Sometimes it’s hard to get a character’s look nailed down early.
Emily Alyn Lind’s character in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire was very different from other ghosts seen in the series — and that required a lot of thought. According to the star, the character of Melody started out with a different look — including a wig — and they shot in that for a week before deciding that the look wasn’t working, and that they had to restart from scratch, reshooting a week’s worth of footage in order to nail the very particular tone of the first truly “social” ghost in the franchise.
She said that it was a “short, blunt-cut” red wig with bangs, so it would have been a pretty significant change from the look that Lind actually had in the film. Unfortunately, as she noted, wigs can be hard to work with, especially when you also have camera and lighting tricks playing big roles in the scene.
“She’s a riot to play, honest,” Lind said. “I feel like I had so much room to be able to play and bring myself into it a little bit, and find her with Gil. It was really fun. I think wer were always on the same page somehow about exactly who this character was. I feel like I always knew who this was, even before I knew she was a ghost, in the audition. I thought, ‘This will be so cool, this is a cool character. I see it. The humor’s there.’ A lot of it had to do with something I haven’t really talked about yet. In the beginning, we were figuring out what her hair was goign to be, does she have a wig, what are we making? What’s her outfit that she died in, that she’s going to have to the rest of the film. I had a wig on for like a week of filming, and then we trashed it, reshot everything, because it just felt like, it’s not Melody. There was a lot of give-and-take, different camera tests. Like, is this too modern? Is it okay? Can she feel timeless at the same time as being witty and funny and able to get along with her peer, who might be technically younger, so it feels right? THere’s so many intricate things that we got to play with, and I didn’t know it was goign to be that deep.”
In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, the Spengler family returns to where it all started – the iconic New York City firehouse – to team up with the original Ghostbusters, who’ve developed a top-secret research lab to take busting ghosts to the next level. But when the discovery of an ancient artifact unleashes an evil force, Ghostbusters new and old must join forces to protect their home and save the world from a second Ice Age.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire stars Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, Logan Kim, Kumail Nanjiani, Patton Oswalt, Celeste O’Connor, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, Annie Potts, James Acaster, and Emily Alyn Lind.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is now available to rent or own on Digital.
