Make Believe: Eryn Krueger Mekash

On the New Orleans set of FX’s American Horror Story: Freak Show, department head makeup artist Eryn Krueger Mekash confronts a sticky location problem: heat and humidity.

“It affects every actor, especially those with prosthetics,” Mekash says. “It’s a challenge keeping everyone looking great — and keeping everything on.”

If anyone can take the heat, it’s Mekash, who’s earned 21 Primetime Emmy nominations (four this past season alone), for programs including AHS, Fox’s Glee, FX’s Nip/Tuck and HBO’s AIDS-themed telefilm The Normal Heart.

She scored her first Emmy win in August for Heart’s non-prosthetic makeup; she was also nominated for the movie’s prosthetics and for both the prosthetic and non-prosthetic makeup of AHS: Coven.

“It was really a surprise to win, because I didn’t have a good track record,” Mekash says.

Production on Heart was halted so that actor Matt Bomer could drop 40 pounds to portray the ravages of AIDS.

When the shoot resumed, “his skin was so fragile and dry, I ended up painting on all the lesions,” she recalls.

“I did all the design work and worked with technical advisers. I wanted it to be authentic. It was rewarding to be given a commendation for doing something so realistic.”

She also strives for realism within the spooky parameters of AHS.

“Everything has to be believable,” says Mekash, who researches the time period and milieu of each season’s setting after meeting with co-creator–executive producer Ryan Murphy to discuss his vision, which is often film-inspired.

Happily, “I’m a huge horror fan,” Mekash says. “I usually know 95 percent of Ryan’s references!”

For the 1952 Florida–set Freak Show — whose characters include conjoined sisters, a bearded lady and a strong man — she leads a team of “amazing” makeup artists numbering as many as 13, including her husband of six years, Mike Mekash.

Her affinity for horror led the Oxnard, California, native to begin her career at 18, when she was one of few women in the field.

She learned from famed special-effects makeup artists Stan Winston and Rick Baker and has worked for Murphy for the past 11 years.

“There’s always a challenge,” Mekash says of AHS, “but I love it. You’re constantly scrambling to pull off something that you didn’t think you could.”

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Originally published in emmy magazine issue no. 08-14.

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• Crew Call: Eryn Krueger Mekash & Mike Mekash
• Crew Call: Monte C. Haught
• An Evening With the Women of American Horror Story