Christopher Guest's Mascots: Actors explain their outrageous outfits

Ten years after his last big ensemble comedy, fans of Christopher Guest’s mockumentaries need wait no longer.

The man who has previously explored the world of a heavy metal band in This is Spinal Tap, community theater in Waiting for Guffman, dog shows with Best in Show, folk musicians in A Mighty Wind, and Oscar campaigns in For Your Consideration is taking audiences into the world of the men and women who suit up to portray various sports teams’ good luck symbols in Mascots, available on Netflix Oct. 13. The mockumentary sees the performers gathering at the 8th World Mascot Association Championships to compete for the biggest award in their line of work, the Gold Fluffy.

When Guest called up Parker Posey to offer her a role in yet another of his movies, he told her she was going to be an armadillo. “So a lot of my preparation was thinking about this animal,” Posey tells EW, noting she wanted her costume to have a homemade, steampunk look. Hailing from Mississippi, her Cindi Babineaux is “an unrealized performance artist,” she describes to EW. “There’s not a lot of foam around her, so she can express herself, ‘cause she’s a dancer.”

But there’s more than meets the eye with it comes to her armor-clad alter ego. “Thinking about why a woman in the deep South would relate so intensely to this animal had a kind of feminist approach to it,” Posey says.

Babineaux and her Alvin the Armadillo face off against Ollie the Octopus (Zach Woods), The Fist (Chris O’Dowd), Jack the Plumber (Christopher Moynihan), Tammy the Turtle (Sarah Baker), and Sid the Hedgehog (Tom Bennett).

See more of the Mascots interview above, and the trailer below.