How Make-Up Artists Milagros Cerdeira & Jeremy Selenfriend Made ‘American Horror Story: NYC’ An Equally Sweaty and Bloody Affair

American Horror Story has become a mainstay at the Primetime Emmy Awards when it comes to make-up, and it’s easy to see why. As the central plots and themes get more ambitious, the designs for everything have to up the ante. Season 11, NYC, takes elements of campy fantasy and fuses them with allusions to queer history. For prosthetic make-up designer Jeremy Selenfriend and make-up designer Milagros Cedeira this season was rewarding and terrifying.

AHS has done vampires, witches, mental patients and haunted houses, but what about the real-life horrors that plagued the gay community in the ’80s? NYC takes the uncertainty of the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic and shoots it through a bloody lens. The season starts during a steamy summer, and Selenfriend and Cedeira and I start our conversation talking about the difficulty of all the sweat that coats everyone’s bodies. It’s a seemingly small detail, but they reveal the surprising amount of work it takes to maintain it.

But then there are the monsters. The Mai Tai Killer destroys lives to create the perfect specimen, but Selenfriend divulges details on just how to make a “Frankenstein Jesus” come to life. The same goes for the ghastly death of Hans–the make-up is so detailed that you can almost smell the rot through your screen. Selenfriend and Cedeira also talk about calibrating the sickness journeys of Russell Tovey and Joe Mantello’s characters.

Creator Ryan Murphy has delivered American Horror Story: The Normal Heart but tapping into the true fear that gay men faced during the AIDS crisis. Selenfriend and Cedeira’s work, though, ratchets it up to a bloodier level.

American Horror Story: NYC is streaming now on Hulu.