'It was such a chore, every day': the surprising reason Ella Purnell was 'part of the biggest challenge' for the Fallout TV show's makeup department

Michael Harvey, Fallout's Emmy-nominated makeup department head, revealed that Ella Purnell presented a surprising challenge for the team due to her extensive tattoos. These tattoos had to be covered daily, especially since her character Lucy wore a wedding dress, which required painstaking and continuous application to maintain continuity.

Another significant challenge was Purnell's prosthetic finger, necessitated by a plot point where her character loses a finger and gets it replaced with a corpse's finger. The prosthetic had to be retouched throughout the day because it was paler than Purnell's skin, and the writers' promise to address it in later episodes never materialized.

These challenges were unexpectedly more complex than working on Walton Goggins' Ghoul character, which involved extensive prosthetics. Despite these hurdles, Fallout garnered 16 Emmy nominations, including recognition for both prosthetic and non-prosthetic makeup, suggesting Harvey's efforts were indeed worthwhile.