Watch Actress Zoe Saldana Transform Into Gamora

 

The Guardians of the Galaxy franchise is notorious for featuring numerous alien species, especially since only one member of the team is human. In a recent video on Twitter, actress Zoe Saldana who plays the ruthless assassin Gamora, shared a time-lapsed video of the process she would go through every day to achieve her character’s trademark green skin for filming Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. It was definitely a long process, and the video speaks to that with the caption, “3 hours 38 seconds.” You can check out the video below.

 

The makeup team actually shaved off an hour from how long the process took during the first Guardians of the Galaxy film, going from an average of five hours down to four. “It sucks that you have to wake up at 2:30 in the morning and by the time we start shooting you feel like you’ve already lived half a day working really hard. But every time I would come to set I would forget about it and I would get enthralled into whatever scene we were doing, whatever discussions we were having, whatever music James Gunn was playing. It was just fun.”

Saldana was far from the only cast member who had to endure long hours in the makeup trailer to transform into an alien. A recent article on Yahoo! documented the varying times for each main cast member, including Dave Bautista (Drax), Karen Gillan (Nebula), and Michael Rooker (Yondu).

Karen Gillan estimated that her makeup would take about four hours, which included putting on a bald cap. She shaved her head during the filming of the first Guardians, but elected to not do so this time. “I loved shaving my head the first time around, because it was such a liberating, cool experience. The second time around I was like, ‘I’ll take hair, if I can have it.’”

Dave Bautista’s makeup would take so long during the first film that he considered sleeping in the body paint, but realized that would never work. Anyhow, the makeup team managed to shave off a considerable amount of time for the sequel, going from three to five hours, all the way down to approximately 90 minutes.

There wasn’t a time given for Michael Rooker, but this time around they actually added a layer of paint. “In a way it got easier,” he said. “There were already five, six layers of paint. … It’s just like real skin.”

Christ Pratt (Star-Lord) required so little time that he used the situation to poke a little fun at his cast mates. “I show up on set and they’ve already been there for several hours. … I’m wearing my robe and my slippers, and I’m like, ‘Oh, hey guys. Been here long? That’s crazy — I just got here.’”

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opens May 5.