In The Scenario, reporter Kirbie Johnson takes readers behind the scenes of the buzziest movies and TV shows to reveal how the best wigs, special effects makeup, and more are created. For this edition, Johnson spoke with the FX dental technician Gary Archer, who took on a subtle but significant part of Channing Tatum’s transformation in the summer thriller Blink Twice.
Channing Tatum has it all: He can dance. He can act. He’s got a great sense of humor. He’s engaged to Zoë Kravitz. All this despite his completely normal, nothing-to-write-home-about appearance.
Everything he’s got going for him, physically and personality-wise, makes for a good foundation to portray the deceptively charming sociopathic tech billionaire Slater King in Blink Twice.
In the film, Tatum looks like himself—until he speaks. We see his character for the first time in an interview setting, not unlike Kara Swisher interviewing any one of our modern tech behemoths. But seeing as Tatum doesn’t have the, er, typical look of a Musk or Zuckerberg type, the key to transforming him into one was dental prosthetics. When he opens his mouth, his teeth are blindingly white and perfectly cut—void of personality or uniqueness, unlike Tatum’s real-life smile with all its charming and natural unevenness. It turns his handsome puppy dog face into the face of someone you’d probably avoid at the bar.
“We were asked to give him a million-dollar smile—white, perfect, broad—just somebody that had so much wealth available to them they could [pay for] a perfect…smile,” the film’s FX dental technician Gary Archer tells Allure. Archer, whose dental career spans 40 years, is known to many in the industry as “The Godfather of FX teeth.” His IMDb is a smörgåsbord of iconic films and television shows; he’s worked on highly notable chompers like Mike Myers’s in the Austin Powers trilogy, Robin Williams’s in Mrs. Doubtfire, and Drew Barrymore’s in Never Been Kissed.
Archer, who has worked with Tatum on previous projects, says these teeth in Blink Twice are akin to the smiles Beverly Hills dentists are charging $30,000-$40,000 for. “[You] cut down every tooth, [give them] bleached white veneers…you’ve seen them on multiple celebrities; they’ve all had their teeth done,” Archer says. The key to Slater King’s teeth, he notes, is that they’re super bleached, over-the-top white (“Somewhat ridiculous, but that’s my dental opinion speaking,” he quips) but aren’t a “joke.” They don’t appear too large for Tatum’s mouth and even though they’re noticeably porcelain white, they aren’t out of the ordinary for a wealthy tech tycoon. “[Kravitz, the film’s director] wanted him to look like he had this billionaire’s smile, but it wasn’t to be done in this overt way that made it look ridiculous,” Archer says. “We didn’t want it to be an eye draw.”
