Interview with Gotham Knights Costume Designer Jennifer May Nickel
Halloween may have come and gone, but that doesn’t mean we still can’t enjoy thinking and talking about great costuming! It fact, I found out during my conversation with Gotham Knights costume designer, Jennifer May Nickel, that it’s a common misconception that costumers like Halloween! Apparently, she prefers putting the costumes on others much more than wearing them herself.
Jennifer and I met at this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, where I heard her speak about her experience working on The CW show, Gotham Knights. I was able to catch her after the event for an interview about how she got into costuming, her work on the show, and her experience getting thrown into the world of Supernatural fandom with Misha Collins fans.
This is an abbreviated version of our full conversation, which you can find on the podcast In Defense of Fandom. This excerpt has been lightly edited for clarity.
Sadie Witkowski
We should talk about the last project you worked on, which is Gotham Knights, right?
Jennifer May Nickel
Yes.
Sadie Witkowski
What was that like? How do you even get that kind of [costuming] job?
Jennifer May Nickel
Yeah, most of it is word of mouth. It is mostly all based on recommendations and people you’ve worked with before from other departments. Throwing your name in a hat and hoping for the best. That was the same way with Gotham Knights. Our producing director was also a producing director on Legacies, so we worked together. Before he even got the job, he put my hat in the ring for costume designing. Luckily, we both got on it.
Sadie Witkowski
It must have been really exciting to work on a Batman property, because it’s so iconic. There have been so many iterations. There’s like a lot of room to play with and still do something unique.
Jennifer May Nickel
Yes, and luckily, my favorite iterations were also where [series creators] James [Stoteraux] and Chad [Fiveash] wanted to go with the show. So I was able to [design] easily; we were all on that same page together.
Sadie Witkowski
Were you a comic book nerd before? Had you read the comics that they were pulling from?
Jennifer May Nickel
Yeah, I had. The Long Halloween is forever one of my absolute favorite comics.
Sadie Witkowski
You’re like, “I get to do this? Really, you’ll pay me for this?”
Jennifer May Nickel
[laughs] Yes, yeah. I was like, “What’s the show?” and Jeff, the producing director said, “It’s Gotham Knights.” While I did not know exactly what the show was going to be about, because it was all just rumors at that point, I just heard the word “Gotham” and freaked out.
Sadie Witkowski
So then once you did get hired on this project, was it mostly designing the look? Working with whoever’s doing background? How do you even start, because you need everything to work together.
Jennifer May Nickel
Yeah, I kind of started on the idea level before it was even started on the show, technically. It made it easy that I was able to talk to Chad and James, and then also Natalie [Abrams, co-creator] about their thoughts and inspiration and ideas for the show and the look. And while I was marinating ideas, the production designer was marinating on ideas. And the DP was marinating on ideas. We’re very lucky that we were all marinating on the same page. When I was watching some of the Batman movies again, recently, there are, even just on the movie-level, so many different ways you can go. Luckily, we were all very much on the Keaton/Nolan [Michael Keaton in the 1989 Batman movie, and Christopher Nolan in The Dark Knight trilogy 2005-2012] end of things. That was just where all of us went together. But it would have been kind of hilarious if one of one of us was really gung-ho on the Schumacher [Joel Schumacher, director of Val Kilmer in Batman Forever, 1995] and just came in with that instead.
Sadie Witkowski
That would be a very different…
Jennifer May Nickel
I still love the Schumacher movies as much as everyone puts them down! It’s a different world, but I still love it because we were in this void at the time and it’s just fun and campy in a very fun way. You can’t look at it… you can’t compare that and The Dark Knight together. They’re just not the same.
Sadie Witkowski
I mean, the Batman comics have done that too, right? They’ve gone away from the absurd camp world like Adam West style and the really dark and gritty, Miller.
Jennifer May Nickel
Yeah you know, Frank Miller is very different. You can have all kinds and you can appreciate all of the different kinds.
Sadie Witkowski
But we need that [but] we need only one kind when we make a show, please. No flaming bat car, I’m very sorry.
Jennifer May Nickel
You don’t need all the ingredients there all at once.
Sadie Witkowski
So when you started working on the show… I’m sure you were aware as soon as Misha Collins got cast as Harvey Dent. Did you know the fandom that was going to get brought along for the ride?
Jennifer May Nickel
No. I knew there was a Supernatural fandom because I have friends who love Supernatural and have called themselves Supernatural fans. Did I know what it entailed, other than there’s an intensity to it? Did I know that Misha was his own sector? No, I just had no idea. And like I’ve said a few times on Twitter, I still feel like I’m learning. I don’t know if I’ll ever know fully and I’m okay with that. I feel like I don’t fully need to know. I’m happy to be a little ignorant.
Sadie Witkowski
[laughing] It’s okay, it’s okay.
Jennifer May Nickel
I just want to stay a sweet, innocent, naive baby.
Sadie Witkowski
[laughs] So did you start getting a lot more people interacting online with you?
