Christina Flannery X The Righteous Gemstones
interview
the RIGHTEOUS GEMSTONES
costume designer
christina flannery
Sequins and militia make unlikely partners but in the final season of The Righteous Gemstones there is no limit to the madness. Anything goes and it does.
Costume designer Christina Flannery helped take the show to another level with her ability to find the perfect clothes for the funniest moments. As we discovered, her biggest challenge was to rein it in. The costume defining scenes are a balancing act of authenticity and high drama. The outfits are perfectly pitched. We asked her how she made the magic happen.
Photograph by Jake Giles Netter/HBO
THE LAB MAG: You must be sad The Righteous Gemstones has finally ended?
CHRISTINA FLANNERY: Yeah, I can't believe it's over. I was a huge fan of Gemstones before I came on to do seasons three and four. I was obsessed with it. I'm a huge Danny McBride fan. I was telling my agent, please, I just want to work on a show like The Righteous Gemstones. And I swear it was two weeks later they said we've got an interview for you, which never happens. It was so, so cool.
LAB: Divine intervention.
CF: It had to have been because, boy, it has changed my life for the better. It's like, what will fill that cup now? But I don't think we're ever going to get that weird line that they ride so well: extreme humour and humanity. I can't think of a show that does that.
I don't get to be on set that much because, as you know, there are a million costumes. So I'm usually in fittings or preparing for fittings. Last season, we shot two episodes basically at the same time, 2003 and the 1800s. It would be hard to keep up with everything. So often when I'm watching things, I'd be like, was that in the script? I don't remember that. Also, how they edit it is so funny and unexpected.
Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
LAB: Tell us about your childhood. When did costume making feel like a possible destiny?
CF: So I actually had a very unusual upbringing. My mom was into the journey of religion. When I was really young, she decided to give being a Mennonite a go. You cannot become Amish. You have to be a Mennonite from actually being a Yankee, that's what they call it. So the closest you can do is to live the life of an Amish person but in a Mennonite aspect, which is confusing to most people. It was things like, my mom sewed all of my own clothing. It's interesting because it was religious, but it was the opposite of the gemstones. It was very dark, with drab bonnets, things like that, so that was when making clothes started becoming an itch within me.
And then, obviously, I've got a very wild imagination. I was really into Barbies. I made their clothes. I was obsessed. But it was this juxtaposition because my dad was very different from my mom, and I would go back and forth between the two of them. So it would be like, okay, you're in an extreme religion, Mennonite, weird, dark cloud kind of thing. You don't really watch TV except for Little House on the Prairie. And it was on a VHS tape, and that's all we were allowed to watch.
Then I would go with my dad, and he would be like, okay, we're watching The Simpsons, and you can play with Barbies and guess what? My favourite album is The Beatles Greatest Hits.
That's kind of where it all came from. And then I just found my balance within that.
LAB: I did not expect that answer.
CF: Yeah. People are like, wait, Mennonite. And I'm like, yeah, I have one photo of proof. I don't have my bonnet on. But I am wearing the most drab, miserable, pilgrim-looking outfit in the middle of Ohio. So yeah, it's definitely weird.
LAB: Did you make any alterations to soup up your outfits?
CF: Mennonite people can wear colours and florals, even minimal things like Amish people have strings, Mennonites have circles of the strings connected. So maybe hinting at certain things.
Actually, I did this movie called Them That Follow with Walton Goggins and it was an Appalachian snake-handling film in Ohio. And I was able to get into these environments of Amish people because I knew how to access them from my past. So, I was able to go into Amish people's houses. And there was a lady that had a store, but it was really only for the people in the church. And I remembered things like, Amish people don't use buttons. They have pins. Like everything is pinned close. But the men are allowed to have buttons. So it was all those weird little things that made wardrobe costuming fascinating to me. It's subtle, even in just understanding masculine and feminine, how it is reflected in religion, from how women have to wear stick pins and men can have buttons. It's so simple but weird and interesting.
