\n<\/p>\n
When Ed Baldwin lands on the moon in October 1971, he is in early middle age. His light brown hair swoops across his forehead. His clean-shaven face is ruddy and, excepting a divot between his eyebrows, unwrinkled. But space can really age a man. By 2003, on Mars, his hair has grayed and receded, and the wrinkles have multiplied and deepened. His skin is sallow, marked with age spots. His cheeks have sunk in.<\/p>\n
Ed, a highly decorated astronaut, is a central character of the Apple TV+ series \u201cFor All Mankind.\u201d<\/a> He is played by the Swedish actor Joel Kinnaman<\/a>, who was a few years younger than Ed during the first season, which debuted in 2019. Kinnaman is now 43, but in the fourth season, which premieres on Nov. 10, Ed is in his 70s. Which meant that Kinnaman\u2019s shooting days typically began before dawn, with four hours in the hair and makeup chair.<\/p>\n This is one of the myriad hurdles and minor miracles of \u201cFor All Mankind,\u201d<\/a> a series that posits a world in which the space race never ended. From its painstaking aging process to its imagination of an alternative past and interplanetary future, \u201cFor All Mankind\u201d is both quiet and wild in its ambitions, a work of science fiction that retains the texture of observable reality. And in this coming season, which shows characters first seen in their 20s now in their 60s and 70s, the crew has had to work harder than ever to achieve plausibility. Sure, you can send men and women to Mars. But can you make them look believable once they arrive?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhen we were pitching the show, we were like, \u2018Oh, this is going to be so great,\u2019\u201d Ben Nedivi, one of the show\u2019s three creators, said during a recent video call. \u201cNow that we\u2019re in Season 4, the challenge has been enormous.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Season 1 began in 1969, when \u2014 mild spoilers for the first three seasons follow \u2014 in the initial shift from our own timeline, the Russians first land a man on the moon. It ended in 1974, with American men and women having built a lunar base. Season 2, which took place in the \u201980s, expanded on this base. Season 3, set in the 1990s, brought Americans, Russians and a lone surviving North Korean to Mars. Season 4 jumps forward another decade. Throughout, the remaining characters are played by the same actors. (The exceptions are characters who first appear as children.)<\/p>\n \u201cFor All Mankind,\u201d which Nedivi created with Matt Wolpert, his fellow showrunner, and Ronald D. Moore, was always intended as a generational show. Its goal was to take the space race from the 1960s to the present and perhaps beyond, showing exploration and advancement across lifetimes.<\/p>\n Sometimes those lifetimes are short. \u201cSpace is an insanely dangerous place,\u201d Wolpert said. Otherwise the show\u2019s format requires its characters to age a decade between seasons, without the use of computer-generated effects. (The C.G.I. on \u201cFor All Mankind\u201d is for asteroids and explosions, not hair loss.)<\/p>\n \u201cThe amount of time that Ben and I spend talking about hair and makeup and aging is not something we anticipated,\u201d Wolpert said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt doesn\u2019t hurt that we\u2019re aging during the show,\u201d added Nedivi, who is visibly grayer than he was when the show debuted. \u201cTrust me, I feel like I\u2019m aging double-time.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n This illusionism began years ago, in the initial casting sessions. Nedivi and Wolpert were looking for actors who were somewhat older than their characters, with the thought that they could be aged down for Season 1 and up beginning in Season 3.<\/p>\n During Season 1, the makeup department, led by Erin Koplow, used foundation to give the actors a youthful, dewy look, covering up wrinkles and any discoloration. For the women, makeup appropriate to the era was laid over that. Hair was given extra luster.<\/p>\n In the second season, the actors were more or less left alone, though some were given small pieces of what Koplow calls \u201cstretch and stipple,\u201d a latex solution that gives the appearance of fine lines. (The actors are mostly in their 30s, which means they should have fine lines of their own. That\u2019s between them and their dermatologists.)<\/p>\n For Season 3 there was more stretch and stipple, more gray hair. Kinnaman, whose character is older than most in the show, was given prosthetic silicone pieces, which created deeper wrinkles. If dark circles or eye bags existed, they were left uncorrected or were even accentuated. And the actors learned to hold themselves differently, better reflecting sore backs and joint pain.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Several critics reviewing Seasons 2 and 3 found these interventions insufficient. \u201cThe effort to age its stars is negligible at best,\u201d a Vanity Fair<\/a> writer wrote of the third season. But this was intentional, meant to reflect a natural, gradual process.<\/p>\n \u201cWith women in particular, it\u2019s really easy to go too far and to make them monstrous with aging,\u201d Glen P. Griffin, who oversees makeup\u2019s special effects and prosthetics, said. \u201cSo you have to be really, really subtle.