"Nothing Too High": Maude Apatow on Blush Sandwiching, Euphoria Looks, and Her Mom's Best Beauty Tip

"I've got, like, eight layers of blush on right now," Maude Apatow tells me from her New York apartment. The actor, director, and Who What Wear May cover star just returned from Prada Beauty's weekend pop-up at the Gansevoort Plaza, the last stop on its multicity Prada Touch Tour, and from the Zoom screen, I can see her drawstring bag and black jacket strewn across the crisply made bed—the only evidence of haste in the bright, airy space. A single flower suns on the windowsill, and Apatow's swooping bob is as sleek as ever, not a flyaway to be seen. That said, her cheekbones do appear quite rosy, either flushed from rushing home or, as I come to find out, rouged to the gods after a few hours of finger painting. Prada dubbed it the Touch blush for a reason, after all.

While eight layers is admittedly a bit much for her everyday glam, Apatow does sometimes sandwich a couple of blush shades for more dimension. "I'll apply a deeper one on the apples of my cheeks and then do a lighter shade going up [the cheekbones]. That's only if I'm really getting fancy with it," she says. At present, she's wearing Prada Beauty's Waterlily, a bright fuchsia, and Tulip, a soft baby pink. Usually, however, she taps on one bubblegum blush and calls it a day. "I gravitate toward a bright pink, but I also love a good dusty rose or bronzier, deeper blush," she says. "I always apply with my fingers. I feel like I get much more control. I start on the apples of my cheeks and then just move my way up—but nothing too high. I will attempt a snatched moment, but it never looks as good as it does when other people do it."

Blush is nonnegotiable for everyday glam, but when I ask about her favorite feature to enhance, her attention shifts north to her wide, round eyes. "I remember putting on mascara for a Halloween costume and my mom making me look down as she put [it] on," she recounts, laughing. "I think I was the bride of Frankenstein. … I was like, 'Whoa, I look amazing.'" Today, mascara remains a beauty-bag staple for her top and bottom lashes (polarizing!) to open up her orbs as much as possible. "I like a deep brown," she says in terms of shades. "There's a Prada deep-brown mascara that I've been using. It's almost black. If you have brown eyes, it looks pretty."

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You'll, of course, find plenty of stunning eye looks on Euphoria, but Apatow tells me that her character Lexi Howard would rather wear a strong lip than extra-fluttery lashes. "Tara Lang, who I work with on Euphoria, and I always try to do a lip with Lexi," she notes. "That's Lexi's signature look over the years that we've shot the show." As it turns out, that's also Apatow's own hallmark. "I love a red lip. That's my favorite going-out look," she adds. (And she wears it well! Just look at the dark-red lipstick she donned to the Chloé after-party during Paris Fashion Week.)

When she's not donning a red lip, though, she's swiping on nothing but a buttery tinted lip balm. "Wait, let me get it! It's right here," she offers before rummaging through her bag for her favorite Prada number. "It goes on really sheer, so it's not too intense," she says, uncapping the mauve-brown pigment.

Unless she's headed to an event or, you know, filming blush-focused press materials, Apatow keeps her base rather minimal, opting for just a bit of concealer to cover up precise areas. "I try not to wear too much makeup every day just because I want to give my skin a chance to breathe," she says. "A little goes a long way, especially with foundation. I went through a phase where I had really thick, dark brows and a ton of foundation and bronzer. I look back at photos and think that was probably not the right call."

Relatable—the overdrawn "Instagram brows" of 2016 spared no one, but they're arguably healthier than the tweezer-happy era that afflicted the '90s. "[My mom's] eyebrows never grew back. She's like, 'Don't do what I did,'" Apatow shares. "But I also have really thick eyebrows, so sometimes, they need to be plucked." There's a fine line, much like the balance between a healthy, vibrant flush and full-on blush blindness. Although, considering how Apatow's skin radiates from my computer screen, I wonder if there's something to be said about this eight-layer-blush thing. Who knows? She just might have unwittingly kicked off a hot summer makeup trend.

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