La Femme Nikita
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FF: And would you say that in the psychological aspect of how the character Nikita dresses, do you feel that, particularly when it’s a so-called office dress or whatever, is she dressing for Michael?
Laurie Drew: No. I don’t think so. She’s got a lot of intrigue.
 (by Firooz Zahedi) |
I don’t think she really cares one way or another. I mean it’s a little deeper than that in terms of their relationship. It’s maybe even more twisted than that. I don’t think it’s as easy for them as like, oh, she wears a pretty dress one day, she’ll get him. You know it’s a lot more complicated than that. And she sticks to her guns, no pun intended, just in terms of who she is, and she’s dealing in real truths with him. And I think that’s their weakness and strength together. I don’t know, it’s hard to say.
FF: Well, it’s the tension that makes it so interesting, I think, too.
Laurie Drew: Yeah, yeah. And it’s the tension based on pretty heavy duty stuff; life and death kind of stuff, like he was her savior, yet her captor.
 (by Firooz Zahedi) |
So I don’t know. I don’t think it’s got much to do with clothes. I think the clothes kind of indicate their personalities and their characters, so in that way there’s an interplay.
FF: And is Nikita dressing now in a more sort of corporate culture savvy way, because she’s ambitious? Is it with mixed feelings?
Laurie Drew: I don’t think she’s ambitious to climb in Section; I think she’s ambitious for herself. I think the one thing about Nikita is, despite all odds, she’s got some vestige of hope left, and that’s what keeps her fire burning. And it’s like she’s not a Hamlet type of person. She’s not like, should I or shouldn’t I, to be or not to be. There’s nothing ambiguous about her. Right? She’s in your face, she says what she thinks, and you know damn the torpedoes kind of thing, right?
FF: Definitely.
Laurie Drew: So I don’t think she’s actually aspiring to climb the corporate ladder in Section. I think if she has any aspirations at all, it’s to live what mere kind of shreds of a life she has left, with some form of integrity.
 (by Michael Courtney) |
FF: Yes, yes.
Laurie Drew: So yeah. She’s ambitious in that, in terms of like okay, I can play this game too. And if I’m going to make something of myself, and my own personal battle of life, you know, then I’ll use whatever resources I have. And if I can be smart enough to fool these guys, then you know maybe there’s hope.
 (by Michael Courtney) |
FF: I understand you often pick clothes for a scene right before it’s shot.
Laurie Drew: Yeah.
FF: So that means… Wow.
Laurie Drew: We only get seven days to shoot a whole show, and invariably Peta’s in every script day, and you know there’s nine, ten, eleven different script days per show. You know it starts to mount up.
FF: I bet.
Laurie Drew: And she needs her sleep. She needs to have a bit of a life. So it’s like the fittings now have just come down to the point where everything that is an option, I present to her already altered and ready to the point where it can go.
FF: I see.
Laurie Drew: So we just haul in a rack.
 Left of Laurie is Anita Bacic, assistant costume designer. (by Harry Zernike) |
We have various outfit choices that are completely altered and accessorized and everything. And then it’s just a matter of her going through the blocking, which is something they do prior to rehearsals. Like they’ll sort of go to the set with the director and a few of the key set people, and they’ll walk through their lines and kind of get a feel for the mood of it.
 (by Marni Grossman) |
And then she’ll come back to change, and then she’ll know, okay, the feeling is this. Because you can read the script, you know I’ll read the script and know it inside out, but not until they actually block it and they have those dynamics in place do we really know what the hell we’re doing.
 (Left rear, Charlene ("Chuck") Seniuk, assistant costume designer; foreground center is Shelley Mansell, assistant wardrobe; and right, Natasha Atkinson, assistant wardrobe. (by Harry Zernike) |
So then that’s when the decision is made as to the feel of it. And then we choose accordingly.
FF: And the fittings, since everything has already been fitted ahead of time, when has that occurred? How long before you actually start production do you fit Peta for a whole bunch of wardrobe?
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Laurie Drew: We’ve got a whole kind of form of her. So we ...
FF: Oh great. Cool.
Laurie Drew: Yeah, it’s something that my seamstresses have. We’ve got one full time lady working with us, Natasha, who works here at the studio constantly.
 Natasha (by Harry Zernike) |
And then we’ve got another lady, Tamio, who’s brilliant; and she’s got her own studio downtown. And we do contract work with her. She builds for Peta and for Madeline. We have their forms, so we don’t need to access them in actual flesh and blood ever.
FF: Interesting. And do you have duplicates of clothes?
Laurie Drew: Yeah. When called for, if it’s a stunt doubling situation, we have to have double, yeah.
FF: So a large bank of clothes has been accumulated at this point.
 Brenda Broer, assistant wardrobe, on location truck (by Harry Zernike) |
Laurie Drew: Yeah. But stuff that looked great six months ago, I wouldn’t want to touch it you know. That’s what I mean it has a life of its own.
FF: Can you give me an example of something that doesn’t look right any more after six months?
Laurie Drew: Yeah, like last year we were into the Costume National kind of silhouette. Very tight with zippers up the back as the pant leg that spreads out over the high heel boot, right? And it looked like so great and so right. And we did a lot of that. And now it’s like hmmm, you know.
FF: There was a spread last week in Sunday’s New York Times, and there were Costume National clothes in the spread. It was a spread on Carrie Donovan. And what they’re doing now is completely different. Pastels and the whole thing.
Laurie Drew: And that’s the danger.
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Because we’ve got distribution in Europe, and they’re seeing like two years ago. It’s embarrassing, you know. But I suppose it still may work.
FF: It does
Laurie Drew: You go with the character then. And what we have is what goes with the character now.