‘Doctor Strange 2’ costume designer confirms Mr. Fantastic and Black Bolt were late additions

A costume designer who worked on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is confirming something many audience members probably already guessed: the appearances of John Karasinski’s Reed Richards, AKA Mr. Fantastic, and Anson Mount’s Black Bolt were late additions.

Graham Churchyard, a costume designer for the Doctor Strange sequel, explained that both Mr. Fantastic and Black Bolt’s costumes were also made entirely with computer-generated imagery, according to an interview with ComicBookMovie. As such it was the visual effects team, whom he expressed sympathy for, and not himself who worked on the costumes for those two particular characters.

“We had designs for other characters, and then we didn’t have casting and there were travel bans. When we were shooting the Illuminati in London, actors like Sir Patrick couldn’t come to London because of travel. Richie Palmer and everyone had a big wish list of like who was going to be in the Illuminati. When it came down to those two characters being settled on, it was then even too late to make something locally in Los Angeles. Just way too late and too close.”

Besides Mr. Fantastic and Black Bolt, “everything else had been physically there” when it came to the costumes, Churchyard said.

“All of Wanda when she’s flying around Kamar Taj on a very elaborate wire rig that’s like a spider that goes six ways that can pull you in different directions. Where possible, pretty much everything is physical in the costumes unless they say, ‘Hey, the skirt is getting in the way of the rig.’ It just gives visual effects one less thing to do out of the million things that they have to do in to bring these characters and enhance them in the way you see them.”

Even Lashana Lynch’s Monica Rambeau variant of Captain Marvel was “built entirely from scratch,” he said.

Interestingly, Churchyard also said there were a ton of Illuminati scenes that were shot that ended up on the cutting-room floor.

“[M]aybe it’ll be on the Blu-ray,” he added. Guess we’ll have to find out just how robust those special features will be when the physical media release of the film drops later this month.

It certainly sounds like the shooting schedule for Multiverse of Madness was a headache-inducing experience, to say the least. In that same interview, Churchyard indicated that while the original scene with the Illuminati was shot in London, the production was forced to go to Los Angeles for the reshoots.

Luckily, Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier did not have to endure a CGI costume like some of his costars. We Got This Covered previously reported about how Mr. Jean-Luc himself was fitted — via a Zoom call — with a custom-tailored suit from Savile Row.

Multiverse of Madness releases on 4K, Blu-ray and DVD on July 26.