Entertainment
Here's How 'Undone' Made Its Cast Look So Realistic
Not to be confused with the Weezer song, Undone is a new Amazon Prime Series, created by BoJack Horseman mastermind Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy. The series premieres Friday, Sept. 13 and follows a character named Alma Winograd-Diaz (Rosa Salazar), who becomes unstuck in time after a traumatic car accident. And while the show is animated, audiences will still be able to recognize the Undone cast.
More specifically, the show is animated through rotoscoping, per the New York Times, and is accomplished by filming live action footage before animating over top. The Times cites Richard Linklater movies like 2001's Waking Life and the 2006 A Scanner Darkly for popularizing the technique, but it's still a fairly new field. Rotoscope animation on Undone was accomplished with the help of the Dutch illustrator Hisko Hulsing, whose animated films include Harry Rents a Room, Junkyard, and Seventeen.
"Frame by frame, the [Undone] animators do line drawings of each of the characters. When they're done it looks like a coloring book," series co-creator Kate Purdy told the New York Post. "So [the pages are] white with all the actors outlined, and they decide which facial expressions best capture the emotionality. Once they've done that work, the footage goes to our studio in Amsterdam and those [animated] performances are hand-painted onto oil-painting backgrounds."
It sounds like grueling, painstaking work, but the results are both gorgeous and avant-garde while still keeping its cast recognizable. Here are the castmembers who brought these pseudo-illustrated characters to life.
Rosa Salazar — Alma Winograd-Diaz
Salazar is best known for her leading role in Alita: Battle Angel, but she's also appeared in Parenthood, American Horror Story, and Bird Box, among others. And she's certainly starting to make a name for herself as a rotoscope animation actor. "I was just so in," she told IndieWire about Undone. "Obviously, I'd been animated before. I'd been an alternate version of myself, and I really like doing that. I feel like it frees me from this body, and I can really give birth to a character — someone completely different — and be free from this mess."
Constance Marie — Camila Diaz
Marie plays Alma's clingy mom, Camila. And if she looks familiar, that's because she's been in everything from Switched at Birth (where she played Regina Vasquez), George Lopez (in the role of his wife, Angie), and a police detective named Toni Brigatti in Early Edition. She also appeared in the 1997 biopic, Selena, with J-Lo in the leading role, where she played the late singer's mother, Marcela Quintanilla.
Bob Odenkirk — Jacob Winograd
While his most iconic character, Saul Goodman, is from the serious dramas Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad, Odenkirk got his start in sketch comedy. After writing on Saturday Night Live from '87 to '95, he and David Cross created the sketch series Mr. Show with Bob and David. However, he's certainly not the first person to transition from comedy to drama. "I did have a gut feeling, years ago, that in a dramatic context I could be really impactful," Odenkirk told Rolling Stone. "As much as comedy is my first love, it’s natural for me to get earnest and honest."
And in the role of Alma's deceased father, Jacob, Odenkirk plays a fairly straight-laced character — though one who's convinced he can time travel and reverse the events of his death.
Siddharth Dhananjay — Sam
Dhananjay is fairly new to the acting scene and has been in Patti Cake$, which starred Unbelievable and Dumplin' actor Danielle Macdonald. He's also appeared in a 2019 film called A Name Without a Place and The Real Bros of Simi Valley. According to a 2017 interview with NBC News, Dhananjay moved to the States for college, where he began making parody R&B videos under the persona Dhananjay the First. It was one of these clips that garnered the attention of Patti Cake$ director Geremy Jasper.
"They reached out to me and they were like, 'Would you try to be part of this movie?'" Dhananjay told NBC. "And I was like, 'Hell yeah, let's do it.'" In Undone, however, the budding actor play's Alma's boyfriend, Sam.
Luna-Marie Katich — Young Alma
Playing the childhood version of Alma is Katich's first and only credited acting role.
Angelique Cabral — Becca Winograd-Diaz
In addition to larger roles as Colleen in Life in Pieces and Sgt. Jill Perez on Enlisted, Cabral has also appeared in Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, Transparent, and Fresh off the Boat. Here, the actor plays Alma's sister, Becca, who seems supportive of her sibling's problems, if not confused.
Kevin Bigley — Reed Hollingsworth
In an interview for the site With an Accent, Bigley shared that his Undone character, Reed, is the spoiled son of a oil tycoon. "I kind of thought of him as a young George W. Bush — this person who's not allowed to fail because of money and privilege," he explained, later saying, "[Reed] can be very annoying in base level, but he's also very endearing with this very warm heart, and that's what Becca — Angelique's character — kind of likes about him."
Bigley has also had roles in Scream Queens, BoJack (where he voiced a variety of characters), and Sirens, among others.
Jeanne Tripplehorn — Beth Hollingsworth
While there's not much info on her Undone character, audiences can assume through context clues that Tripplehorn plays Reed Hollingsworth's mother.
John Corbett — Layton Hollingsworth
Mr. My Big Fat Greek Wedding himself plays the role of Layton Hollingsworth, who is likely Reed's father.
Daveed Diggs — Tunde
You may recognize Diggs from a variety of places — onstage in Hamilton, where he played both Thomas Jefferson and Marquis de Lafayette; Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, where he played Perry; Black-ish, as Johan Johnson; or the film Blindspotting, where he starred as Collin. In Undone, he plays the character of Tunde.
Tyler Posey — Father Miguel
Posey is a prolific actor who's been working in the biz since he played J-Lo's son, Ty, in Maid in Manhattan. Since then, he's starred in the MTV series Teen Wolf, wooed Jane Villanueva on Jane the Virgin, and played Gabriel in Now Apocalypse. Here, Posey's character is named Father Miguel.
Sheila Vand — Farnaz
In addition to playing the starring role in the critically acclaimed Iranian horror movie, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Vand has also appeared in Argo, Tuca & Bertie, The OA, and now Undone.
So now that audiences know what the Undone cast looks like in real life, they'll be prepped to watch the show when it airs on Sept. 13.