Sketches for The Righteous Gemstones courtesy of Christina Flannery
LAB: Prior to the Gemstones, were you enamoured with any bold designers? Do you have an early memory of a gemstone-type outfit where you went, oh wow!
CF: No. I think because of my jumping around, I was able, as we all did in my generation, to just watch what was on TV, which was talk shows. So, the earliest thing I can remember was that 1994 Geraldo Rivera episode about the 90s club kids with Michael Alig. And just seeing them on the screen, I feel like that really pivoted my whole appreciation for glam. I was probably like 10 years old.
Photograph by Jake Giles Netter/HBO
LAB: Dressing the show is a massive team effort, the accessories, the hats, the footwear, the capes, all of the crazy clothing that needed to be sourced; how many people did you dress, and how did your work together?
CF: So I would say over the two seasons, it was probably well into the thousands because you see the Doomsday Preppers, the Civil War, then you've got the Monster Trunk Rally and everything like that. It was a massive team effort. It was fun.
Photograph by Jake Giles Netter/HBO
LAB: And then there's a great deal of inspiration in the world of televangelists. Drawing from all of that must have been fun. Who was the most outrageously dressed, real-life evangelist that you came upon?
CF: I think that the person to me, who reflects Judy and Amy Lee, is very much Tammy Faye Baker. I think that she influences anything that's about televangelists. You have to go back to the core, and that is Tammy Faye Baker. And I loved her so much because, again, growing up in the weird religion, the stuff that I was doing, we would have Billy Graham on the tv and this weird dry version of it. But then you would have Tammy Faye Baker, and I loved how she was just so pro-gay, which was, again, out there and so bizarre. And I mean, she was the epitome of drag, and I loved that. So she was definitely my influence.
Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
LAB: Was there anything from this show that you learned? A new thing about yourself or the world?
CF: Okay, so something that I learned from being on a show like this is how you have to seamlessly go between worlds. Even just this season alone, you've got the 1800s, and then you've got a Lake House bloodshed Michael Jackson moment. So I think for me, I'm always up for a challenge, and I'm like a triple Aries. I live in LA now, so you know, I'm going to throw the astrological signs out there, but I love a challenge. This one really taught me how to work closely with the team and then just take a moment and appreciate it. Like I said before, you're in the 1800s, and then you're shooting at the lake house on the same day. So yeah, it was learning how to balance and manage that. That was definitely something that I learned from that.
Photograph by Jake Giles Netter/HBO
LAB: Can we talk about baby Billy's Elvis inspired clam suit. Just give us some background on that because it's so wild.
CF: So that costume is the coolest costume I've ever designed. I can't imagine a world that I could top it. I think that was my real first wing it moment with Danny and just being like, okay, I'm going to try something really weird. And he might tell me to go F$@# myself, or he might just be really into it. And then I also had to sell it to Walton. And I hadn't seen Walton since our movie, which was the snake-handling film. Selling it to Danny was easy; he was like, my God, this is so amazing. Then, I had to go through the process of building it and outsourcing it. I came out to LA during a hiatus, and I was crawling through the fabric district, which is not very clean, to get these crazy fabrics and bits and pieces, working with my tailor and then bringing it in.
We had to do pre-fits because he's the busiest actor working, especially now, but bringing it in and being like, so, you're going to wear this costume. And also, there's a giant oyster shell connected to it. You're basically a walkabout. And he loved it. I feel so fortunate. I feel like that really carved me out as a costume designer in my own right, where that's my own identity. And I think it just opened up doors for me, you know?
Photograph by Jake Giles Netter/HBO
LAB: Is there a costume that you're most proud of?
CF: Yeah, I mean, it's that oyster costume. I'm working at Warner Brothers right now and they are so great when I come in there, they know all the clothes. So they're telling me, we're getting bits and pieces of your show in here. And I'm saying, where is that damn thing? And can I steal it out the back door? You know, like, don't crush the oyster shell.
