Costume designer Anna Terrazas has spent her career working between her native Mexico and the U.S., on films and shows including Roma, The Deuce, Bardo – False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths and most recently Eddington.
Speaking to Deadline at the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra project and talent incubator on Tuesday, she revealed her fear as she traveled to the U.S. earlier this year in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency and his attacks on Mexico.
“I went back to New Mexico for Eddington, for a couple of things, and Trump was president. When we shot, he wasn’t there yet,” said Terrazas.
“For the first time, when I crossed, I had a weird feeling. I have a visa, an O1 visa, that I have been having for almost 15 years… But this time when I entered the U.S, I was a tiny bit afraid. I was like, ‘I don’t know if they’re going to let me in or going to question me’,” said Terrazas.
“Nothing happened but it was just the feeling of having this visa, this privilege, and still having that fear.”
Terrazas is attending Qumra as one of its Qumra Masters alongside Walter Salles, Darius Khondji, Lav Diaz and Johnnie To, giving a masterclass and advice on a selection of the projects.
Since his inauguration in January, Trump has signed an executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, threatened Mexico with steep trade tariffs and made slanderous claims against President Claudia Sheinbaum, saying she was in alliance with drug cartels.
“It was just really weird. Nobody was really talking about it. I was the only Mexican to say ‘Guys, what’s happening?’ I was looking at the news and thinking, ‘Why is nobody saying anything?,” said Terrazas.
“And then with the film industry, nobody’s really doing anything. We were getting a lot of U.S. projects coming to Mexico and right now it’s very slow. I don’t really know what’s going to happen. It’s back-to-back from the pandemic, to the strikes, to the fires, to Trump. There’s something in the air that I don’t quite yet understand. It’s not just affecting the film industry, but all industries around the world.”
Eddington
Black comedy Western thriller Eddington stars Joaquin Phoenix as an ambitious small-town New Mexico sheriff who goes up against his mayor, played by Pedro Pascal, in a pandemic-era power struggle. Emma Stone also co-stars.
“We had a blast. I saw Joaquin lately. We were going to do another film, and that didn’t happen. He was like, ‘You need to see the film. We did a fantastic film’. I need to see what we did, this craziness. I enjoyed working with Ari and everybody on the project. Emma is amazing,” said Terrazas.
“At one point there was the possibility of shooting it Mexico, Ari came over when we were in prep for Pedro Páramo,” she added, referring to Rodrigo Prieto’s lavish Netflix-backed adaptation of the 1955 Juan Rulfo 1955 classic.
“They went scouting. The locations were great, but it would have been super expensive to do it in Mexico in terms of the production design and all that. We built where we shot. You can’t recreate that. It’s a very New Mexico film,” she continues.
“It was a great experience to go to another place that I have no idea about and to understand what Ari was describing, the characters… we were talking so much about the essence of being in Albuquerque, Santa Fe and all the surroundings.”
Prior to Eddington, Terrazas worked on Pedro Páramo which reunited her with Roma production designer Eugenio Caballero.
Set in Mexico between the 1870s and the 1920s, the magic realism epic revolves around the history of a remote town called Comala, the life of which has been destroyed by vengeful local feudal lord Pedro Páramo.
Terrazas oversaw the creation of 5,000 pieces of wardrobe, enlisting the skills of local artisans to recreate the fabrics, clothing and footwear of the period. She credits Netflix with making the film happen.
“They pushed us and helped us to be able to do this project the way we did it,” she said. “When I told them about working with the artisans, that takes time. I actually had time to do the research before starting pre-production,” she explained.
“Without that research and all the investigation that we did and getting the artisans to be able to work with us and starting things ahead of the pre-production, we couldn’t have done it in time.”
Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos gifted President Sheinbaum with a hand-crafted shawl – or rebozo – which was worn by one of the film’s lead characters, as he announced in February that the platform planned to invest $1B in series and films in Mexico over the next four years
The wardrobe was recently exhibited at the Mexico’s textile art event “Original” and is soon set to go on tour to Paris, Washington, Louisiana, and Singapore.
Earlier in the day, Terrazas gave a masterclass on her work for George Pelecanos and David Simon‘s The Deuce, Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma and Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Roma, highlighting the importance of team work and collaborating with the production designer and cinematographer.
She also touched on her first cinema credits on Gael García Bernal’s directorial debut, Déficit, about a house party that takes an unexpected turn, followed by Carlos Cuarón’s Rudo y Cursi.
The latter sports comedy drama, starring Bernal and Diego Luna as two brothers working on a banana plantation with dreams of breaking into professional football, was produced by Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Guillermo del Toro.
“Gael and I have been really good friends since we were kids. It was his first film directing, we were just kids sort of learning. Rudo y Cursi was also a lot of fun for all of us,” she said. “It was based a little bit on Carlos and Alfonso’s life because their mother used to have a field of bananas.
Terrazas has since collaborated with Alfonso Cuarón and Iñárritu on their films but not the last of “Three amigos” del Toro. She says it is on her wish list.
“I kept seeing him when we were doing the press for Bardo and he was doing Pinocchio. I was like, ‘We have to work together’,” she said.
