, a technically demanding undertaking involving meticulously hand-painted blood, complex stunt coordination and carefully planned continuity across weeks of filming.
For costume designer Tammy Joe, establishing Carrie’s sheltered upbringing was essential to understanding her wardrobe. Having grown up largely isolated from the outside world, Carrie’s clothing reflects the limited resources available to her and her mother, Margaret.
“I think when you first meet Carrie, you realize very quickly that she's lived a very isolated life,” Joe explained. “And so that was a big part of the storytelling of why she makes her own clothes, because she doesn't have access to the outside world.”
Rather than simply dressing Carrie in outdated clothing, Joe approached her wardrobe as an extension of the character’s creativity and circumstances. Her handmade garments were designed to feel believable, incorporating patterns and materials that could realistically have been available within her home. As Carrie begins attending high school and encounters the fashion choices of her classmates, her wardrobe gradually changes. But rather than undergoing a dramatic makeover, she starts experimenting with the pieces she already owns. The costume department incorporated upcycling into the character’s evolution, allowing Carrie to adapt existing garments and incorporate contemporary details inspired by her peers.
One particular example comes when Carrie assembles an outfit for her first party, transforming clothing from the lost and found by adding elements she discovers around her house.
“I think the most important thing is, even within the evolution, that Carrie's still very Carrie,” Joe said.
For makeup department head Krista Young, the challenge was creating a distinct visual contrast between Carrie and her mother Margaret’s sheltered existence and the more expressive world of the high school students. Working with Summer, who portrays Carrie, Young wanted to establish a complexion that suggested a life spent almost entirely indoors.
“I really wanted to make sure that she didn't look like she had been in the sun at all,” Young explained.
She used a corrective foundation carefully blended into the actor’s skin to create an appearance that felt entirely natural. Rather than emphasizing visible makeup, the department relied on understated details to communicate Carrie’s emotional experiences. One of the most important techniques involved adjusting the flush of color in her cheeks during moments of heightened emotion.
“What I incorporated was adding a flush to her cheeks, which would intensify sometimes in times of stress or fear or anger.”
The approach allowed Carrie’s internal experiences to become visible without introducing makeup choices that would feel inconsistent with her upbringing. Margaret’s appearance followed a similarly restrained philosophy, with subtle eyebrow definition and minimal mascara used to emphasize expression while maintaining the illusion of an entirely makeup-free face.
By contrast, the high school students offered opportunities to explore more contemporary and individualized looks. Chris, the wealthy and popular student, begins the series with polished makeup, including carefully applied eyeliner that reinforces her social confidence and attention to appearance.
Meanwhile other characters represent a different experience of adolescence, experimenting withtheir identity through changing makeup choices. Brightly colored eyeliner and small stylistic variations across episodes helped communicate that ongoing process of self-discovery serving as a constrast to the naturalistic look of Carrie.
Hair department head Julie McHaffie approached Carrie’s appearance with a similarly detailed understanding of her emotional journey. At the beginning of the series, Carrie’s hair is tightly controlled, typically pulled into low ponytails with a precise middle part and an almost severe absence of loose strands. She even selected one particular color of hair elastic that remained exclusive to Carrie throughout the production.
“We used one color of elastic the whole show. I never changed that elastic color on her and nobody else got that elastic,” she revealed.
As Carrie becomes more comfortable exploring the world beyond her home, that controlled appearance gradually softens. The edges of her hairstyle become less rigid, and eventually her hair is allowed to fall naturally, revealing its wave and movement. These transitions required careful planning, particularly because the production filmed scenes out of chronological order.
“We shot the very beginning and the very end all at once and then went back and filled in the middle,” she explained.
The department developed a detailed visual progression before filming began, ensuring that every hairstyle corresponded to the appropriate point in Carrie’s emotional development.
Few moments in horror literature carry the cultural significance of Carrie’s prom, and the responsibility of bringing that sequence to life was something the production team approached with considerable reverence. Young recalled a particularly memorable moment when director Mike Flanagan gathered the entire cast and crew together before filming the blood-soaked portion of the sequence. After completing the scenes set before the blood falls, Flanagan called everyone into the gymnasium and addressed them from the stage.
According to Young, he spoke about the privilege of recreating such an iconic moment from Stephen King’s work and the importance of doing justice to the material.
“It filled me with an excitement, but it also was daunting,” Young recalled. “I realized that the blood was such a major part of telling this part of the story and that I had a really huge responsibility ahead of me.”
For both Joe and McHaffie Carrie marked their first collaboration with Flanagan, making the experience especially meaningful. Joe also emphasized the enduring emotional resonance of the source material.
“I think everyone understands what it was like to be at that point and to feel that vulnerable,” she said.
One of the production’s most technically demanding challenges was maintaining continuity throughout the prom sequence and its aftermath. Young revealed that the blood seen falling from the bucket was not the same substance used to create Carrie’s blood-covered appearance in subsequent shots. nstead, the makeup department painstakingly hand-painted the blood onto the actor.
“The blood that drops from the bucket is not the blood that you see Carrie on camera,” Young explained. “We did hand paint it on, and we did it about 12 different times over several weeks.”
The complexity was compounded by the production schedule, which required scenes from the beginning and end of the story to be filmed together. Every stage of the blood’s appearance therefore had to be carefully mapped out in advance.
Across all three departments, the defining approach to Carrie was the understanding that physical appearance could function as an extension of the characters’ emotional lives.
Whether through the subtle softening of Carrie’s hair, the evolution of her handmade clothing, the careful application of naturalistic makeup or the gradual deterioration of Chris’s polished appearance, each visual choice contributed to the storytelling.
The prom sequence brought those disciplines together on an extraordinary scale, requiring an intricate balance of character development, practical effects, stunt coordination and continuity.
Watch the full conversation with costume designer Tammy Joe, makeup department head Krista Young and hair department head Julie McHaffie on Welcome to the Stage.
