If you didn't recognize Emmy Rossum in Angelyne, we wouldn't blame you.
The actress, 35, looks like an entirely different person in the new Peacock series, which follows the real-life story of pop culture icon Angelyne, who graced billboards across Los Angeles in the '80s. When it came to transforming into the billboard queen, Rossum told E! News that it took major makeup magic and some well-places prosthetic cleavage.
"It's all prosthetics," she said about recreating Angelyne's famous bust, "and I think that's what's so incredible about our incredible hair and makeup team."
In fact, the actress wore 3-pounds of fake boobs (a breastplate was glued to her torso) that left her with blisters, she previously told The Hollywood Reporter. She also relied on two different pairs of contact lenses, heavy eye makeup, and a platinum wig. Oh and she bleached her naturally dark eyebrows.
Her physical transformation was certainly a team effort, as Rossum told E! News, "Everyone worked hand-in-hand with my movement coaches and vocal coaches to kind of help create the icon that is Angelyne."
Being a self-proclaimed "nerd" about researching roles, Rossum was excited to dive head-first into character preparation, picking up everything she could from numerous videos and recordings of Angelyne.
"I worked with a vocal coach, a dialect coach, a movement coach," she shared. "Many, many coaches helped me kind of figure out who my version of Angelyne was."
Even Rossum's nearly one-year-old daughter Samantha—whom she welcomed in May 2021 with husband Sam Esmail—got in on the makeover fun…at least for Halloween.
"I did make her a little Angelyne Halloween costume," Rossum shared. "So, she went in spirit as Angelyne. She was just missing a little mini pink corvette."
Meeting Angelyne IRL also helped Rossum's preparation, as she joked that she was "a little over-prepared" by the time they met. But Rossum wasn't the show's only cast member who got some advice from their real-life counterparts.
Playing the fictitious filmmaker Max Allen, actor Lukas Gage got a special surprise from the man his character is based on. "It was really, really fascinating," he told E! News, "and he might have showed me his actual, unfinished documentary [about Angelyne], which I think he needs to release because it's really, really quite good."
Likewise, Alex Karpovsky's Jeff Glaser might be a fictional journalist for The Hollywood Reporter, but he did get to meet up with the reporter behind his character's inspiration.
"I asked him about his experiences, which was very helpful. But, it was also helpful just to see the way that he carried himself, the way that he sort of approaches the general subject of journalism, especially long-form journalism," said Karpovsky. "And we actually shot at The Hollywood Reporter where he works, and we actually shot at the very desk that he operates from. So, that was all neat for me."
Check out the full interview above.
Angelyne premieres today, May 19, on Peacock.
(E! and Peacock are both part of the NBCUniversal family).