This Broadway Star Is Sharing Her Backstage Beauty Tips Ahead of the Holidays

Gooding has picked up quite a few backstage makeup tips and tricks from working on Jagged Little Pill. By far the most helpful thing she's learned is how to keep her makeup from coming off on her love interest's face (which can come in handy for various scenarios, from mask wearing to date night). Because stage makeup tends to be heavier than your typical everyday glam, it's a major feat to keep layers of product from budging. "If I don't really set it down with lots of powder and lots of setting spray, my makeup literally gets on everything because I have really oily skin," Gooding told POPSUGAR. "A little hack that I learned to get less makeup on another person's face is to use less liquid products around your nose and mask area."

What makes someone feel their best is different for everyone, but makeup is often viewed as a universal confidence booster. For Gooding, she feels like her best self when she has "dramatic, Sharpie-looking drawn-on brows" and access to makeup that works for her skin tone, which sounds like a basic ask, but is unfortunately not always a given.

"In the past, it's been really hard to find makeup that was my skin tone and was my undertone," said Gooding. "I didn't realize at first just how important undertones are, especially for stage makeup. My undertone is pretty red, and so it was really hard to feel confident on stage. I think my biggest struggle, just as it's the same struggle for a lot of dark-skinned people, is just finding makeup that really works." When the makeup is right and Gooding feels like she's looking her best, it affects her energy on stage. "That confidence that I get, I just let that flow into everything."

The Laura Geller Beauty and Broadway shoot may have been Gooding's first beauty campaign, but having taken place on Broadway with fellow Jagged Little Pill star Elizabeth Stanley, it felt just like home. "We both got to sing these little song jingles for them, and it ended up being the coolest thing," said Gooding. "The look they gave me was this bluish-blackish smoky eye and a natural lip."

For her makeup, they used the new Party in a Palette ($25), where 15 percent of all proceeds from sales goes toward Save Our Stages, a national independent venue association working to keep theaters open. In the video, Gooding can be seen dancing along and narrating her holiday makeup look in song form while Laura Geller re-creates it in real time. Geller started out as a Broadway makeup artist before launching her namesake brand, so the holiday shoot was a full-circle moment for the brand.

Gooding is anxious to get back to work full-time and be on stage again, but what she misses most is the magical energy of live theater. "I don't really know how to describe it besides like that moment when the lights go down, and you feel everyone holding their breath, and the energy feels like a staticky [television] — it just, it feels really, really good. I'm very excited to feel that feeling again."