Costumer Calls Beetlejuice 'Dirtier and Older' in Sequel and Details Dressing Michael Keaton's Return (Exclusive)
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09/14/2024 09:00 AM
'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' costume designer Colleen Atwood tells PEOPLE that the character had been in the underworld for a 'long time' so she had to address his wardrobe accordingly
Parisa Taghizadeh/Warner Bros.
Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice in BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICEFor the last 36 years, Beetlejuice has been toiling away in the underworld.
At least, that's what Beetlejuice Beetlejuice costume designer Colleen Atwood assumes he's been up to.
The title character played by Michael Keaton in both the 1988 film and the sequel, released Sept. 6, terrified audiences in the '80s in his iconic grungy black and white striped suit. The character terrorized the Maitlands and the Deetzes — and in the sequel, Atwood had to decide how to approach updating that iconic suit, or if she even wanted to update it at all.
Her first step was figuring out who Beetlejuice is now.
"He's an older, gentler Beetlejuice now," she tells PEOPLE of Keaton's character. "He'd been down [in the underworld] waiting for a long time. He was just the same, just dirtier older and a little bit fatter."
To achieve this new but older version of Beetlejuice, Atwood took his original costume, designed by Aggie Guerard Rodgers, and used it as the basis for what she put together for her film.
"It was our inspiration piece, of course, but we redid it in a little bit of different fabric that could crunch up," she says, explaining that she wanted it to look like he was literally sitting there for years. "We aged it like he'd been in it for 30 years was the idea. It had a lot of layers of textures and different colors on it. We gave him a little bit more of a tummy. We wanted him to look like he'd been down there for a long time."
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Warner Brothers /courtesy Everett Collection
Michael Keaton in 'Beetlejuice'Atwood continues, "We did all of this aging with [treatment to] the clothes. It's a little bit softer fabric that's more rumpled and stuff. That was how we dealt with that."
Beetlejuice's red wedding tux also makes a return for this film, and Atwood crafted a new iteration of this. She says the original felt more like a "prom tux" but she and her team made one that was a "better fit" for Keaton at his current age.
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Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures
Michael Keaton as Beetlejuice in 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice'."It's a little bit more grown-up, but still cheesy," she says of the look. "We ended up making that and then just doing the typical ruffle-front tux shirt that Beetlejuice wore."
From there, Atwood was able to let her creative juices flow a little more, because Beetlejuice had more costumes in the sequel than he did in the original film — and some of his outfits in this movie were ones that Keaton himself inspired. Atwood tells PEOPLE that the bullfighting scene was one that Keaton wanted to do, so she helped create that look.
"It was fun to have more outfits for Beetlejuice this time around, because we'd looked at him in just those two outfits for a very long time," she says.
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