Preacher’s Jill M. Ohanneson on creating the show’s awesome style
Preacher costume designer Jill M. Ohanneson tells Hidden Remote what goes into crafting the AMC series’ fantastic wardrobe.
Fans of AMC‘s Preacher know part of the show’s success is its visual style. That includes all of the unique wardrobe, which is overseen by Jill M. Ohanneson.
Jill works with an incredible costume design team to create all the looks of Preacher, and with the fourth and final season continuing tonight, Hidden Remote spoke to her about how the style gets put together—and the very interesting way she got the job.
Learn more about the show’s amazing costumes in our interview below, then don’t miss a brand new episode of Preacher season 4 Sunday on AMC at 10 p.m. ET/PT!
Hidden Remote: How did you get involved with Preacher? Was there something about the show that originally hooked you as a designer?
Jill M. Ohanneson: I was so excited when I got the phone call from my agent to say hey, Preacher‘s interested in interviewing you for season 2. I was like what? Are you kidding me? Because I had watched the entire first season with my teenage son and we were completely and totally into it. I think my son was even more excited than I was that I got the interview.
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I went in and it just felt like such a perfect fit. I really liked the people involved and they liked my aesthetic and I knew one of the executive producers through mutual friends…But when I went in to meet with Seth Rogen and the showrunner, Seth said you know you’re here because of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure [on which she was also costume designer].
That was just hysterical because that’s their thing. They’re really into what they saw growing up and what affected them. This graphic novel is one of the things they read when they were growing up and I think that’s why it was such an important project for them. When I found out I got the job, I was ecstatic.
HR: Coming in on Preacher season 2, how did you decide what direction to take the costumes in? Was there a template already established you had to work with?
JO: There was. I did want to make sure that for the first couple of episodes there wasn’t a huge change because I think that’s jarring for the audience and they go oh, there must be a new costume designer. I really wanted it to be seamless so for the first couple of episodes I stayed within the perimeters of the first designer.
But after that, because we went to New Orleans, it felt like it forced me to change—because the location was changing. We weren’t in that small Texas town anymore. We were in this incredibly wild city full of music and color and great food and nightlife. So from that point in time, Tulip’s clothes evolved and Cassidy’s clothes evolved.
Particularly for Tulip, what would she wear? She’s such a hard, tough [woman] and she takes care of herself and works on cars and she knows how to make guns. We wanted to have her costume reflect who she is and her approach to the world, which is tough chick. For Cassidy, it was really about him being a magpie…He’s constantly trying to find things here and there and because he’s been around for so long, none of those contemporary strictures are relevant to him anymore.
So we combined a lot of women’s clothing into his costumes. It was finding the right balance of that’s too much of a caricature versus that’s an interesting and odd combination. We could easily tell when we were in the fitting room, Joe [Gilgun] and I, when something was working and when we were pushing it too hard.
HR: Preacher is ambitious from a logistical standpoint. The show has changed locations each season, and so much happens in every episode. Does that make your role more complicated?
JO: One of the things that definitely informed that was, there’s always a fight. There’s always a car chase. We constantly had multiples on multiples on multiples.
That’s why moving along, Tulip winds up wearing lots of jackets—because she was constantly in a fight and we had to be able to protect [Ruth Negga] and the stunt person’s elbows and body. So that became her outfit, somewhat of a silhouette because that allowed her to do what the script called for and still protect herself.
Our template for Cassidy was just odd and eclectic and out of the box. I didn’t ever want him to look like he had on a normal costume, unless it was written in the script that he had a normal costume.
All Dom [Cooper] wanted in the world was to change his outfit. (laughs) He was so tired of that costume. And Ruth as Tulip wanted to wear the same costume all the time. It was so funny that they were the opposite of each other.
HR: What do you take away from working on Preacher? This is the kind of series that’s not like any other for a designer, so is there anything you learned or want the audience to learn about the costume design?
JO: All I can say is that we go to so many different and bizarre places that I got to design the most diverse group of costumes I ever designed. From biblical to a fetish party and everything in between, and there’s some origin stories in there. There’s so much content, and I think it’s always tricky when you’re finishing a season to wrap up all the threads, and I think they did a really good job at that.
I think it’s unknowable for the audience to have any kind of idea of what it takes to really put together a show like Preacher where you have so many elements. If you’re doing a hospital show, everyone’s in scrubs and lab coats. If you’re doing a courtroom drama, everyone’s in suits. But this show is so all over the place that it really takes a great team to make it all happen.
I’m only as good as my team, and I have been so blessed these last few years to have great department teams to recognize my vision. And my vision is to help the director realize his vision, so our job is to make it look effortless, but it’s not. My team works so incredibly hard to make everything look the way it’s supposed to and be seamless, so I just want to [be] a voice of appreciation for them.
Preacher airs Sundays at 10 p.m. on AMC. For more on Preacher and other AMC shows, follow the AMC category at Hidden Remote.