LAB: And the capes. Please tell us about the capes!
CF: Oh, I love the capes. They're so amazing. It was another one of those early on things where we were kind of going back and forth with what these capes could look like. And I just did not know that Danny was going to take those capes to that level. He doesn't ever repeat things in seasons, as I'm sure you've noticed. And the fact that he brought those capes back, it's him being able to be a child again. I think it was so fun.
And the funniest thing, after the show wrapped, the line producer took a bunch of the capes and him and his peers are playing Dungeons and Dragons and they wear the capes. So, you know, it's freaking hilarious. Long live those capes.
Photograph by Jake Giles Netter/HBO
LAB: Can we talk about the two worlds of militia. So you've got the Civil War, and then you've got the doomsday preppers. Tell us about the challenges and the exciting moments.
CF: You know, the Civil War is tricky. It's a tough thing to talk about. I am mostly from the South. It's a really hard one to chip away at, in a way that you're just not even able to dive in as far as you'd like to, but also don't want to.
Sketches for The Righteous Gemstones courtesy of Christina Flannery
And in that era, what I think was fascinating about those clothes is that they were all mixed and matched. These people are so poor, they're so young, and they pulled clothes off body parts. And a lot of it was made from fabrics at their own house. Everything was just a ragtag, which was so fun to do.
Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
The doomsday preppers are such a fascinating culture. It's very post-apocalyptic punk. We have Sturgill Simpson and all kinds of cool people in there. That one was a fun one as well. It was tricky, though, because it was around January 6th when all this stuff was going on. So we've got people out there getting maybe a thousand pairs of camo pants in rural Ohio because you don't have access to that everywhere. We found a place that had 75 pairs of Civil War underwear, so yeah, I'm probably being tracked by the CIA.
Photograph by Jake Giles Netter/HBO
LAB: You've got such distinctive colour palettes for the Gemstone children.
CF: That was developed before I came onto the show. I think Danny wanted them to each be their own gemstone. I don't generally pick colours and stick with characters. I do appreciate that but it's not how I flow. What was interesting was having to follow that and reel it in a little bit. I had to keep them in that colour palette because it's season three, and you don't want to confuse the viewer; they want to know what's going on. I think they can tell the difference between my seasons and the previous seasons but you don't want to have a jump scare and have them being like, what's going on? So that was prior to me.
Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
LAB: What was your biggest challenge?
CF: Dialing it back. That's the only time I got notes, when I was saying, I know, in season three, Keith and Kelvin go their separate ways and he starts working at a woodworking shop. I'm like, let's do a goth woodworking shop. And Danny's like, no, I think we should just make him normal. Or when BJ's depressed in the wheelchair. I'm saying, okay, I have these really cool ideas for tracksuits that could be crazy, referencing the pole dancing and all this stuff. We can really kick it off. And he's like, these are the moments that we need to step back and let it breathe, which is a challenge for me, but I also understand. So that was definitely be the biggest challenge.
Photograph by Connie Chornuk/HBO
LAB: What's your daily routine? How do you stay sane during the intensity of something like this?
CF: You know, I don't stay sane because I have made that mistake of making something I love, something I do.
When I'm on a project, it consumes me. On TikTok, I would follow Hillsong and weird preachers. And I'm sure if people looked at my Instagram, they were like, what the hell? I just quit following these church people probably a month ago.
But you struggle in the film industry. You don't get a lot of sleep, so you're an insomniac. I'm up late at night thinking about where I could get that fabric from and where I can buy these pieces because, in Charleston, there is no access to anything, no good fabric stores, no clothing, and there's not even a mall. So I think that's what I'm trying to do on this show now. I'm trying to find a balance within this, and that is a challenge I am working on.
Photograph by Jake Giles Netter/HBO
LAB: What's the best advice you've ever received?
CF: Obstacles are not in the way, they are the way. I heard this recently and it blew my mind. It was just such a profound thing for me to hear. So that's my new mantra, if you will.
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