As Makeup Department Head on the Hulu hit Deli Boys, Nesrin Ismail is behind some of the most interesting looks on television. She’s an expert in both beauty and special effects makeup and puts all that to use on the comedy about fish out of water drug kingpins in an unexpected Philly deli underworld. In our interview, Ismail took us behind the scenes with stars Saagar Shaikh, Poorna Jagannathan, Asif Ali, and Alfie Fuller, revealing unexpected visual inspirations ranging from 80s Bollywood flair to Solange’s signature style. It was a fascinating chat. Read the full interview below.
The Interview with Nesrin Ismail, Makeup Department head for Deli Boys
[Editor’s Note: This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.]
Ayla Ruby: Okay, fantastic. So again, it’s lovely to meet you. This is awesome.
Nesrin Ismail: Thank you, Ayla.
Ayla Ruby: The show was a ton of fun. It was so unexpected. Congratulations on just all of it.
Nesrin Ismail: Thank you. Thank you. I’m very proud.
Ayla Ruby: You should be. I have a lot of questions about the show, but I’d love to learn a little bit more about you first and kind of your journey and your career and just all of that and your bio, I guess.
Nesrin Ismail: Well, I started a long time ago in LA and I took the regular journey of any aspiring makeup artist. I started Beauty and then I ended up doing a lot of indie movies and that’s how I really got into FX.
Ayla Ruby: I have a question really quick. I guess I’m not as well versed, in that when you say you started Beauty, what does that mean?
Nesrin Ismail: It’s like how everybody starts the beauty of makeup.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, I see, gotcha.
Nesrin Ismail: Usually if you’re interested in makeup, there are two routes you take. All the glam and all celebrity makeup artists, whatever, that’s the beauty route.
Nesrin Ismail: There’s a lot of, especially boys when they’re very young, they’re into monsters and all the burns and all that and that’s the special effects. And a lot of makeup artists, when their journey takes them to film and tv, they end up getting interested also in special effects, all that. And then some people just specialize in one thing and some people specialize in the other. So I kind of do both because I started in beauty and then veered to effects, got few projects as regular makeup and then did few project as specifically a special effects makeup artist. And now I combine both.
On how she came on board the Deli Boys project
Ayla Ruby: Yeah, it’s fantastic. And I have so many questions about that and I was looking at the pictures on your website and looking at some of your other work and I’m just kind of blown away by how realistic and how amazing all of it is. All the special effects stuff, so kudos to you and all that. So Deli Boys is really cool. Can you talk about your journey to that project? How did you come on board and how did you know it was something you really wanted to be a part of and to be in or be on the team for that?
Nesrin Ismail: The truth, everybody jumps on projects mainly just to work really. And unless there are huge names attached to it, you don’t really know at the beginning. At the very beginning, you don’t really know what the project is all about. You just know who’s working it or who’s attached to it. And the truth is, I jumped on the project because I wanted a job really, and with my skillset, because I am a beauty makeup artist and a special effects makeup artist, the unit production manager, the person who put my name in front of the producer, because I worked with him before in a past project, put it as that and I got accepted. And before you get, you just put on your resume and before you get, you don’t really know what’s the project about, what are the needs of the production, you just put your resume, people take a look at it, see if your skillsets and your resume match to what they want. And then you get in. So then I got in when I got in because we started with a pilot first, and that was one year before it was green lit, but we had the strike,
Nesrin Ismail: So that’s why it took so long. But usually pilots are six months before the rest of the episodes are done. When I got in the pilot, when I got hired for the job, I got all the breakdowns of course, and what they need and what the story was about. And from there I was like, this is a match made in heaven because it’s very rare to find a colorful project, a project that’s about a different culture. And I was, it had a ton of glam beauty, ton of special effects and blood and all that. I just felt I really did just luck out. It’s pure, it’s pure luck I feel when you get the project and it’s an immediate alignment of elements. So I love that.
On the research behind some of the looks, including being influenced by old-school Bollywood and Solange
Ayla Ruby: So once you got your breakdowns and you got what the journeys were of the characters and everything, did you do any research to create these colorful looks or to get into this world, be it Philadelphia or the other cultures?
