Best known for her beloved turn as Dr. Arizona Robbins on Grey’s Anatomy, Jessica Capshaw currently leads 9-1-1: Nashville opposite Chris O’Donnell. The Ryan Murphy series has already generated major buzz and earned a second-season pickup, yet Capshaw admits the experience has been refreshingly unpredictable. “You don’t really understand how wild the ride is until you’re in it,” she says.
Off-screen, her approach is just as thoughtful. Between long days on set and life at home, she’s embraced a more intentional take on beauty, tweaking her routine for Nashville’s heat and humidity and committing to a multi-step cleanse at night. “Washing my face really helps me get back to baseline,” she says. It’s a grounded philosophy that carries into everything else: her podcast with Camilla Luddington, her role on Tell Me Lies and a sense that she’s fully in sync with where she is right now.
We only have a few more weeks until Nashville airs its season finale. What can fans expect?
“It’s been so much fun! I knew the franchise and what they were building, but until you’re in it, you don’t really understand how wild the ride is.”
You never know when you start a project if it’s going to be great or not, but how did it feel when you got that call that it was already picked up for Season 2?
“Oh my gosh, it was so great. For whatever reason, the two biggest and longest-running jobs that I’ve had in television, I came in after they started. They were already successful shows, and then I came in, or was added. I realized, when we got the Season 2 pickup, that I had never had that feeling before.
I had never experienced starting a show and not having a blueprint, not knowing, ‘This is what people like from this show, and this is what we’re doing and this is the direction we’re going.’ We were starting our own version of 9-1-1 from scratch.
The first year was complete with the ups and downs and all around. You figure out the stuff that works. You figure out the stuff that doesn’t work. You figure out scheduling. You figure out life. You figure out your life at work. You figure out your life at home. You figure out all of it.
It was really cool to get the phone call because it meant that we got to go do it again with all the information we gathered during the first season, and hopefully make it even better.”
You’re in the mix of it now—filming in the South and with the Southern heat. How does that all go into your character’s beauty notes?
“Well, honestly, we are talking about beauty, so there’s a fun to it, right? But when the beauty is for the work, it makes it more serious. It makes it a weightier topic. Yes, you have a whole different climate. Makeup and hair are different when there are extreme temperatures and different levels of humidity. For sure, we were figuring things out because you need different tools. For the makeup and hair products, we had to use different ones at different times of the year. We had to figure out how to plus or minus things in a way that catered to the elements, if you will.”
Very interesting. I’m sure you have a cleanser that you like using. Is there anything that helps you go from set back to normal life when you wrap?
“Yes. You know what? It’s like all the memes and funny things we all watch on socials. It’s like what I did in my teens and my 20s, and now what I do in my 40s, is very different—being that you come home with a face full of makeup in your teens and 20s, and you just go to sleep. Your face hits the pillow with all the makeup on it. Now, you use the 25-step removal—all of the things!
In the beauty industry—it seems like this at least—there are just so many things you can do now. You don’t even know what is actually necessary, what’s actually good, what your formula should be. It’s really interesting. For me, between set and home, it’s really all about cleaning. I’d say there’s definitely at least three to four steps in my cleaning process before my head hits the pillow.”
Less is more. Using all the things doesn’t really work.
“No, it doesn’t. By the way, I feel that way about makeup. It’s wild. I love using makeup. Take me to a beauty store, and I am convinced that I don’t have that shade of lip liner, and I need that one! Then I also definitely need that blush because it’s different. Even though it’s the same color, it’s less creamy and not powder. I can justify any new purchase.
That said, I don’t really wear that much makeup at once. I’m just not a big makeup wearer. But, of course, you do have to wear different kinds when you’re on film and television, and again, needing to wear makeup for a 15-hour day, a 14-hour day isn’t really fun.
The removal does end up being a process, but I have what works for me down: I mix in the oil cleanser first, then the cream cleanser. Then I add an actual soapy cleanser because I find that if I don’t, it doesn’t all come off. The cleaning really helps me with pore size and getting to that baseline of squeaky-clean.”
A finely tuned process! Now that we’re in April, what else are you excited for this spring?
“Spring! When I was living in California, I barely even noticed when spring arrived because the climate was moderate. Things didn’t necessarily bloom. I vaguely remember people talking about allergies, but it wasn’t a particularly pronounced feeling or shift.
Now that I live on the East Coast, it is my favorite season. It is the most glorious of glorious events that happens. I think that nature is magic in a way that I did not recognize or understand before. It begins the shift as we winter, as a verb, and now we are ready to spring. I’m so excited. Everyone’s outside more. The temperature is warmer. There are flowers, and the buds are starting to come on the trees. It’s my favorite time.”
