Star Trek: Picard wins an Emmy award for the Romulan prosthetic makeup in “Absolute Candor”

"Absolute Candor" -- Episode #104 -- Pictured: Sir Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard of the the CBS All Access series STAR TREK: PICARD. Photo Cr: Trae Patton/CBS ©2019 CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

SEPTEMBER 18, 2020 - Star Trek: Picard has won an Emmy award in its inaugural season. The show won the award yesterday for Outstanding Prosthetic Makeup For A Series, Limited Series, Movie Or Special, for the episode “Absolute Candor”.

Observant Trekkies will note that this award is the same as the one that Star Trek: Discovery won in 2019 for the season two episode “If Memory Serves”. Sadly, the other Star Trek series nominated this year - Short Treks - lost out in its Outstanding Short Form Comedy or Drama Series to Better Call Saul Employee Training: Legal Ethics With Kim Wexler.

For those who don’t remember, the Emmy-winning episode “Absolute Candor” was the one in which Picard travels to the planet Vashti to pick up Elnor, a young Romulan who would go on to join the main cast of characters. The episode took place largely in a Romulan refugee colony. Back in August, James Robert Mackinnon, the department head for special makeup effects on Picard, talked to Gold Derby about his experience on set. In that conversation he revealed that between “Absolute Candor” and “Stardust City Rag” (another Emmy-nominated episode that was filmed at the same time), he had a total of 107 makeup artists on set, along with boxes of prosthetic ears, foreheads and eyebrows.

Mackinnon called out the extensive Romulan makeup as the team’s biggest challenge, saying, “Everything was very skin colored. As an artist, you can hide a lot with painting veins and all that kind of stuff, to hide all that...but with Romulans [being] flesh colored, it’s really the hardest thing.”

Please join me in wishing congratulations to the whole team at Star Trek: Picard on their win.