Nesrin Ismail: When I got the breakdowns, the breakdowns are very simple in general. They just tell you a broad idea and it’s up to the artist who’s hired, interpreted, interpret those words and make a visual of it. And then the producer would go and see. It’s like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s what we’re talking about. Or Oh, I like this more than that. So when I got the breakdowns, the characters were vague. Prairie is fashionable,
Nesrin Ismail: I’m sorry, not Prairie. Lucky is fashionable for our main fashionable strong woman. That’s a very general idea is so I knew it was a Pakistani family thing and I looked into each character, what era they grew up in because that really matters on how you perceive everything else. So she’s a poor kid from Pakistan or she grew up as a kid in Pakistan. What era did she grow up in? Nineties, early nineties. Okay. What was she watching? What is child would be, oh my god, what would awe a child usually are movies. What kind of movies are you watching in Pakistan you’re not really going to be watching? It’s some American movies, but it’s mainly Bollywood. So I figured, well, I think she’s going to be enamored with a Bollywood eighties stars because I seen, so I made a couple of visual references to what she might have seen or got influenced in as she grew up and made the looks to fit that current, because she can’t really duplicate old looks. It’s just going to look dated and made it current and made it to fit the actor that was cast. So I made a couple of references to her color, and then Poorna when she was cast. Okay, so what colors, what is actual color palette? How can we do eighties Bollywood references but modernize it? So pretty much contemporary looks rooted in history or in the history of her culture.
Ayla Ruby: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That’s fantastic. That makes a lot of sense. Now you mentioned briefly Prairie earlier. Can you talk about the theory behind her and how you approached her look? And was there anything, once you had the actor who was going to play Prairie, how did that work, the collaboration there?
Nesrin Ismail: Well, when I got also Prairie’s breakdown, it was Afro futuristic shaman. I looked at Alfie [Fuller] and I was like, okay, Afro futuristic because she’s a shaman. Okay. So I got references from, because it’s very hard to say Afro futuristic because you have African references and bumping it up and modernize it. So I got references from tribal West African line work, all those white line work. These are West African tribal work. So I did that. And also she would be kind of, Solange was another reference that came to mind how Solange do her makeup. Her makeup is way simpler than what we ended up doing, but it is that a bare face and then a bump of color, bare face and a bump of color. And Solange gives you that mystic, she’s the only one in the modern culture that has this mystical aura about her. I put also Solange as a reference.
Nesrin Ismail: And then at that point I didn’t know that it would be Alfie Fuller that at that point it was not revealed. We just needed be an African-American actress. And then when I got the note that Alfie was cast, of course I went to Alfie’s work and saw her color tone and all that and made some just color charts for her. And then we did a couple of tests because even when you have a vision and you talk with everybody and you give charts and references and all that, that doesn’t really mean anything. You have to do it, test it, see how it’s going to look on camera and eight, nine people have to approve it. So we did the very, very beginning of Alfie’s character or Prairie’s character. I did the test. Alfie, she came in to shoot one day. So came in the morning, I did a quick test, they looked at it, oh, okay, yeah, that looks great. And then we did the pilot. Okay, well for the pilot we’ll have four different looks. And I just did my thing
On collaborating with Alfie Fuller for Prairie’s look
Nesrin Ismail: A year later when we came in to shoot, I was like, okay, so now we need to personalize this a little bit. Now I got a script. Now I know her from the pilot. You can see her character and her personality, but it’s just different when you start working, you have a bigger script. So I had a certain look for her, which was a lot of the lines. And then as we work together and I was like, oh, what do you think about this? And she’s like, oh, maybe we should add that. And what I got from Alfie was she used to, in her real life, in her daily life, likes makeup a lot and not a whole lot of people actually wear a lot of makeup, actors outside work. She loves her makeup and what she was doing at that time. So she just bare face and she put those little two dots, one.here, one dot that you barely see white dots and my original ideas. And then we’re going to play a lot with lines, white lines because that’s from the West African influence. And I’m like, I think we should incorporate that. And Alfie said, great, let’s do it. So we bumped it up 10 times, which actually does. So we added more dots. So the dots and the lines were her signature.
Ayla Ruby: Well there’s so much in the eyes and surrounding the eyes right with the dots on the lines, it feels very important to her character and helps tell her the story. I can’t imagine her character without that.
