Returning to a Hollywood role after 20 years doesn't always require huge transformations for actors, but Rebecca Romijn's X-Men villainess Mystique is obviously an exception. The blue-skinned shapeshifter is back for the upcoming MCU epic Avengers: Doomsday, with Romijn retaking the reins from Jennifer Lawrence, who played the younger version in the mutants' second Fox trilogy. The actress, who's currently keeping the Star Trek franchise going strong, has shared that she wasn't required to spend quite as much time in the makeup chair for the Russos' movie, for better or worse.
Romijn's Mystique will forever remain one of the most elaborately made-up characters in cinema history, and the amount of hours she spent in the makeup chair getting her entire body turned blue and textured remains wildly impressive. She's said in the past that it was initially a 9-hour experience for the first X-Men movie, and that the team got it down to 7 hours by the time X-Men: The Last Stand came around. But that's still an entire workday for some people, and that all had to happen before she could even step in front of the camera.
It appears that particular headache, as it were, isn’t nearly as time-intensive as it was during the early years of CGI and digital effects. Speaking with EW about going blue for Doomsday, she said it was a relief to learn that she wasn’t being asked to spend a third of her working days getting paint and prosthetics. In her words:
Apparently, they were no longer interested in waiting for actors to be processed, so it was much faster.
Though she didn't seem to elaborate on that notion, one can assume she potentially meant that the Russos were not eager to wait 7+ hours for actors to get physically set up for shots, and that they were working with the mindset that any amount of costuming and character details can be digitally added into the shot during post-production. It's not the most ideal approach for audiences, since the line between practical effects and CGI remains pretty thick. But definitely good news for certain blue-skinned cast members.
It's still unknown exactly how much of Mystique fans will even get to see in Avengers: Doomsday alongside other co-stars from Fox's extended X-Men franchise, but we know from the explosive first trailer that she'll use her morphing abilities to turn into Florence Pugh's Yelena Belova at some point. (I'd love to see her turn into Thing or Johnny Storm, just to see how that would work, but I'll take whatever I can get.)
For all that she was happy to not spend nearly as long in the makeup chair as she had in the past, Rebecca Romijn explained why that extended prep time actually had a net-positive effect on her performance overall, saying:
The original transformation that I went through for those first three X-Men movies was really imperative to that character for me: It really put me in just the right headspace to play [a character] as angry as Mystique.
Which doesn't necessarily mean that Mystique's return in Avengers: Doomsday will see her doing meditative yoga and showing off her Wordle skills. She still seems pretty angry on the whole, though possibly with different motivations this time around.
Check Romijn and the rest of the ensemble cast out in the Avengers: Doomsday trailer that went public just prior to Comic-Con.
Catch Mystique showing off her unique powers and charms when Avengers: Doomsday joins other 2026 movie releases and hits theaters on December 18.
