Every year, Heidi Klum, the reigning queen of Halloween, delivers an unforgettable costume. She has transformed into a sexy one Jessica RabbitA flamboyant peacockand even a grotesque worm. Always one to deliver the unexpected, Klum knew she had to transform something unique for this year’s festivities. So the day after last Halloween, the star immediately started brainstorming. “I knew I wanted to do something nostalgic,” says Klum. “I started reminiscing and thinking about what dolls I played with, what movies I watched and what some of my favorite childhood memories were.” The model came across a mini statue of ET, one of her favorite movies and characters as a child, and a concept for 2024 was born. “It’s my favorite childhood movie of all time; I’ve watched it a million times,” says Klum. “It’s a film that inspired me to dream and imagine the possibility of life beyond Earth.”
Of course, it’s not the first time Klum has dressed up as an alien: see her 2019 lookwhen she missed an alien science experiment. But with ET, the star was excited to put a new stamp on a classic Hollywood figure — and to enlist her husband, Tom Kaulitz, to appear in a couples costume with her. (Yes, there are two ET’s) It took a whole year to bring their alien appearance to life. The process began in November 2023, when Klum called her favorite FX artist Mike Marino and his team; They immediately started discussing the execution of the costume. “There were a lot of adjustments and countless meetings,” says Klum.
Marino and his team of thirty artists began the painstaking process by making digital scans of the bodies and faces of both Klum and Kaulitz. “We started by digitally printing their bodies and digitally sculpting the different parts of ET: arms, legs, feet,” says Marino. “Then we pieced everything together to make sure they lined up and fit. We 3D printed, cast, cast in foam latex, and reinforced with spandex all of the sculptures. We then glued the pieces to their faces and blended them into the body. The team created every detail from scratch, right down to the alien eyeballs, teeth, tongues and fingernails. “Everything was finished with a full airbrush job,” says Marino.
The biggest challenge, of course, was determining the exact scale of the ETs, which are intended to be mini-sized. “ET is much smaller than a normal human, so we had to create an illusion by placing their bodies on both mine and Tom’s,” says Klum. “It was difficult, but we got through it.” To make things even more difficult, Marino and his team had the added challenge of making both looks fully animatronic as well. “We had to design a head harness that could balance on their heads without being too heavy,” says Marino. For Klum, this proved to be the most difficult thing to navigate in costume. “Balancing the headstock was one of the biggest challenges,” she says. “It had to fit securely without being too heavy as I wore it for hours. We also used detailed airbrushing to make the costume fit our faces seamlessly; It was a long and painstaking process, but it was worth it.”