Nesrin Ismail: Which is great because this could have been going any which way. Any other makeup artist will interpret it completely different. And then the producer will say, oh good, nice, cool, great. But it just helps that you have a vision. The actors like your vision because if the actor who understands the character way more than you do, because I would say a hundred percent of them are incredibly prepared
Ayla Ruby: Of course.
Nesrin Ismail: And they already looked in backgrounds and they all have backstories of whatever. So they do have also some sort of an idea. And if your idea does not match completely what in their mind, it doesn’t really work.
Nesrin Ismail: So you have to at some point have a relationship with your actor to see that both of you have the same vision and both of you initially work on getting the image, the visual representation better and better and better. And I lucked out with Poorna and Alfie and all the guys, we just lucked out because we all work together. She’s like, oh, we like that. You know what? Can we do a different color? Sure, let’s do this. How about that? It was at the end of the day, filmmaking is collaborative. There is no one vision, there is no one person who’s behind some, you have the general idea, but everybody collaborates together to make it work and to make it successful.
On working together with the costume department and more to create the Deli Boys looks
Ayla Ruby: I want to go back to the characters in a second, but I think collaboration is such a great word too, because in addition to the makeup and the makeup department, you’ve got the costume department as well to work with to create this kind of visual for the characters. How does that work for you? How do you collaborate? What’s that like?
Nesrin Ismail: Well, honestly, I think best friends, the two people who collaborate most for the visual aspect of it in any film or TV is usually the makeup and costume or makeup, hair and costume. These are the departments that kind of work with each other. So with Kaylee [Breneman], our costume designer, we also lucked out with this one. She’s incredibly collaborative. A lot of people will send you, a lot of costume designers, that’s normal. They’ll just send you the designs last minute.
Ayla Ruby: Okay.
Nesrin Ismail: So you’ll be like, wait, what is she wearing? Okay, and you’re last [minute.] Kaylee would, we had a whole email thing that was going on that we knew exactly ahead of time. So I would say two days ahead of time, I know exactly the costume that is going to be put on Poorna, that scene that day. And that helped. Usually there’s no notes from, I mean as far as I know, there’s no notes from wardrobe. They don’t just care about their costume. And my job is to compliment that costume with the makeup, so that it makes sense to the character. That was the collaboration that we got everything ahead of time. I knew exactly what they were wearing, the colors. Because also there’s something that nobody really talks about is the nails.
Ayla Ruby: Oh, that’s true.
Nesrin Ismail: It’s very small. Very few people will notice. Lucky, Poorna, every outfit matched her nails. You start looking at the episodes and because that’s her, she’s incredibly, that’s the character. She’s a put together woman at all times. So nails always matches outfit,
Ayla Ruby: Makeup takes a very long time. But nails also take, it’s hard on your nails, hard on your body. And it’s not like you’re shooting consecutively. Right? If you’re shooting a couple of different looks, how does that work for you? How does that work for the actors generally?
Nesrin Ismail: What’s done now, generally because of the nail issue. I mean in regular TV shows, which is the procedural one, the medical stuff, the whatever you notice, go and look at all their nails.
Ayla Ruby: I’m going to now, I feel like I need to.
Nesrin Ismail: Because nobody want to mess with this continuity. Continuity is a nightmare back and forth. And then they reshoot something with whatever. So you can keep your continuity or what you’ve done in pictures for the face, for the makeup and the nails. Also, it’s very hard thing is you also have to, so what usually people do is they keep it neutral. It’s one color that they keep for the whole time. That way they don’t mess with continuity or it’s usually just one color. And when you go back and forth, a lot of the times you use the stick on nails. The stick on nails. More specialized shows. So if the show’s going on a nail salon, now that’s a whole different animal, part of the character. So you have a nail tech part of the crew that goes back and forth and all that. For us, generally, the general thing that I would have possibly taken is the stick on nails and change and put back and change and put back. Now Poorna is very natural. Those are not good for you. She doesn’t even put the gel on.