Jennifer May Nickel
It was when I first posted about the ties. It just blew up and I was not prepared. I feel like he [Misha] and his people need to have a sit down with the people he works with at the beginning of projects and say, “Okay, guys, this is what you’re in for. This is what this means, this is that, don’t do this…” Like I just wish we had a “Okay, you’re working with Misha” one-on-one.
Sadie Witkowski
Yes. I think people get that. You’re not the only one. I interviewed the head of the Family Business Beer Company, who is the brother-in-law of Jensen. I asked him, “so is it hard to be associated celebrities?” He said “No, it’s really great. Except for every once in a while, Jensen will say, ‘I’ll see you guys at the brewery’ and all the sudden we have lines going out the door. And then our system will crash and we look really unprofessional. And we’re not! We just didn’t ask Jensen to do that. We have to take his phone away now.” There needs to be a training guide, be warned: fandom is intense.
Jennifer May Nickel
Yeah, if your phone blows up, it was probably Misha and it’s okay. It’s a good thing. Not a bad thing.
Sadie Witkowski
Like, “Am I being doxxed? Oh, no. Okay, it’s fine.” [laughs] So I do want to talk more about the design for Gotham Knights and how you approach designing for both these characters but also the actors who are going to be portraying these characters. Because everybody’s got different body types and different features that you might try to accent. How do you go about thinking about those aspects?
Jennifer May Nickel
With that, because the showrunners and I start way before the actors start, we definitely go in with an idea. We have boards of ideas that myself, my assistant costume designer, Marissa, like. We bring ideas together. We kind of jump off of points of things that the showrunners have mentioned, and pull these together. Kind of cull through it with them. Then, when the actors are fully on board and able to start work, we have protocols that we have to do. Even though we know who the person is, we can’t just go contact them. So then, once we’re allowed to contact them about the show, having a phone call with them, talking over more of those ideas. I don’t always like to send my boards to them right away in case there is something that they really want to see within the character that myself or the showrunners didn’t know about before. And I don’t want to put something on there that I haven’t been able to talk them through first. Because sometimes people can see one thing and have their own interpretation of it and think that you’re meaning one thing when you actually mean a whole other thing with it. So, I like to have a chat with the actors first and then update the board accordingly. Make sure that the show runners are good with it, too. Then usually, I’ll do a follow up phone call or even an initial fitting with them where we talk over the boards. I do their measurements, things of that nature. That’s when you have time. That’s not always possible. There are times where they’re cast the day before they work. They’re flying in and I’m like “Here’s your inspiration!”
Sadie Witkowski
[joking along] I made you a Pinterest! We have a lot of safety pins and duct tape and we’re just gonna work it from there.
Jennifer May Nickel
Luckily, usually, that’s not too often the case. More it’s you’re just hoping and praying that they see the character the same way you all have seen it before too, and that they don’t have a completely different idea that you don’t have present. It goes on screen in hours or the next day. So that’s always the “I hope we’re on the same page. This is it.” Luckily, with Gotham Knights, we all very much were. It’s rare that it happens, but every once in a while you get a surprise.
Sadie Witkowski
Yeah, I’m sure. How much of the costuming is pre-made; Things that you’re customizing versus totally custom made?
Jennifer May Nickel
It often depends on the amount of time that you have before the actor goes on screen and from when they’ve been cast. I love and enjoy custom making costumes for the characters as much as humanly possible because we get to get it exactly as we wanted. That’s not always possible in store.
But for Rebecca March in episode 103, we were going to custom-make her gown for the gala. I had drawings of it ready to go and everything. But the casting process took a little longer to seal the contract and all of that so there wasn’t time between her being cast and then going on screen for us to make that. But when she came in and we got all of her measurements and everything, then everything else from there on out was custom made.
Sadie Witkowski
Like, we got it for the rest of the season. It was just really one didn’t nail what we were planning on here.
Jennifer May Nickel
Yeah. But what we were able to find, thank God – we had three really stellar options out of the things that we were able to get in, in just a very hot minute. So it was good. We’re happy with it.
Sadie Witkowski
Wait, do you have to be on set? Or have someone from your team on set to address situations like, “Oh, no! a button popped off his shirt or something?” Like, to do these small fixes.
Jennifer May Nickel
I can’t always be there and thank God! That would… I don’t know how I would get anything else done. We have a full team for just being on set. On set costumers. We have our costume truck that we have our own ‘truck key costumer’. Some places call it truck supervisors, some call a key trucks. I’m just calling it ‘truck costumer’. But that is the one person who is the go-to for taking the costumes that are finished from my end in the costume shop and taking it onto the track, categorizing it, inventorying it, making sure tags are off, stickers are off, all of that stuff. Then, prepping it to go into the actor’s dressing room for them to get in it.
Then from there, once they’re [the actors] in the costume, the set costumers take over to make sure they’re ready to go. Make sure, that if for some reason I can’t be there to establish the costume, and for some reason Marissa can’t be there, they’re taking photos and sending pictures to me and Marissa. “Okay, this is what it looks like on. Is there anything you want differently? Do I need to roll the sleeve different?” There were a lot of tie photos. Making sure they got my wacky tie knots right and the pins. I’m very… I’m extremely anal retentive so there were a lot of photos to make sure they got the pin, or tie tack placement, or tie bar placement, as I wanted it. And so they’ll send me those photos. And then when they’re on set, they take continuity photos, they make continuity notes, so that from scene to scene to scene (because we don’t film in order), everything will match up, whether we’re filming it a day later or months later as a pickup or insert shot. So, they take care of everything.
