Landing on the right hair color for the actor and her character took multiple tries: “We had to choose a level of brunette that wasn’t so dark that it looked shocking,” Bélanger says. The process started with a mood board that kept readers’ expectations for the character in mind. “On the cover of the book, it’s like a red- [or] warm brown,” he says. The team tried that exact hue as well as honey and chestnut browns and ultimately landed “somewhere that sits between dark blonde and light brown.” (At Allure, we’re partial to calling it by the portmanteau, bronde.) After deciding on the shade, they began constructing the wigs. Butterworth created a mold of Reinhart’s head before installing the hair, strand by strand, into the base.
Once you know someone’s wearing a wig, your eyes start looking for it, right? Bélanger says that this posed some real challenges. “We had to think about the hairline, the density—all the details that will make a difference,” he says. “Sometimes it can look wig-y. I think everybody was so concerned from the get-go with that.”
To ensure the wigs looked as realistic as possible on camera, Bélanger and Butterworth added different-colored strands for dimension after seeing it on Reinhart. They also added lighter-weight, fluffy strands throughout the wigs that caught the air easily, so they behaved the way natural hair would outside in heat and humidity—and on a girl watching her (ripped) fake boyfriend play ultimate Frisbee.
Installing Wigs on Reinhart (And Avoiding the Fake Facelift Look)
Hiding Reinhart’s naturally thick hair under the wigs required multiple steps and lots of pulling. “I had to really work it precisely so that it disappeared,” says Bélanger, a process that required him to pull Reinhart’s hair “very, very, very tight,” but “not in a way that would hurt her.”
Courtesy of Frédéric Bélanger
It would, however, sometimes tug on the perimeter of her face. “She would be like, ‘Fred, you’re giving me a facelift. People will think I have a facelift,’” he says, laughing. Ultimately, he loosened it. “She was really mindful of me not doing that.” Once the wig was secured in place with U-shaped pins, Bélanger made sure to blend the part with Kryolan Dermacolor Camouflage Creme, which was color-matched to Reinhart’s scalp.
Hair in a Story About Tired Students and Scientists
Styling the hair for this film could easily have been an afterthought. Olive is a STEM student who spends a ton of time at the library, but Bélanger was meticulous in capturing the character’s lifestyle. “Olive is not the perfect girl,” he says. “She’s a student. Students are overwhelmed. We wanted the hair to look like it could be lived in.”
