Designing Will Ferrell's Elf Costume Came With Its Own Set Of Challenges
There are many charming things about Jon Favreau's "Elf." The Christmas movie about a man who is unintentionally raised by North Pole elves and eventually returns to New York to find his biological father has become required holiday viewing, joining the ranks of seasonal classics like "It's a Wonderful Life" and "A Christmas Story." Will Ferrell is infectious as Buddy, the boisterous and cheerful man who approaches life with the same fervor and intensity as a small child on Christmas morning. Ferrell's portrayal of the film's iconic character could easily have gone in the direction of cringe — after all, he does play a full-grown man whose child-like behavior often gets him into trouble — but in Ferrell's competent hands, he manages to make Buddy an endearing and often heartwarming character who audience members can't help but love.
But just because Ferrell was able to portray Buddy in a convincing and inoffensive manner doesn't mean that there weren't challenges when it came to preparing his character for the screen. In fact, one of the biggest hurdles the crew had to jump over on their way to bringing the oversized elf to life was Buddy's now-iconic costume. It turns out that dressing a giant elf is a lot harder than it might seem.
How to dress a giant elf
In order to bring the character of Buddy to life, costume designer, Laura Jean Shannon (who has done costumes for everything from "Scott Pilgrim vs. the World" to the Amazon Prime Video show, "The Boys"), had to take a lot of things into account. The film stars Will Ferrell as the man-turned-elf, and it's no secret that Ferrell is a very tall man (a quick Google search will inform you that he is, in fact, 6' 3"). And when it comes to costuming very tall men as giant elves (and they aren't of the Legolas variety), things can get pretty tricky pretty fast. There is a fine line between adorable and unbecoming, and Buddy's costume presented Shannon with a lot of opportunities to accidentally create the latter.
In an interview with Feel Christmassy, Shannon addressed the challenges that came with creating the now-iconic Buddy the Elf costume. She says, "It was less a challenge dressing Will due to his size and more a challenge to make sure nothing seemed off-putting or in bad taste." She goes on to say, "After all, I had to dress a grown man in tights and a cutaway coat." And it is true that Buddy's outfit could easily have gone the way of "oh dear God what were they thinking!" especially when tights are involved. Shannon explains, "Needless to say, we did have a fair amount of fittings to be sure we struck the right balance between absurd and adorable." Thankfully, in Shannon's capable hands, Buddy turned into one of the most endearingly adorable elves to ever grace the silver screen (sorry, Hermey!).