The gore in "The Princess" might as well be its own character. Through seemingly countless fight sequences, King racks up quite a few cuts and bruises throughout the film. "The biggest challenge of all of that for me was that we didn't shoot in continuity," Armstrong says. "So you have to make sure this cut has happened then, and you have that cut there and you don't have it before. Your continuity notes are massive."
The hair and makeup team used a combination of prosthetics and makeup to create fake wounds for King and the rest of the cast. "Joey's got one very big [cut] on her arm, and that's a prosthetic," Armstrong says. "Every day you put it on, and then you color it and you blend it in." The prosthetic molds, she explains, take up to two days to dry, so the team would have to prep them in advance to make sure they had enough every day on set.
For bruising and more minor cuts, Armstrong used the Skin Illustrator FX Palette ($76), a favorite among makeup pros. "You use pure alcohol with it," she says. "I use a little brush, and I literally just paint it on."
Between hair, makeup, and fake injuries, Armstrong estimates that it took two hours to get King ready for shooting each day.
A Makeup Routine Fit For a Princess
For what Armstrong calls King's "beauty makeup" (aka her base before all the cuts and bruises were added on), she mostly used foundation. Her top picks for buildable coverage were Charlotte Tilbury Light Wonder Foundation ($44), Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush Flawless Foundation ($44), and IT Cosmetics Your Skin but Better CC Cream ($42).
Rather than use separate products to contour and highlight, Armstrong would create dimension with shades of foundation that were both darker and lighter than King's skin tone. "I would maybe go darker in certain areas like [King's] jaw and underneath her cheekbones and then blend it up to highlighting on her cheeks," she says.
King's dewy glow was courtesy of Glossier Futuredew ($26), which Armstrong used as a radiance-boosting primer before makeup. She also applied Glossier Cloud Paints ($20) for a flush of color on the cheeks, mixing the pigments in with foundation for a softer effect.