Complicated alterations get sent back to the office, or have someone come over for emergency repair, which definitely happens every once in a while. And sometimes, luckily, we’ll just have a multiple [of the costume] anyway. So it just depends, but they’ll fix things on the fly. And yeah, if a stain happens on the fly there, there’s a whole toolkit right there on set, ready to take care of it.
Sadie Witkowski
It’s something I’d never thought about. Even if you have the costume ready to go on the rack, you still need the sleeves rolled exactly this way. I never even thought about that.
I just wanted to ask, from your point of view, is it harder to do the really statuesque, fancy clothing like the Marches wear, or is it more difficult to do clothing that is going to be needed for action shots? You know, like the Talons? Which ones are more difficult to work on?
Jennifer May Nickel
I see them as all the same to me, because they all, at some point, will have some action, some level of pristineness. They just all have their different elements. I love that I get to do all of it, because I enjoy the variety, and I get to work every part of my brain instead of just one.
Sadie Witkowski
When you were designing the Talons, did you have to think about using different materials than you would for something that’s more like a party scene? Because you tend to need more flexibility?
Jennifer May Nickel
Yeah. With the Talons, it’s something that both has structure but also flexibility, too. It’s something that’s going to hold up for a long time because the pieces are very complicated and custom made. So we can’t be replacing them every single episode. They need to stand up over multiple episodes, so you think of that differently than some of Rebecca’s dresses. But in the end, I was able to meld some of the same elements together to show the audience, “This is the Talons way, but this is Rebecca’s way” of wearing very similar things.
Sadie Witkowski
Right. So it has the owl-ish elements to it. Are there different outfits for the Talon stunt doubles who are going to need to take a hit repeatedly, versus a more intro shot, which is supposed to be more detailed? Or is it all the same?
Jennifer May Nickel
For the Talons, it’s all the same. Sometimes on certain other shows, or depending on what it is, there will be lesser things, or it will be constructed differently. But because the Talons were played by stunt doubles the entire time, we were able to construct it with that in mind.
Sadie Witkowski
That’s awesome! I mean, that makes it easier on your part. You can say, “No, they’re supposed to look kind of beat up and just keep going.” I also loved all the historical elements that you got to incorporate into that. Have you done a lot of historical research trying to fit that kind of… Is it neo-gothic? Is it art deco?
Jennifer May Nickel
I took a few elements from a little bit of everything over the last basically 120 some years. I started in the 1900s. There’s World War I elements in there. There’s definitely a lot of World War II elements. It’s taking the different battle elements across different timelines and bringing them all together.
Sadie Witkowski
Yeah, because you want this to be a militaristic look. So it’s like, “Great, what are the uniforms from all of the last 100 years of wars?”
Jennifer May Nickel
And there’s also an element of science and wealth. In the way of, it’s not just your basic military uniform. These are wealthy people making this happen. For a while, they only thought [there was] one [Talon]. There were more. But Rebecca is also a practicalist of, “I have all this money. I’m also a busy lady. I’m not going to be retooling this every damn time something happens to one of them. I want it to last. I want it to be good.” So there’s also a little technology to it. There are things that just a regular military person or even an officer of some sort wouldn’t have.
Sadie Witkowski
Right? They’re not just grunts. They’ve got some kind of armor protection designed that is a little bit more high tech than you would expect from that era.
Jennifer May Nickel
Yeah. So it’s trying to meld a bunch of different ideas together. Show the history at the same time.
Sadie Witkowski
Oh, man, that’s so cool. I love bringing all these historical moments in, because you feel clever when you catch them yourself.
Well, is there anything I didn’t get to ask you about working on Gotham Knights that was surprising to you or that you’d like to share?
Jennifer May Nickel
Is there any burning question that you’ve always had?
Sadie Witkowski
[pause] Who was the messiest with returning your costumes?
Jennifer May Nickel
[laughs] I’m not gonna throw someone under the bus! No! But, I bet people could guess. I bet people might guess someone just because of a fandom. They would be wrong. That would not be the person that would have been the most.
Sadie Witkowski
Oh, man. Yeah, I was wondering. We all want to know the behind the scenes stories, you know?
Jennifer May Nickel
Just in general, anyone who has a theater background, actor wise, they’re usually very good at tending to their costumes and hanging them up when they’re done, and being very particular about how it comes back to us, which we love. We love the actors who hang their clothes and don’t leave their underwear on the floor for us to pick up….
Sadie Witkowski
[laughs] Well, thank you so much for your time. This was awesome.
Jennifer May Nickel
I’m glad I finally got to do it too.
If you enjoyed this edited excerpt, you can hear the full conversation on In Defense of Fandom. The podcast can be found on apple, spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can also sneak a peek at my earlier podcast adventures!
Fun Times at Family Business Beer Company’s “Family Reunion”
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