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Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Costume Designer Recalls Meryl Streep's Dog Eating Her Belt on the Set of Don't Look Up
www.yahoo.com/news: Meryl Streep is always perfectly put together as image-conscious, doomsday-denying U.S. President Janie Orlean in the Academy Award-nominated film Don't Look Up, but one of her most stylish outfits had to be scrapped when her dog decided her belt looked more chewy than chic.
Sometimes you really just have to laugh when you see things like this. Of course it may have been a huge deal to the costume designer and probably the whole production staff that was privy. In my experience, when unexpected things like this happen, I try to keep it light, especially when in the position of manager or leader. It can ease everyone’s nerves and frankly letting yourself or others get stressed out about something as ridiculously uncontrollable as a dog chewing a costume piece is incredibly futile. That is why I appreciate this designer’s mindset in terms of general scope especially when she describes it as, “one of the greatest things that's ever happened to me in my career”. Even her joking about the quality of the puppy and taking the job less seriously is a really valuable asset in high-stress jobs, which working with famous people such as Streep sounds to be extremely nerve racking.
I love stories like this. You just know that at the moment it was so stressful but now you can’t help but laugh at how absurd it is. I think it is so honorable, and not to mention pretty cute that Meryl tried her best to fix the belt. I can imagine if something like this happened to me on both sides. On the costumes side of things, I would be so stressed out, I might even laugh about it at the moment just because I wouldn’t be able to contain myself. I don’t know if I would’ve gone for sharpie if I was Meryl but it was certainly worth a shot. Mistakes like this are something that will always, always happen during a show. I have found that they usually happen at the worst time possible when you already feel like the show is a dumpster fire. The most similar thing like this that has happened to me was I was working on Peter and the Starcatcher and I got into a little car crash on opening night, I was fine, just shaken up. I still called my show that night and now looking back, of course, that happened because why wouldn’t it?
This just cracked me up. I love that both Meryl Streep and Susan Matheson (the costume designer for Don’t Look Up) got a good laugh from the entire situation– TLDR: the dog ate her belt. And, Streep really did try to make the belt look better, but sometimes a sharpie can only go so far sadly. The moral from this story seems to be that at the end of the day, it really is ok to laugh at things like that and a slip up like that won’t be the end of the world. I’ve met people who would get incredibly upset at something like a costume malfunction, and I do really think that a) puts the wrong emphasis of importance in the project and b) doesn’t change the fact that a dog ate Meryl Streep’s belt. Really a fun story– maybe I’ll actually get around to watching that movie soon!
I feel like things going wrong during productions are always incredibly stressful and panic inducing in the moment, but super funny and entertaining to talk about later. Meryl Streep’s dog eating her costume’s belt for an important outfit in her film, Don’t Look Up, was probably no different; the costume designer and production team must have been a little miffed, but it sounds like Meryl Streep’s light hearted attitude and attempts at trying to provide a solution helped make the situation very painless and fun. This part in particular is something that I found to be sort of interesting in theory and practice. In the case where something goes wrong, performers attempting to help in a way that they think is beneficial could be more harmful than helpful, as they are not trained to handle these kinds of problems. Meryl Streep’s sharpie solution wasn’t exactly harmful, and while her efforts were definitely appreciated it did not really provide an end to the problem.
This story made me cackle. As tragic as it was that the poor designer had to reinvent an entire outfit on short notice, the reason why that happen is just funny. Sometimes the best thing to do when something like this happens is laugh. After seeing pictures of her dog, I do have to admit I would have also thought of just giving the dog the belt back to use as a toy. Part of both the challenge and the charm of making a movie or putting up a show is that sometimes things just happen. Back in my junior year of high school one of the actors had to use a cane to stomp on the ground. During tech when we got the prop we were using for the show, we realized the actor got used to smashing the original so hard this one just broke. We laughed, moved on, and decided to just get him a new cane for every performance night.
5 comments:
Sometimes you really just have to laugh when you see things like this. Of course it may have been a huge deal to the costume designer and probably the whole production staff that was privy. In my experience, when unexpected things like this happen, I try to keep it light, especially when in the position of manager or leader. It can ease everyone’s nerves and frankly letting yourself or others get stressed out about something as ridiculously uncontrollable as a dog chewing a costume piece is incredibly futile. That is why I appreciate this designer’s mindset in terms of general scope especially when she describes it as, “one of the greatest things that's ever happened to me in my career”. Even her joking about the quality of the puppy and taking the job less seriously is a really valuable asset in high-stress jobs, which working with famous people such as Streep sounds to be extremely nerve racking.
I love stories like this. You just know that at the moment it was so stressful but now you can’t help but laugh at how absurd it is. I think it is so honorable, and not to mention pretty cute that Meryl tried her best to fix the belt. I can imagine if something like this happened to me on both sides. On the costumes side of things, I would be so stressed out, I might even laugh about it at the moment just because I wouldn’t be able to contain myself. I don’t know if I would’ve gone for sharpie if I was Meryl but it was certainly worth a shot. Mistakes like this are something that will always, always happen during a show. I have found that they usually happen at the worst time possible when you already feel like the show is a dumpster fire. The most similar thing like this that has happened to me was I was working on Peter and the Starcatcher and I got into a little car crash on opening night, I was fine, just shaken up. I still called my show that night and now looking back, of course, that happened because why wouldn’t it?
This just cracked me up. I love that both Meryl Streep and Susan Matheson (the costume designer for Don’t Look Up) got a good laugh from the entire situation– TLDR: the dog ate her belt. And, Streep really did try to make the belt look better, but sometimes a sharpie can only go so far sadly. The moral from this story seems to be that at the end of the day, it really is ok to laugh at things like that and a slip up like that won’t be the end of the world. I’ve met people who would get incredibly upset at something like a costume malfunction, and I do really think that a) puts the wrong emphasis of importance in the project and b) doesn’t change the fact that a dog ate Meryl Streep’s belt. Really a fun story– maybe I’ll actually get around to watching that movie soon!
I feel like things going wrong during productions are always incredibly stressful and panic inducing in the moment, but super funny and entertaining to talk about later. Meryl Streep’s dog eating her costume’s belt for an important outfit in her film, Don’t Look Up, was probably no different; the costume designer and production team must have been a little miffed, but it sounds like Meryl Streep’s light hearted attitude and attempts at trying to provide a solution helped make the situation very painless and fun. This part in particular is something that I found to be sort of interesting in theory and practice. In the case where something goes wrong, performers attempting to help in a way that they think is beneficial could be more harmful than helpful, as they are not trained to handle these kinds of problems. Meryl Streep’s sharpie solution wasn’t exactly harmful, and while her efforts were definitely appreciated it did not really provide an end to the problem.
This story made me cackle. As tragic as it was that the poor designer had to reinvent an entire outfit on short notice, the reason why that happen is just funny. Sometimes the best thing to do when something like this happens is laugh. After seeing pictures of her dog, I do have to admit I would have also thought of just giving the dog the belt back to use as a toy. Part of both the challenge and the charm of making a movie or putting up a show is that sometimes things just happen. Back in my junior year of high school one of the actors had to use a cane to stomp on the ground. During tech when we got the prop we were using for the show, we realized the actor got used to smashing the original so hard this one just broke. We laughed, moved on, and decided to just get him a new cane for every performance night.
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