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‘Boots’ Drained a Company’s Entire Body Makeup Inventory

Inside the sweaty, muddy, bald work of making the cast look like Marine recruits.

Oct 23, 2025

You know things are serious when you need a good recipe for mud in bulk.

The point of the work done by artisans like Boots head of hair Marcos Gonzalez and head of makeup Leah Vautrot is that you don’t notice it. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a staggering order on a daily basis.

Stream Boots

Consider what it means to play a character who’s outdoors as often as the recruits in boot camp. You think actors are out getting suburned? That’s makeup. Not to mention covering up a tatted-up cast, and convincing hot rising actors to shave their heads on camera. Actually, convincing them twice.

READ: ‘It’s Not an Eighth. It’s a Ninth.’ Dressing the Men of Boots.

Boots halted filming in 2023 during the strikes and resumed filming a full year later. That’s a full year of hair to snip off. “ The first time, it was like trying to get blood from them,” Gonzalez says. “And then the second time, they were apprehensive still, trying to hold onto one last strand. I wouldn’t put up with it. Off!”

And Vautrot’s work got the ultimate compliment from some of the actors, who came back to set with even more tattoos.  “Honestly, they were like, ‘Well, we knew you could do it!’” she says with a laugh. And if I’m covering a giant sleeve every day, what’s one more tattoo to cover?”

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Vautrot estimates that half of the main actors and 75 percent of the background cast are tattooed, something that wouldn’t fly in 1990, when the show is set.  How extensive was that aspect of the makeup work? “ We completely drained the inventory of the European body art company that I used,” Vautrot says. “There were times they said, ‘We’re out of that color.’ And we were like, ‘Well, we’re gonna need it.’”

But here’s where the hair and makeup work on a show like Boots gets really interesting and a lot more complex than the average viewer should ever realize. Take sweat.

For a show that filmed during a New Orleans summer, sweat should have been the easiest thing in the world to obtain and maintain. But as Judy Garland pointed out, some people sweat; some people perspire. And those look different.

“The challenge for me was that they really wanted the sweat to read,” Vautrot says. “But when people are bald… That sweaty hair around the temples is what really gives it away. So it was a continual drenching. We mixed sunscreen with water so that it would stay on and read better. But as the series progressed, we started adding sunburn, so that we could feel the element of them being outside.”

As anyone who has seen sweat glistening on a shirtless Max Parker can attest, Vautrot’s work is good. But Vautrot was also in charge of the mud. What, did you think they just picked up handfuls from the ground and smeared it on themselves?

“That was super fun,” Vautrot says of working with “right-hand person” Everett Brannon on creating the perfect mud recipe. “I wanted it to be grimy. I wanted you to feel how dirty they are. But then there’s gotta be dirt on top. So we mixed up different tones that would read on different skin types but be consistent for the mud that they were going through.”

As for Gonzalez’s work, things were hardly any calmer—even if one production team member wondered aloud what he did other than shave heads.  “We definitely said, ‘Leah, I know you know what you’re doing,’” he said of buckling down and getting the job done. “And she knew that I knew what I was doing. And we did it, and we got it done, and we didn’t let anything veer us off of the course. Nothing.”

That’s easier said than done when you’re working at the scale and pace of Boots, which, in addition to the strike-related break in filming, went from 10 episodes to eight. The guys are bald, but do you know how quickly hair grows in real life? That’s a problem in either direction when it comes to continuity, something with which Gonzalez and his team were constantly battling. But there was at least Vera Farmiga to bring joy.

“That was beyond fun,” Gonzalez says. “She’s a fun lady. She would say, ‘OK, this.’ And then the executives would say this, and then this person would say this, and 30 people would say this, and it was like, OK, we’re gonna go from here and just do what we have to do. Luckily, she had a special weapon, which was a wig that she already had that was custom fit for her, a wig from The Conjuring that we ended up having it all redone.”

But for Gonzalez, the joy of Boots was seeing the cast bonding in true Marines fashion.  “Watching what happened to each of them after they shaved their head… it was amazing,” he says. “Everybody became little groups, and they became closer. It was really beautiful.”

Leah Vautrot’s makeup department credits include Trigger Warning, The Gray Man, Killing It, and The Winchesters. Her go-to at craft services? “ Hummus in a seaweed wrap.”

Marcos Gonzalez’s hair department credits include the Queer as Folk reboot, Causeway, and Blue Bayou. He says his go-to at crafty is “ banana with peanut butter and peanut M&Ms on top. Just saying.”