Alex Perrone’s – Alex Perrone, makeup department head for Dropout’s improvised “Very Important People,” breaks down how character looks are planned, locked, and created—right up until an actor sits in the chair and gets transformed with paint and prosthetics. From a chest piec
The makeup chair on “Very Important People” isn’t just where characters get finished—it’s where the show’s weirdest turns start.
Alex Perrone. the makeup department head for Dropout’s improvised interview series. describes a process where ideas move fast. visuals get “locked” on a tight timeline. and then everything has to stay flexible enough for improvisation. In Season 3. that scramble has to happen while the guest actor is in the chair—sometimes with their eyes closed—waiting to be ambushed by paint and prosthetics from Perrone and her team.
“Very Important People” is hosted by Vic Michaelis. who plays a fictional version of herself. guiding viewers through a strange public access-style series also called “Very Important People.” Behind the camera. Perrone and director Tamar Levine trade notes all year long. whether the team is preparing for a new season. finessing looks during production. or developing characters for later.
The show’s creative engine is built to be shared. The core Season 3 production team—Michaelis. Levine. Perrone. costume designer Alisha Silverstein. producers Paul Robalino and David Kerns—puts together proposals for “total transformations.” Perrone points to examples like a superhero with the mundane power of bubbles. a giant baby. or a sentient flower.
But the team also has to accept a crucial reality: even the “VIP” crew doesn’t know what direction a guest actor will take until the improvisation starts. That means makeup plans can’t be fully scripted, even when the team begins preparing them weeks in advance.
The first phase is teamwork and timeline discipline. Perrone says they ideate for a few weeks with everybody before “locking looks.” In a 15-episode season. Perrone describes that they lock three to four looks within the first three weeks. and the builds begin as more looks keep getting pitched and created.
“It goes up to the very end, once we have all the cast locked,” Perrone told IndieWire.
Some designs arrive through pure discovery. When Rachel Pegram—described as a werewolf content creator with some body-ody-ody—was shaping a character, inspiration for the final look came from locating a specific prosthetic: a chest piece with six nipples.
Other transformations come from the challenge of reinvention. Perrone says “Very Important People” also has a special pressure to surprise repeat guests like Lisa Gilroy and Zac Oyama, giving them completely new looks each season they show up.
Perrone highlighted Gilroy’s shift across the seasons: going from an “old woman” look in Season 1 to a monster in Season 2. and then to a beautiful makeup design in Season 3 where she plays a clown. Perrone says the team wanted a new direction for Gilroy and a big departure from Spencer. a character people already love.
“We knew we wanted to take her in a new direction and also do a big departure from Spencer. ” Perrone said. “People love Spencer. We love Spencer. But we wanted to give Lisa a different direction to take her improv and something different for Vic to work with as well. We pulled through more of the beauty aspect of the makeup while still adding nuances that make it twisty and fun.”.
“T wisty and fun” is essentially Perrone’s north star for the makeup world of “VIP.” The show demands an almost impossible range: some characters are built like outlandish. unique beings—a giant rock person or a fully made-up hot dog person—that would never fit into film and television in the way most audiences expect. At the same time. the series also includes subtle transformations that preserve the performer’s face. using things like stubble or smaller prosthetic pieces.
Perrone says her favorite setups are the large inanimate-object characters because comedians often deliver something completely unexpected. She describes them as moments that “are never what I anticipate.”
But she also defends the quiet power of pulled-back characters—where the performer’s face comes through and the makeup work becomes a set of small. trackable cues. Those details can be as simple as a silly mole. or in the case of Caitlin Reilly in Season 3. Perrone says the team “really pulled back everything” and relied on costume designer Alisha Silverstein to push it toward something outlandish based on how the actor plays it.
The mix isn’t just artistic—it’s practical. Perrone explains she gets about three custom pieces per season. Those builds involve scanning, sculpting, and customizing for an actor’s body. On a typical film or TV schedule. she says those builds might take months. but “Very Important People” has only two months of prep and 15 episodes to shoot.
With that limitation, the team has learned to create complexity quickly. Perrone says more actors in Season 3 now get eyes and teeth specially added for character looks. She also cites a “hit list” of places she turns to for interesting and odd applications on short turnaround—naming RBFX Studio and Dyad Prosthetics.
“We pull from that, and rather than using them, maybe what they’re intended for, we add our own spin to them and make a new creation and make it unique for Dropout,” Perrone said.
That kind of reinvention isn’t confined to one department. Perrone frames the most challenging designs as team problems—especially when the concept itself is so specific it has to be visualized from scratch.
In Season 3, she points to Sudzo (Eugene Cordero), a bubble-powered superhero. The initial producer’s pitch was for a low-rent superhero. Finding a way to make even a generic superhero feel original was hard. Perrone says it took a few weeks to land on “bubbles” as the power.
Then the bigger question arrived: how do you represent that on-screen? Perrone says it took “if not improv, a lot of yes-and-ing between departments” to get the look right.
“That one evolved over weeks, and it was a complete collaboration between everybody,” Perrone said.
For Perrone, the most lasting takeaway from working on “Very Important People” is the room the show gives to creation. She says it’s rare to find so much collaboration and time to create something the team has wanted, and she describes the production as open to different ideas that evolve.
She also credits Dropout for representing their artists on the show.
“Very Important People” is streaming on Dropout.
Very Important People Dropout Alex Perrone Vic Michaelis Tamar Levine Alisha Silverstein Eugene Cordero Lisa Gilroy Zac Oyama prosthetics makeup design Season 3 bubbles superhero RBFX Studio Dyad Prosthetics