Comments on: What is With The Wigs?

A moment for Hollywood’s current wig epidemic

The Yearning Rating: ✰*

*These wigs deserve less!

Today we’re trying something a little different today…Enjoy!

Written by Alison Romig

Two weeks ago, I sat down with a glass of chilled red to watch my most innocuous guilty pleasure, And Just Like That…

I was ready to roll my eyes at Carrie, scroll on my phone through Charlotte’s scenes, and cringe at Miranda’s lopsided bob announcing her new commitment to lesbian-dom. But unfortunately, I found myself way too distracted to focus on any of that. And the distraction wasn’t thanks to the surprise fact that I have actually been enjoying this season so far (which, I have!). No, it was courtesy of something that has been beguiling me for years, but has really reared its ugly head (literally) lately. Hollywood has a wig problem.

When Rosie O’Donnell entered the Great Value brand Henrietta Hudson in a grey shake-and-go, I knew the time had come for us to address this issue among the masses (ie. The Yearning’s modest but hardwon subscriber base). Where are the days when wig making was an art? A character detail so fine, it had the potential to not only outfit a performance, but create one? Aragorn in Lord of the Rings, Sally in Cabaret, even something as simple as Regina George’s golden locks in Mean Girls. These were WIGS. Now the most we can hope for is a hairline that’s glued down.

Rosie isn’t the only victim of this epidemic, she’s simply the latest. I didn’t bring it up in my review of Season 3, but Yellowjackets might be one of the worst offenders, creating a crisis out of chaos. By virtue of the show’s elongated timeline, wigs and hair extensions are necessary, and it’s hard to perfect the continuity of it all, but there are some things that are just unforgivable. In a show that was once hyper-raw, aesthetically speaking, this change feels indicative of its overall tilt towards melodrama. Exhibit A: Ghost Jackie.

Ella Purnell has graciously revisited the role of Jackie multiple times since her character’s tragic demise. Yet every time, she is subjected to diminishing returns, wig-wise. It feels almost disrespectful to the memory of the character! I saw someone on Reddit attempt to explain this away by arguing that the bad wigs are symbolic of the fact that Jackie is no longer a real, breathing human, but a figment of an imperfect memory/imagination. Yeah, okay, maybe I’d buy that if the wigs weren’t equally as horrid elsewhere on the show…maybe (but probably not).

Poor Christina Ricci has been put through three years of varying mousy blonde mops—all different, might I add! This is such an odd detail to me. The adult timeline on Yellowjackets has played out over less than one year’s worth of time. So why the need to change Misty’s wig from bad to worse? Why change it at all if no improvements have been made? These are not rhetorical questions! Please, someone explain this to me!!

Chronic wig enthusiast and famed Australian Nicole Kidman’s wigs have long served as Hollywood fodder. While some of her wigs have been amazing (Practical Magic!)others have been…less successful. Her blond lob on Season 2 of Nine Perfect Strangers recently caught my eye for all the wrong reasons. Not since Julia Roberts in Mother’s Day have I seen a blunt bang this offensive. And the real kicker here is that Nicole’s wigs are a CHOICE. As in, Nicole Kidman famously only works with one hair and makeup artist, Noriko Watanabe, on all of her projects. When asked about the decision to wear this particular wig in Season 2, Kidman says it was “very quick.” No comment.

Some people try to defend this wig crisis by saying that we now shoot with such high definition cameras that the wigs were always this bad, we can just see their faults more clearly now. But we at The Yearning call BS. Nicole Kidman’s wigs also looked bad on film for Babygirl. No amount of film grain can fill in that hairline!

In short, what is going on here? Are all the bad wigs a recession indicator? Another example of an industry cutting costs at the expense of quality? Is AI 3D-printing these wigs? It’s a head scratcher.

We want to know–what are some of the worst wigs you’ve been subjected to recently? Enlighten us in the comments!