Narrator: The third season of "True Detective"
follows a disturbing crime as it unfolds
over three different time periods
from 1980 to 1990 to 2015.
The present-day period shows Mahershala Ali's character,
detective Wayne Hays, as a 70-year-old man
who's still haunted by the case
while grappling with his own memory loss.
Ali is wholly convincing in old age
thanks to the power of his performance
and the makeup artistry of Emmy-nominated
prosthetic artist Mike Marino.
Jimmy Kimmel: And your old-man makeup.
Mahershala: Mike Marino, Mike Marino, man.
Jimmy: Is the best old-man makeup I've ever seen
on any actor.
Narrator: We visited Mike at his studio in New Jersey
to find out how he turned Ali into an old man
for "True Detective."
Mike is the makeup designer behind "Black Swan,"
"Wolf of Wall Street," "Birdman,"
and Heidi Klum's elaborate Halloween costumes.
On "True Detective," he was in charge of the makeup
and wigs seen on Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff,
who plays Wayne's partner Roland in the show.
Mike has a ton of experience adding decades
to actors' faces.
But his transformative work was really spotlighted
in "True Detective"
because of the unconventional way
that the show's narrative was structured.
Mike: They're intercutting in between time periods,
so you really get a chance to see the difference
and the contrast between Mahershala's face
and Stephen Dorff's face.
Narrator: The first step in the transformation
was deciding where exactly the prosthetics would go.
Mike: When you're designing a makeup,
you have to find all these lines and creases naturally
that that actor may have,
so that when you glue pieces onto it,
it doesn't move strange.
Mahershala's skin is so perfect that there's no landmarks
to hide a wrinkle in
or hide a prosthetic inside,
so it's really challenging finding the place
where prosthetics can live.
Narrator: Next, to actually make the prosthetics,
you have to take a life cast of the actor's face,
basically creating a three-dimensional copy of it.
Mike: We start out with a life cast of Mahershala.
I take that life cast, and I cast it out in plaster,
and I take little pieces of clay,
and I add a little where I feel
is going to look the best
as far as wrinkles and puffy dents,
and I add in wrinkles, and I sculpt everything down
to a very fine detail.
Narrator: The sculptures run under water,
then the pieces of clay are removed
and put on individual molds
from which the prosthetic pieces are made.
Mike: On set, I take those pieces and glue onto Mahershala
and Stephen Dorff
all these prosthetics that were once sculptures.
Once that is done, they're airbrushed
to look like real skin, freckles, little imperfections,
things like that.
Once it's all painted,
we glue wigs on, make sure their sheen and reflection
of the skin is really perfect.
It really took about three hours
to glue on the prosthetics each day.
Narrator: All that had to last
throughout a 12- to 16-hour shooting day.
Mike: It's a battle each day.
I'm maintaining the makeup as well.
You know, in "True Detective" we filmed in Arkansas
in the summer, so it was really hot.
So it was also an engineering feat
to really kind of prep their skin to not sweat,
put them in air conditioning tents,
put Mahershala in a dark room
where he's not in sunlight and he's sweating.
Narrator: Mike's work on the show
wasn't limited to the actors' faces.
His team also built a life-size replica
for Will Purcell,
the missing boy whose body Wayne finds in a cave
at the end of the first episode.
But the aging transformations were his real masterpiece.
Mike: You can see how they'd most likely age in real life
'cause I try to find on their own face,
where if I find any little wrinkle or line or crease,
I accentuate that.
I'm kind of a reverse makeup artist.
A makeup artist is taking out all the flaws and things
on someone's face, and I'm adding them in.
So I'm really an actor's worst nightmare.