We speak to costume designer Joanna Johnston about outfitting Anne Hathaway and Octavia Spencer in acclaimed director Robert Zemeckis' new adaptation of Roald Dahl's "The Witches."


With a track record including critically-acclaimed titles&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hulu.com/movie/forrest-gump-736e863a-9fa4-489a-a7f4-1cc06e57fde7">Forrest Gump</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/70172928">War Horse</a>,&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Daniel-Day-Lewis/dp/B00BOLE7X0">Lincoln</a>&nbsp;(for which she received an&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lofficielarabia.com/pop-culture/at-the-oscars-celebrities-appeared-in-more-seductive-dresses">Oscar</a><a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/lincoln-costume-designer-joanna-johnston-reacts-her-first-oscar-nomination-411005">&nbsp;nomination</a>),&nbsp;costume designer Joanna Johnston has had a hand in some of&nbsp;Hollywood&rsquo;s&nbsp;most influential movies.

It comes with the territory of working with film mavericks&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lofficielusa.com/film-tv/the-six-must-watch-award-season-movies-and-why">Steven Spielberg</a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href="https://lofficielbaltics.com/en/art/roald-dahls-witches-are-back-with-anne-hathaway">Robert Zemeckis</a>, both of whom Johnston has worked closely with for over 20 years. For her latest project with Zemeckis, the newly released adaptation of Roald Dahl&rsquo;s&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GX5A8JQnSPQ2QFgEAAAAC">The Witches</a>&nbsp;on HBO Max, Johnston designed costumes for a whole coven of terrifying witches that front as normal women and lure children to their demise.&nbsp;

Zemeckis&#39;&nbsp;new take on the 1983 children&rsquo;s fantasy novel places the characters&nbsp;in 1960s Alabama with an African American protagonist and his grandma,&nbsp;giving the story a more inclusive update.&nbsp;

Juxtaposing&nbsp;the witches that roam the&nbsp;Grand Orleans Imperial Island Hotel where the action is set,&nbsp;Octavia Spencer&#39;s&nbsp;&quot;Grandma&quot; offers a sense of warmth and home, outfitted in floral prints and comfortable&nbsp;house dresses.&nbsp;

In contrast&nbsp;is&nbsp;Anne Hathaway&#39;s&nbsp;Grand High Witch, whose perfect&nbsp;red lips give way to a wicked,&nbsp;sharp-toothed grin; coiffed wigs and&nbsp;chic hats cover a bald head covered in sores, and gloves and pointed-toe heels conceal claws. Fans of&nbsp;Anjelica Huston&#39;s&nbsp;Grand High Witch from the 1990 version of the film won&#39;t see the same horror-level makeup, but rather CGI and some strategic prosthetics transform Hathaway on-screen. Joined by dozens of other witches from around the world, the costumes act as their ultimate disguises to their true, children-despising forms.

Here, Joanna Johnston speaks to&nbsp;L&#39;OFFICIEL&nbsp;about the defining features of Spencer, Hathaway, and the other witches&#39; costumes, from drawing from Spencer&#39;s personal background to paying homage to the start of her own costuming career.

The Witches

You&#39;ve worked on a couple children&#39;s movies before&nbsp;The Witches,&nbsp;but they&#39;ve been few and far between your other work on period pieces and action films. What drew you to this project?

You don&#39;t usually choose it for the genres, you choose it for the storytelling. For instance, I used to say I was never interested in doing sci-fi, but then, I ended up doing a film which was partly science-fiction because the story was so amazing. I think it&#39;s just the story and the directors.

Between&nbsp;BFG,&nbsp;Polar Express,&nbsp;and&nbsp;The Witches, they all fall between Bob Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg. They are the two directors that I work with ongoing. It was them more than the type of films, so to speak.

&nbsp;

For this telling of&nbsp;The Witches,&nbsp;it may be a new generation&#39;s first introduction to the story. How did you, Robert, and the rest of the team begin imagining the world you wanted to create?

Roald Dahl is majorly important as a storyteller and enormous in Great Britain. There are very few children &mdash; as I understand it &mdash; who haven&#39;t been taken into his stories in some form.&nbsp;The Witches&nbsp;is in the consciousness of a lot of people. It&#39;s a huge point of reference&mdash;I know it&#39;s a little bit less so in America, but he&#39;s in the psyche of storytelling here.&nbsp;

The icing on the cake was that [Bob Zemeckis] moved the story from the 1980s, which was when it was written, to the 1960s, and then set it in America.

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Since the movie is&nbsp;set in Alabama, did you do any research into the fashion of&nbsp;that period and place in America?

It was actually an international research, because all the witches at the convention, they come from all over the world, so we had a whole lot of witches who were representing their countries. Witches can be any kind of peoples. I went all over the place. It was an extensive research platform to play on.

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What were the influences behind Anne Hathaway&rsquo;s Grand High Witch costumes?

There were some iconic people of the &lsquo;60s and I did a&nbsp;homage to my boss&nbsp;<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0694018/">Anthony Powell</a>, who I worked with when I was an assistant. He&nbsp;used to do fabulous, dramatic black-and-white [costumes] as one of his specialities. I wanted her to be glamorous and be the focus&nbsp;where the other witches would really look up to her, so she had the greatest impact out of anybody. It&#39;s all about her vanity and her projection.&nbsp;

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For Octavia Spencer&#39;s character, she wears a lot of patterns and prints. What was the choice behind that?

She has great standards in her dressing and she always looks lovely. Earlier on, I decided I wanted her to be in print pretty much all the time.&nbsp;Flowers and details&mdash;she&#39;s the polar opposite of the Grand High Witch, so you&#39;re playing characters with each other.

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Octavia is from Alabama &ndash; did she share any input for her costuming since she&#39;s familiar with the setting?

I talked to her about her childhood and I knew that women wore housecoats in the home when they&#39;re doing domestic stuff, and she reiterated that to me about her family. You keep all your better clothes when you&#39;re going out, but when you&#39;re in the home, you have these house dresses. They&#39;re practical but they can also be very good-looking, made out of cotton and nylons. I definitely tapped into her and her experience.

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The witches&rsquo; accessories are the main component of their identities. What was it like coordinating those elements&nbsp;for so many characters?

Complicated, because the witches have claw hands and feet, so I came up with this concept that all the witches have to wear gloves to cover up their clawed hands. They have two fingers, which are false fingers in a five-fingered glove. If you look at the film closely, they are rigid. They don&#39;t move because they&#39;re actually stuffed. The shoes had to be quite long and pointy, so they were elongated to accommodate their clawed feet.

The Witches&nbsp;is now availalbe to stream on&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hbomax.com/feature/urn:hbo:feature:GX5A8JQnSPQ2QFgEAAAAC">HBO Max</a>.

A look inside the fashion magic in "The Witches" with costume designer Joanna Johnston

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