‘White Chicks’ Had Marlon and Shawn Wayans in Makeup For 7 Hours
Shawn and Marlon Wayans completely transformed themselves to play their White Chicks characters, Brittany and Tiffany Wilson. But the process was grueling. According to Marlon, it took nearly seven hours for them to get through hair and makeup each day while filming the comedy film.
Marlon Wayans says making ‘White Chicks’ almost ‘killed’ him and Shawn Wayans
When Shawn and Marlon developed the idea for White Chicks, they may not have known how hard it would be to transform them into their characters. In a recent chat with GQ, Marlon recalled the long hours the actors worked and how much time they had to spend on hair and makeup.
“That movie almost killed us,” he said. “Seven hours of makeup. We’d work 14 hours, after that. It takes an hour to take the makeup off. Shawn and I would get two hours sleep for like 65 days, or 60 days.”
Despite the grueling schedule, Marlon remembers spending time with their co-stars. He noted that he and Shawn continued working on other projects on the side.
“We still managed to hang out with our cast,” Marlon recalled. “And we still managed to write a series of books, and write Thugaboo, which was an animated series. That was hard. It almost killed us.”
The ‘White Chicks’ makeup creator reveals what it took to get the Wayans camera ready
White Chicks makeup creator Greg Cannom worked with his team for months to develop the right face and body makeup for Shawn and Marlon. When talking to EW in 2004, he revealed that they used foam and latex to restructure the actors’ jaws and noses. And they utilized special contact lenses to make their eyes look whiter.
Cannom also recalled keeping the brothers in makeup for hours on end. He suggested the long laborious process wasn’t easy to manage.
“We did 60 days of this, and it was grueling for them and it was grueling for us trying to recreate it each day,” Cannom said. “You get one piece of foam an eighth of an inch off-center and it screws up everything, and I mean everything.”
“If they ate or drank anything, they had to be touched up,” he continued. “They were hardly getting any sleep between the makeup and working all day, but they were amazing, mugging around and joking.”
‘White Chicks’ was a box office hit
Shawn and Marlon Wayans worked day and night to make White Chicks. In the end, their hard work paid off.
The 2004 film was a box office hit. Against a budget of $37 million, the comedy brought in $70.8 million in the United States and $42.3 million internationally, grossing a total of $113 million.
White Chicks has since become a part of pop culture. Many of its lines and moments are still referenced today. The Wayans brothers have revealed their desire to make a White Chicks 2. But they’re only willing to do it if they can skip the makeup and use CGI for their transformations.
