On the heels of the announcement that Margo’s Got Money Troubles has been renewed for season two on Apple, reporter Kirbie Johnson interviewed hair department head Jaime Leigh McIntosh about the realistic and fantastical wigs showcased in the series for her column The Scenario.
Margo’s Got Money Troubles follows new mom Margo (played by Elle Fanning) and her quest to provide for her child in what many still consider an unorthodox fashion: creating content on OnlyFans. The series was acclaimed by critics, while viewers enjoyed it because it was simply a delight to watch. The show—based on the book by Rufi Thorpe—is also chock-full of fun and fantastical hairstyles, all of which give more context to the characters wearing them. From the mountain of wigs created for Margo’s alter ego, Hungry Ghost, to Rico Nasty’s mullet and glow-in-the-dark braids for her role as KC, there are also wigs hidden in plain sight, like the one worn by Michelle Pfeiffer, who plays Margo’s well-meaning but somewhat superficial mother, Shyanne. As the series wrapped, department head Jaime Leigh McIntosh reflected on her and her team’s hard work, and shared details from behind the scenes.
Hungry Ghost’s Gargantuan Galactic Wig
Hungry Ghost’s wig.
Jaime Leigh McIntosh
Fanning in the hair and makeup chair.
Celeste Gonzalez
Fanning as Hungry Ghost on set.
Celeste Gonzalez
For Hungry Ghost’s fantasy hair, stylist Celeste Gonzalez not only sewed “three and a half wigs” together, but she also added zip-ties to help with weight distribution and structural support, a trick that Gonzalez credits to drag artists. Overall, it took several weeks to create the wig because McIntosh and Gonzalez were working on it as the series was being filmed.
The wigs they used were synthetic and ordered online, which helped keep costs down from a custom-designed wig (for reference, just the extensions and hair color used in Love Story cost over $10,000). “I think they each were maybe around $50 each, so really it was just the expenses, the time of the stylist going into it [that drove up the cost] that you’d need to factor in.” To finish off the look and make it shimmer, the wig was topped with glitter body spray. Gonzalez estimates the wig itself weighed five pounds; Fanning was “a trooper” for wearing it, adds McIntosh
McIntosh said she got inspiration for the shape of the fantasy wig from the Instagram account Chaos Dreamland. “It’s an Instagram page where someone creates AI images, but the hair is always adorable.” The hair lead scrolled through the account with Fanning and landed on a pink hairstyle with bumper bangs and a Barbie-esque ponytail. “I would say [ours] is better than the image that we were inspired by. It’s a little controversial, I suppose, using AI, but I didn’t create the AI image, and I like to draw inspiration from all sorts of places. I don’t want to limit myself on that side of things.”
