Since the new live-action The Little Mermaid premiered last month, we’ve been on a collective high— seeing the talented Halle Bailey shine as Ariel was unreal. To celebrate her new film, Bailey posted a few behind-the-scenes Instagram clips showing the hard work it took to transform into one of Disney’s most beloved characters. But did you know her hair transformation alone reportedly cost $150,000?
[SEE ALSO: Halle Bailey’s Best Beauty Moments]
Bailey’s hair stylist for The Little Mermaid, Oscar-nominated hair department head Camille Friend, described what it took to get the singer-actress’s hair in character for the film. It was important to Bailey that it stay true to her Black heritage and sport her natural locs. Friend said that since her real hair is 24 inches, a wig wouldn’t have worked. Friend came up with the idea to wrap Bailey’s natural locs. “If we take hair and wrap it around her locs, we don’t have to cut them and we don’t have to color them. We can change her hair color without changing the internal hair structure,” says Friend about the process. The wrap style took 12 to 14 hours each time to execute. The 30-inch hair used for the transformation was three shades of red and fused with Keratin tips. “I’m not guesstimating, but we probably spent at least $150,000 because we had to redo it and take it out. It was a process.”
What do you think of Halle’s hair transformation?
