How Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough Became Sasquatches in *Sasquatch Sunset*

Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough’s Sasquatch transformations in David and Nathan Zellner’s 2024 film Sasquatch Sunset combined custom foam-latex prosthetics, fitted fur suits and boots with hours of application and intensive movement work. The finished costumes were designed to move with the performers, but Keough said they were still difficult to move in; the cast also had to build a physical, vocal performance for a film without conventional spoken dialogue.

What did Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough look like in Sasquatch Sunset?

The actors became shaggy, fleshy-looking Sasquatches through custom creature makeup and fitted suits, not an off-the-shelf transformation product. Sundance’s festival coverage describes the film’s creature effects as shaggy prosthetics, while creature and prosthetics designer Steve Newburn explained that the makeup was built to work on the performers’ faces and bodies. The look appears throughout the film, which follows a Sasquatch family over the course of a year.

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Newburn said the prosthetic components were made of foam latex, thin enough to allow movement, with hair attached to facial pieces. The costumes included climbing boots built into the feet to help with the terrain. Rather than relying on a mechanically operated head, the design used makeup and prosthetics that moved with the actors’ performances.

How long did Jesse Eisenberg’s Sasquatch makeup take?

There was no single precise call time that applied to every actor or day. Newburn recalled that the first test makeup took “probably two and a half, three hours” as the team worked out the process. Once the routine was repeated, he estimated that most performers were ready in “about an hour and a half to two hours with the suit.” Eisenberg separately remembered spending about two hours in the makeup chair in the morning.

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Eisenberg described facial prosthetics with hair attached and a close-fitting body suit. He recalled that the hair around the mouth made eating at lunch awkward, and that powder was used between takes to help manage moisture and chafing. Those details are his recollections, not a claim that every actor had the same routine on every shooting day.

Why did the suits feel hard to move in?

Newburn estimated that a complete suit weighed about seven pounds, with the climbing boots as its heaviest part. That figure describes the designer’s estimate of the costume’s weight; it does not measure how comfortable or easy it was to perform in. Keough described the practical experience differently: “The suits are stunning and incredibly made, but they’re really difficult to move in.”

She said that walking even a few feet or raising an arm could be hard. The distinction matters: a relatively light costume can still restrict movement, feel hot or demand effort, especially when performers need to move through forest terrain and express character without ordinary dialogue.

How did the actors learn to move and vocalize as Sasquatches?

Eisenberg said the cast took part in a Sasquatch movement boot camp in the Redwoods with movement coach Lorin Eric Salm, who had worked with him on Resistance and studied under mime artist Marcel Marceau. The actors established fewer than ten specific sounds they could share, then improvised other vocalizations during performances. Grunts and physical behavior carried interactions that would normally be conveyed in spoken lines.

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Keough told the San Francisco Chronicle that she studied primate videos and joined a weeklong behavioral boot camp in Eureka. She described using reaching and hand movements inspired by apes and looking to the Patterson-Gimlin footage for ideas about walking. These were reported preparation choices for a fictional performance, not evidence about real Sasquatch behavior.

How did the location and schedule shape the costume work?

The Zellners wanted old-growth redwood forests and remote Northern California locations rather than a soundstage, to give the film a naturalistic setting. The production worked from hubs in Eureka and Arcata, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. The filmmakers also described a tight schedule, complex creature effects, erratic weather and wild animals as challenges of the shoot.

Newburn said his team had six weeks of preparation, rather than the three months he would normally want for a project of this kind. After arriving in Northern California, they conducted a test makeup the next day and began filming the day after that. He reported making two finished suits for each actor, plus an additional Eisenberg suit for river work: nine suits in all across the four characters. Local reporting described heavy rain and snow and the need to dry costumes overnight, making duplicates and costume care part of the production’s practical demands.

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