How Heated Rivalry’s hair and makeup artists transformed the show’s leads | Canada Voices

When Connor Storrie would come into Joan Chell’s makeup trailer on the set of Heated Rivalry, he would stay in his character Ilya Rozanov’s Russian accent. “We knew he was keeping it going so he wouldn’t get distracted,” said Chell, the Toronto-based head of the makeup department for the hit Crave series.

The accent was so convincing she would forget it wasn’t Storrie’s natural voice. “One day, he came in after he’d finished for the day, so he was back to his normal accent,” she said. “I remember looking at him and thinking, ‘Why is he talking like that?’” Everyone in the trailer started laughing. “We would all talk back to him in a Russian accent.”

While working on sounding Slavic, Chell and her team were also hard at work covering the tattoos of Storrie and Hudson Williams (as well as François Arnaud and Robbie Graham-Kuntz, who play the show’s secondary couple) all over their bodies, a process that initially took about two-and-a-half hours each day.

The painstaking manual method involves using an alcohol-activated colour palette to cover the tattoo itself, which then must be matched to the skin tone. After everything is covered, the work is sealed with a setting spray.

“We always did everything in the morning, no matter when the love scenes were shot,” said Chell. “So if they were playing hockey for the first two scenes, it had to last the day.”

Chell also added freckles to Williams, which are a feature of his character in the Game Changers book series that the show is based on. In her work on Anne of Green Gables, she had hand-drawn freckles onto the main character, dotting them on one by one – it was gruelling work.

Fortunately, she had come across a better option while working on upcoming horror film Forbidden Fruits: a freckle kit from Korean brand Maykoo. Applied with a stamp, the product comes with the option of three shades. Chell changed up the colour depending on the lighting of the scene. “If it was really bright, I wanted them a little more subdued,” she said. In dark, moody rooms, she would kick it up a notch.

For the steamy love scenes, Chell relied on all-natural cult-favourite skin balm Egyptian Magic to give the actors’ bodies a sheen. The effect was sometimes enhanced by a product she calls “green jelly,” which was also used to create sweaty hairlines during hockey scenes.

Because the first season spans nine years – from 2008, when the leads first meet during their rookie season, to 2017, when they profess their love at an Ontario cottage – the characters’ hair needed to subtly evolve over the course of the story. That’s where Winnipeg-based hair department lead Zinka Tuminski, who has worked on Away From Her, Kim’s Convenience and Anne with an E, came in.

When conceiving of the characters’ hairstyles, Tuminski knew she didn’t want what she calls “barber hair” – a cut done with clippers rather than scissors. That style of hair cut, Zuminski said, is “just so perfect with every hair in place, and I can’t stand that.” Instead, she wanted their hair unkempt, with lots of texture. “These guys play hockey every day,” she said. “They don’t care about their hair.”

To indicate the passing of time, Zuminski kept Williams and Storrie’s hair pushed forward during Shane and Ilya’s rookie years to make them look younger. As they aged, she moved the hair off their faces to look more groomed and styled, especially during scenes where they were wearing suits. For Storrie, smoothing the curls off his face and revealing (and sometimes darkening) his sideburns communicated a sense of maturity.

Williams had lots of ideas for his character’s hair, which he and Zuminski mapped out with photos. “He was very into it, and we talked about it at length for every single year,” she said. “We had an idea that he’d have these soft bangs, and then in the in-between years, it was slightly to the side. And then when he was older, just right off his face.”

For Storrie, Zuminski envisioned a “soft mullet” that a hockey player who didn’t care about his hair might have. (Part of the inspiration was Winnipeg Jets left-wing Kyle Connor). Younger Ilya’s hair looked fresh and shiny thanks to Eleven Australia’s Keep My Curl cream, and older Ilya’s hair was blown out to relax some of the curls, using Layrite Natural Matte pomade, giving it a cleaner look.

Neither Chell nor Zuminski have ever worked on a project that has skyrocketed quite like Heated Rivalry. “It’s hard to have words for it because it’s just very unexpected,” Chell said. “It was my favourite show that I’ve done in years,” Zuminski noted. “I’m just happy to have been a small part of it.”

And they only have glowing words for Storrie and Williams. “From the get-go, when they walked in for makeup tests, they were just the sweetest boys,” said Chell, describing them as polite, honest and delightful. “They’re so good at what they do,” Zuminski added. “This couldn’t have happened to two nicer people.”