Tazewell, a previous nominee for “West Side Story,” already has an Emmy award (“The Wiz Live”) and Tony award (“Hamilton”) under his belt. He triumphed over fellow costume designers: Arianne Phillips (“A Complete Unknown”), Linda Muir (“Nosferatu”), Lisy Christl (“Conclave”) and Janty Yates and David Crossman (“Gladiator II”). history-as-first-black-man-to-win-best-costume-design/">
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Costner, who stars, directs, and cowrites, had to fill out the posse with accomplished creatives who could rise to the occasion. Enter Lisa Lovaas, a costume designer whose 40-year-long career includes credits on the Transformers franchise, Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise, and Renfield.
To depict the epic chronicle of the 18th-century unification of the Hawaiian Islands in the Apple TV+ miniseries Chief of War, costume designer Caroline Eselin faced an unparalleled challenge.
“None of this had been done before—and never on this scale,” she says.
I was tending bar in a jazz club the night Saturday Night debuted. The next day all my friends, many of whom were musicians or into nightlife and clubbing, were raving about it. That show changed late-night television forever. You wouldn’t think of Saturday Night as anthropological, yet it’s a study of history as much as it is creating a show. It captures a slice of New York, the characters, and honors the chaos surrounding the inception.
Mussenden is a big believer in reading, not just looking at photographs. She also believes in using fellow costume designers as part of her team. “I never designed a Western before, so I had to start my research from scratch,” she reveals. “I began with the Civil War using Time-Life’s The Old West encyclopedia that I borrowed from my friend, costume designer Kimberly Adams. I hired costume designer Christine Cantella for three weeks to visit all the museums in Texas and take photos.” Additional research included combing through digital libraries.
Napoleon was an outsider who rose to heights of authority to rival any world ruler. The Corsican soldier maneuvered through the muck of some of history’s bloodiest battlefields and most powerful royal courts, using charisma and the cult of celebrity to his advantage in both arenas. When Bonaparte donned the velvet, ermine-trimmed mantle and crowned himself Emperor of France—an image captured in the dazzling Jacques-Louis David painting in the Louvre—he reached a pinnacle of glory beyond the wildest imagination of anyone except, perhaps, himself. It would be all downhill from there.