Ayla Ruby: I can understand that
Nesrin Ismail: Technically gel is really not that great for your nails most, the most lighter on your health of the nail is really the regular nail polish, everyday nail polish. So that’s what we did. We kept and we did regular nail also, Poorna would be sitting, I’ll be doing her hair if any of my team has time, so they’ll be helping her with her nails or be taking this or taking that. But also that adds to the character how it looks and it adds to the work and adds to the time. So we were all hands-on to keep the nails in, check what outfit, what kind of nails, what colors. It was a lot.
On continuity in special effects
Ayla Ruby: Yeah. Well, and to bring it back a little bit to the special effects stuff too, and for a lot of, well, not for a lot, but for portions of this, you’re dealing with blood, you’re dealing with all these other things that need to have continuity and need to have things done. How does that work? How does that juggle? What’s that process like for you for the special effects and prosthetics.
Nesrin Ismail: Well, because I am a special effect artist, I worked on The Walking Dead. I was not in the zombie unit. That’s a different unit from us. But I was on The Walking Dead and I did Chicago PD for four years. So I had, in my trailer, I had a lab little room that I would do my prosthetics on. And it works like any other continuity, meaning you do the look, you take good pictures and you keep a chart and you keep your notes. That’s the only way you keep it organized and kind of done and really just comes with how good you keep your continuity comes in with experience. How often have you done it before? And that’s, I keep pictures for that day. You write exactly. I had a whole chart of exactly what we shot because we shoot out a sequence.
Ayla Ruby: Yeah, of course.
Nesrin Ismail: Exactly what we shot. What’s the outfit, what’s the makeup for the outfit, what’s the nails for the outfits? And okay, what days do we have the effects? What did the effects what day? So for example, the big effect was the one of the guy running with the blood.
Ayla Ruby: The one where he runs out of the deli. And then…
Nesrin Ismail: So that was shot throughout. I don’t know the whole, because he got the hit in the pilot and four or five, the blood cannot stay the same because if we’re going timeline, right? So we had three, I did three and a half levels of the blood
Nesrin Ismail: When he first got hit. The blood is there, Colored red, it is there. And then as time goes when he kind of runs away, now you got few hours meaning that blood color has changed, blood oxidizes. So that now, which today, what are we shooting? Is it level one when it’s a fresh hit, level two, which the blood has oxidized a little, and then he stumbles just more blood, right? So we’re adding blood, so that’s level three. And then those guys take him to the apartment. Now he’s there, that’s it. He stumbles more, that’s blood. And then he got hit by the thing. That’s another blood with different colors. So I just kept charts of everything we did and I painted on. So for continuity, blood flows differently. Means when you pour blood on or any kind of liquid, it will flow some way. You do the same time in a different day, it’s going to flow completely different. So I take pictures of the first blood flow and then when I need to recreate it, I just paint it on, I paint the outline on and just fill it in with the blood. That way it looks the same no matter what
On what Ismail is proud of accomplishing with this show
Ayla Ruby: That makes sense. And I know there’s so much that goes into it. I feel like we could, I have so many questions about that, but I know we’re just about at the end. Is there anything you want people to know about your work, this show, or anything that you’re really, really proud of having accomplished with this show or just in general?
Nesrin Ismail: What I really accomplished, what I’m so proud of in accomplishing in this show is that I showed how diverse my work can be from electric beauty work to intense special effects and prosthetic work. And I’m really proud of how visually stunning it was. And really that wasn’t just because of me, to be very honest. As I said, it’s a collaboration. I am so proud of how this looked at the end. You can work a project and you never really know how it looks. You think you until it’s color corrected, until if the costumes are not that great, it’s not going to be as visually stunning. But what I’m really proud of is that I truly lucked out to be in the company of such great artists who made my work look better because the great costumes, because the hair, because of the funny lines, because you can make the most strikingly visually amazing thing, but if the writing is bad, that’s it. It doesn’t mean anything. So because the writing was great, because the directing was phenomenal because the lighting of sets, because how visually stunning the actual set was, the art direction on this show is impeccable.
Nesrin Ismail: I feel so proud that I was in the company of very, very talented group of people who made this whole thing kind of bind together.
Ayla Ruby: Well that’s wonderful. And it was a lovely show and I think like you said, all of it worked. Thank you so much for talking.
Nesrin Ismail: Thank you. Thank you.
Deli Boys is now streaming on Hulu.
Learn more about the show, including how to watch at the official site for the title.
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