There is arguably no Disney villain with a more iconic look than Cruella de Vil. And obviously, it all comes back to her infamous two-tone hairstyle — so how exactly did they make that work, and look real, on Emma Stone in “Cruella”?
Sadly, no, none of it was her real hair. Very few actors would die their hair two different colors in that drastic of a fashion. But then again, Estella’s red hair wasn’t Emma Stone’s natural hair either. According to Nadia Stacey, who headed up hair and makeup on “Cruella,” it was all wig work. And that presented its own challenges.
“From a practical sense, it was actually pretty hard because to get wigs made, black and white wigs made, the white hair is really hard to come by,” Stacey told TheWrap. “It’s really hard to get, so I only actually had two black and white wigs for her, and then I kept kind of changing and swapping them out with all the different styles, and added things to them, and changing them. Yeah, like a do-it-yourself kit, Cruella hair.”
Of course, that kit didn’t come with instructions. And according to Stacey, getting the two colors to work well together was the next big hurdle.
“When you dress hair, as a hairstylist, there’s a symmetry to it. And when you’re dressing a certain style, you can see the overall picture of the style,” Stacey noted. “But the black and white hair kind of throws off your eye. It’s strange. So getting some of those styles right — and the black hair reacts different to the white hair when you’re styling it as well. It does two completely different things.”
And because it does two different things, Stacey really just had to play around with looks and see what would work. The good news is, Emma Stone had full confidence in her. The two worked together previously on “The Favourite,” and Stone is the one who called Stacey to let her know she’d gotten the job. And having that familiarity and confidence made all the difference.
“She absolutely just let me go with it, and just let me come to her with it and trust me to kind of come up with it, so yeah, it was amazing,” Stacey said. “I guess that’s why it gave me confidence in the beginning because I knew that I had been given that trust from Cruella!”
In the end, Cruella’s looks are as memorable as ever, from her head to her toes.
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