By: Dove
—
As a busy actress and model, Skye Marshall is forever on the go, challenging herself at every turn. Marshall currently co-stars in the BET web series 8 Days a Week, and appears on the new season of CBS’s CSI: NY. Needless to say, she’s enjoying every moment of her career, but politics can be as harsh as stage lights in Hollywood, and Skye has to be conscientious of her appearance and attitude at all times.
We recently tapped in to some beauty secrets from Skye to find out how she maintains the effortless glow to play Zoe, a character several years her junior in 8 Days a Week. In this exclusive interview with UrbLife.com, Skye also tells us about her huge audition for the role, why working on the CSI: NY set is almost like an internship, and explains why a positive outlook is as critical to beauty as the right lip color! Read on…
What are your top tips for keeping a fresh face?
Skye Marshall: I have so many tips for skin and makeup. Here are a few:
1. Drink water! I drink tons of water. I think that a lot of people don’t really grasp that the digestive system can run your entire body overall. From your energy, to your skin, from your complexion, tone, hair, nails.
In order to flush that digestive system you have to continuously drink a lot of water. Otherwise the toxin build-up will show on your face. Your sluggish ways will show on your face. I try to drink as much water as possible. Probably the easiest and the cheapest beauty secret.
2. Exfoliate daily. Because they do constantly apply a lot of makeup [in my work], just a foam cleanse is not going to be enough. I do have to use a daily scrub. I’ve tried tons of expensive products here and there, but the best one that I’ve had the most success with is Neutrogena Visibly Even.
I saw commercial years ago that Gabrielle Union was doing, [and she]won’t endorse just anything. I gave it a try and it actually did work out amazing for me. It evens skin tone and requires less makeup. That’s what you want. You never want for them to have to put on a lot of makeup. The more even you can get your skin, the better.
3. Take a break. I don’t think a lot of people throughout the day just relax. The stress will also show up on your face. I try to maintain my stress levels as much as possible. I exercise, I meditate here and there, not as much as I would like. Just to take better control of your emotions. If you see a situation that could possibly be negative or stressful, attack it early or use more preventative methods to avoid it. That way you can also calm the hormone levels so that way you won’t tend to get breakouts.
These are just methods that work for me, because after all of the studying I’ve done, I found that our bodies will react exactly how you allow it to react. Everything is not on the counter, most of the stuff is God given. You drink some water and you maintain your level of stress, so that it doesn’t show up on your face. Also you want to maintain a healthy diet of course.
4. Park your powder! When traveling, leave all of the loose powders at home. It becomes messy after a while and a lot of times you have to do quick touchups. You don’t want to have powder getting on your clothes. When you have to do a quick fix, the pressed powder is the way to go. [Avoid] using one tone over the whole face. Always have a couple of options for your highlights. You want to have a lighter powder for your highlighted areas and a deeper powder to accentuate the cheekbones, jawline, and around the hairline so that it’s a nice blend.
I can’t stand to see that circle right below the hairline on women’s faces because they have used the exact same color throughout. You want to have that natural look. If your entire face has the same tone, you lose a lot of your definition that your bone structure is built for. If you look at a lot of my photos, my cheekbones and my face might look chiseled, but that’s because I placed the makeup in a way to give it that more defined look.
5. Define your cheekbones. Another nice tip, right below your cheekbones apply just a little bit of a light line. I leaned that from Naomi Campbell. Whether you have defined cheekbones or not, it will make it look like you do. I use like a chocolate eye shadow and rub just a little bit under my cheekbones, and instantly have the more defined look.
Right under the eyes, that’s where you put your highlights and bronzer. On the actual cheek, you apply your plums, your reds, your colors. Under that is where you should put a shadow darker than your skin tone. It’s like a straight line. It’ll give you that defined, highlighted look. It gives you a fierce face, you’ve got to have that! It just completely changes the look, even behind the bone structure you already have.
6. Prep your eyes properly. I see a lot of women that apply the mascara and just keep going until it gets to this thick layer of mascara. The best tip for me is to apply a thin layer of mascara, leave it alone, and go to work on another area of your face. Then return and do a second coat of mascara.
You want to let that first coat of mascara dry, otherwise you lose the shape of your lashes and it tends to clump after a while. When you let that first coat dry, the second coat will break the lashes apart, because you’re breaking apart dried mascara. Once you break it apart, it spreads your lashes even more to give it volume.
One thing I do not like – I think all women have experienced this before – where you put on your eye shadow and it looks amazing, then after the day goes by and the oils in your skin build up, you start to see the lines through your eye shadow. My recommendation would definitely be to use a primer. Primer works amazing for eye shadows.
If you don’t have a primer, just put a little bit of your under-eye concealer on the eyelid itself, and then apply the eye shadow on top of that. That would be my backup, but I would definitely go with a primer that way it can set your eye shadow to stay in place for 8-12 hours.
7. Balance your eyes and lips. One thing I will say, make sure your eye shadow speaks to your lips. Seriously. If you’re giving loud, dark eyes or colorful eyes, always go soft on the lips. Go for a nude or a softer, lighter pink. If you already have chocolate tone lips such as myself, just put on a clear gloss. That way you’re not doing too much. If you want to do the lighter eye shadow, then give them the plum, give them the red, and give them those deeper colors.
You definitely don’t want to draw too much attention to both the eyes and the lips [at the same time]. That’s when you start to dip into the hooker lane. The days I don’t do the eye shadow, that gives me the opportunity to play around and push the envelope with different colors for my lips.
Lip liner is important too. Whatever color lipstick you use, take that color down a couple of darker shades and use a lip liner to have the continuity blend from your skin tone to the inner lip. The inner lip is bright pink, so you want that bright pink to go to the color lipstick, darker liner, and darker skin tone.