\u201d<\/p>\n That subtlety can be thankless: The actors don\u2019t enjoy it; the viewers don\u2019t see it. Griffin and Koplow both described believable middle-age makeup as the hardest part of the job. But this nuance is necessary. Should characters survive, the hair and makeup teams will have to intervene further.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Costuming also helps to age and situate the characters. As with the makeup, the period clothes are meant to murmur, not to shout.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s best if they\u2019re not overtly loud,\u201d said Esther M. Marquis, the costume designer for the third and fourth seasons. \u201cThere has to be space for the actor to be who their character is. I don\u2019t want to crowd in.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n As the characters have aged, the tailoring has changed. \u201cHollywood loves to get all trim and put together, and that\u2019s not really our show,\u201d Marquis said. The fit in subsequent seasons does not always flatter, suggesting maturity, even subtle weight gain.<\/p>\n The few costume pieces that do fit and do shout are the spacesuits, each of which is custom-built. While the suits in the first season were closely modeled on NASA\u2019s designs, by Season 2, Americans had established a permanent base on the moon, outpacing current technologies. For the third and fourth seasons, Marquis had to imagine a suit appropriate for Mars\u2019s climate that could be made mostly from materials and methods available in 2003.<\/p>\n \u201cThe suit that I was designing had to live in both worlds, a future world and a past world,\u201d she said. \u201cI didn\u2019t want to get too far away from a 2003 reality.\u201d<\/p>\n But Marquis did give herself some license, dreaming up a textile that would lead to a slimmer and more pliant silhouette. Most real spacesuits are 14 layers thick. Marquis\u2019s are slighter, as are the astronauts\u2019 backpacks, which would struggle to hold both life support and backup life support systems.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of action in Season 4,\u201d she said. \u201cSo the suits had to get lighter.\u201d She noted that the real-world suit designers she had spoken to were also wrestling with the same question.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The show\u2019s depiction of a different Earth extends beyond crow\u2019s feet and helmets. Its approach to alternate reality is typically subtle. A Mars landing is an admittedly big swing, yet most of the other timeline changes are more restrained. Ted Kennedy skips the Chappaquiddick party. John Lennon survives. Michael Jordan plays for a different team.<\/p>\n In each subsequent season, the divergence from our world is greater, a butterfly effect enhanced by the technologies the space race of the show has yielded. Most significantly, the moon\u2019s supply of helium-3<\/a> has been mined for cold fusion, effectively solving the climate crisis. (Unscientific viewers like me might have assumed that helium-3 was among the show\u2019s inventions. It\u2019s very real.)<\/p>\n This reflects the show\u2019s arguably less subtle message, that something profound was lost when America gave up the space race.<\/p>\n \u201cThat longing is what inspired us,\u201d Nedivi said. \u201cThe show presupposes the idea that actually going out into the unknown and learning more about the world will teach us more about who we are and what we\u2019re capable of.\u201d<\/p>\n Since the series\u2019s 2019 debut, the space race has coincidentally begun to run just a little faster. More private companies have launched rockets. The Artemis 3 mission<\/a>, slated for 2025, plans to land a woman and a person of color on the moon, both for the first time<\/a>. There is new interest in mining metal-rich asteroids<\/a>, a Season 4 plot point and another example of the show\u2019s science fiction edging closer to reality.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the technology that we highlight has become part of the conversation in the real timeline,\u201d Wolpert said. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the secret weapons of our show: It\u2019s not about impossible stuff. Nothing in our show is impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Nedivi said \u201cFor All Mankind\u201d was intended as escapism, as entertainment. \u201cBut if we can encourage further space travel,\u201d he said, somewhat grandly, \u201cthat would be a huge plus.\u201d<\/p>\n While the show can\u2019t take credit for advancing exploration, it has made at least one contribution to the space program, a small stitch for mankind. Last year, Axiom Space, a private company contracted to supply the suits for the upcoming Artemis missions, contacted Marquis. It wanted her to create a spacesuit cover<\/a>, a garment meant to cloak Axiom\u2019s proprietary technology during a news conference.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s no way they can use it in space because it is black and colored,\u201d Marquis said of the cover. \u201cBut it was a wonderful experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Axiom has since asked her to design flight suits that real astronauts will eventually wear. In tailoring the flight suits for those astronauts, at Axiom\u2019s Houston headquarters, Marquis was struck with a feeling of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very similar to fitting an actor,\u201d she said. \u201cThat\u2019s crazy, right?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n