‘RuPaul's Drag Race' makeup head Natasha Marcelina has to be ‘prepared for anything'
Natasha Marcelina has been with RuPaul's Drag Race since Season 4 in 2012, rising from makeup artist to department head. She's also won an Emmy along the way, in 2020, for her work on the groundbreaking hit and, most importantly, has witnessed the show's impact.
"It's been amazing," Marcelina tells Gold Derby at our Meet the Experts: Makeup and Hair panel. "I feel truly lucky to have been involved with the show for so long and just seeing how it's grown over the years and how, just as a whole, drag has evolved because of the show and the influence that it's had on pop culture and especially hair and makeup of course."
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Marcelina points to "all of the beauty influencers and Instagram personalities" who pull a lot of their makeup technique from that of drag. "Such as the contouring, baking, the layering of different products and stuff like that — all comes from that theater slash drag world."
Marcelina does not collaborate with the queens on Drag Race — they all do their own makeup since it is a competition — but sometimes she has to provide products, like green makeup for Season 17's Wicked rusical. "Because clearly that's not something that that person was thinking, 'I should bring green body makeup,'" Marcelina notes. "We have that."
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The makeup artist primarily works with the show's judges, guest judges, and celebrity guests. "It's basically a conversation of like, 'What's going to make it, what are they wearing, what's the vibe?' And based on that, we're developing looks around that. And oftentimes things are very last minute. So we just kind of have to be prepared for anything."
Some of the celebrity guests come with their own glam teams, which Marcelina welcomes, especially if they're repeat visitors. "When we get the opportunity to work with them again, it's like, 'First of all, like, who are they? What is their personality?' And it's great when we have someone who comes to the show and it gives them an opportunity to kind of explore a different side, like a more fun, glamorous side, maybe, than what [they] usually portray if they're an actor or if they're a singer. The sky's the limit in just expanding on what their characters are."
Such was the case when 1923 star Julia Schlaepfer served as a guest judge in this season's fourth episode, which is also Marcelina's Emmy submission. Marcelina is a "huge fan" of 1923 and was psyched to give the actress a modern look.
"If you've seen the show, you know that her character is very — it's a period show. The looks are very subdued. The focus is definitely on the story and what the characters are going through versus aesthetic choices. So it was cool to come and have her do like a glam look, like something that maybe not everyone is used to her doing," Marcelina says. "She had this amazing pink feather outfit, which was super cute and very, very like kind of Clueless, kind of like '90s glamour. So it was a fun opportunity to just do like a big blonde hair and a pink lip and a dramatic eyelash."
Marcelina's dream guest judge is none other than Cher. "I mean, how can you choose a look? Like, she's done everything," she says. "So many queens have impersonated her over the years. She's so iconic and I feel like that would just be the ultimate in a guest judge for us."
This article and video are presented by MTV/Paramount.
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