Tell us about the BET webisode series 8 Days a Week. How did you get involved in it and what is your role?
SM: My agency submitted me for 8 Days a Week and I got the audition and I was extremely excited. I read the breakdown of the character, her name is Zoe Daniels, and she is a fashionista. She lives outside of society’s box. She loves to push the envelope and she’s very original. What also makes Zoe original is that she’s very in tune and in tap with the power of the mind.
As far as maintaining that positivity and understanding that you have full control over whatever situation that you’re in as soon as you adjust your mental state. If you say that you continuously hate something, then whatever that something is, is going to continuously confirm to why you hate it. Zoe always has to remind [the other girls]of that because we are all fighting for a dream, we all have goals, we all have careers that we just got out of college is pursuing.
When college students are fresh out of college, you get hit with that, “I’m getting thrown into the real world and I actually do have and put my dream into effect, but I don’t see how it could be done.” Zoe continuously steps in and reminds them, “Don’t worry about the house. Just worry about what you want and it’ll be done, it’s already written, so smile and have that attitude of expectancy because it will come. Just be flawless and be fly as you always are and enjoy your life.”
Skye Townsend plays Jade, and Zoe works with Jade at the café. She always gets involved in all of the drama and gossip, that’s like the highlight of her day to hear what’s going on. I read the breakdown of Zoe, completely fell in love with her, went into the audition… and to be honest Zoe is exactly like me, so it was fun for me to play myself.
In real life you’re older that your character. Do you feel like you were able to bring a little more knowledge to your character’s reaction to things?
SM: I do believe that I brought wisdom, but I still diluted the dialogue so that I spoke to them in their own language, so I made it hip, made it fun, and made it funny. Zoe speaks her own language anyway. Instead of saying see you later, Zoe would say “see you latro.” She’s in her own world.
She’s a typical 23-year-old that still believes that because they are done with high school and college they’ve “been there done that,” know it all, know what’s going on, but has no clue that she just started life. She’s nothing but a ball of light, and if any arguing goes on in that café, Zoe will put an end to it immediately.
I went in for the audition and I was very nervous, because the casting director was Ms. Robi Reed and she is hands down the biggest casting director in Black Hollywood of all time. She put Halle Berry in her first film, she cast Denzel Washington in Mo Better Blues, and she cast all of Spike Lee’s first films, Harlem Nights, every single episode of In Living Color. Her resume is endless when it comes to influential films, Black Hollywood, television shows, all the way up to Tyler Perry’s For Colored Girls.
As a Black actress that’s new in Hollywood, you want to read and audition for Robi Reed, but you also want to feel confident that you’re ready for her, because the first impression with Robi is lasting. I studied endlessly on my craft and worked really hard and was prepared for my audition. At first when I went in, I think I may have blacked out because I was so nervous. Robi Reed has an intense poker face, so you don’t really pick up on what she thinks of your performances.
The day that I got the call back, I just shot through the roof. They let me bring some of my comedic improve into some of the lines and they loved it. They loved the decisions that I made, and based off of that I booked the job and it was history after that. I went on set and everyone was very professional and we all worked very well together, even though we didn’t get a chance to rehearse together. We all just meshed very well and we got the job done in a very quick amount of time. Everyone was very excited.
The thing I notice out here in Hollywood is a lot of people really don’t know how to stay in their own lane. Everybody wants to be the director, the producer, the lighting, and everybody wants to do the makeup and the hair.
On our set, everybody plays their position and plays it very well, and everyone else also respects the colleagues and the entire crew. We continuously stay on top of our production timing. There was never any overtime we had to do. Everyone was looking at [the creator]Lyah [LeFlore] and if she was smiling, let’s keep going we’re good. As long as the boss is happy, we’re happy.
You’re working on CSI:NY; tell us a little about that. Also what can we look for you in coming up?
SM: I have a role but I don’t have enough dialogue to really brag about it yet. For the past month, I do spend three to four days working on CSI. They have about 15 CSI techs and I’m one of them. It’s CSI: NY and it films in L.A.! [laughs]To me really it’s like a paid internship, that’s what it feels like because I’m constantly surrounded by the greats.
I always say that if you want to be in a certain position, go and submerge yourself in that environment. Really feel it out. If you want a BMW, go test drink a BMW. Don’t go back and continuously wishful think about it. An entire week films one episode, and it’s usually 12 hours a day. The show is an hour. You never know what happens in the editing room.
For me, CSI, I don’t look at it right now as exposure, I look at it as training and me learning from a lot of the greats and being on set and just experiencing what it’s like to be on one of the big budget shows. That is one of my goals and dreams.
I have a feature film, I was out in Cannes, France at the Cannes Film Festival last year, and I met up with a director from London named Andy Thompson and he has a feature film he’s going to be shooting. So I’m attached to that, I can’t say too much about it now, but that’s something I’m really excited about that’s coming up in December.
Besides that, it’s a hustle and flow industry, so you book but you keep grinding and keep hustling to stay busy. That’s exactly what I do. I don’t care if two weeks ago I did 106 and Park to promote 8 Days A Week and the very next day I did background work on 90210.
I’m very humble and love to learn and I love to be around people that are in a position that I’m striving for. They only motivate me. I can’t learn anything in a house. I keep myself as busy as possible, and also to avoid having to get any bartending and waitressing gigs like most actors!
Find out more about Skye Marshall on her official site SkyeMarshall.com, and follow her on Twitter @SkyeMarshall
CLICK HERE to watch 8 Days a Week on BET.com, beginning with Episode One!
1 Comment
Pingback: air jordan oreo 4s