Season 4 of Stranger Things is all about change. There’s a fresh start in a different state for both the Byers family and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). There’s the presence of a brand-new (deeply disturbing) undead wizard named Vecna, whose primary goal is to inflict unimaginable horror on the Hawkins squad (which, yes, includes several new cast members). There’s even a spooky new house, complete with an ominous grandfather clock. In the face of all that newness, there’s one very familiar thing that hasn’t been seen since Season 1: Eleven’s shaved head.
The reappearance of Eleven’s new-old look isn’t exactly as heartwarming as seeing a long-lost friend — let’s just say her head is shaved against her will by people from her past we hoped she’d never have to encounter again. Welcome or not, the buzz cut is an extraordinary achievement by Stranger Things hairstylist Sarah Hindsgaul and her team, who created Eleven’s shorn locks via a painstakingly designed wig. What’s more: The unforgivingly close-cropped wig had to fit over Brown’s own long hair.
When we first see Eleven this time around, she’s got long hair and bangs, a reflection of where she starts off at the beginning of the season. “Every year, we have Eleven mimic her surroundings,” Hindsgaul tells Tudum. “She and Joyce have the same hairdo, since they’re all living together.”
But when circumstances change for Eleven, so does her hair. Hindsgaul was determined to make it happen, even though show creators Matt and Ross Duffer were already thinking about other hairstyles for Eleven to wear if the buzz cut didn’t work. Typically, dramatic wig transformations take hours to fit and often require a special effects team to look convincing. Hindsgaul and the production schedule didn’t have that kind of time; Brown was working limited hours due to her age, and the Duffer brothers told the hair team they had to move quickly when it came time to shoot — and figure out a way to hide Brown’s armpit-length hair.
“I begged and begged and begged,” Hindsgaul says. “In the end, [the Duffer brothers] were like, ‘OK, we’ll let you try with the wig if you can do it in 30 minutes, but when we do a screen test, if we can see that it’s a wig, we’re not going to let you do it. It’s not worth it if it looks funny — we’d rather just have her in a ponytail.’ ”
Under pressure — and convinced Eleven’s return to her former nightmare wouldn’t be the same without her shaved head — Hindsgaul says she felt even more resolved to get it done. She spent countless days and nights working on the wig with her team trying to figure it out.
“I was very scared about going short enough,” Hindsgaul says. “I kept on keeping it a little bit longer, just so we had a little bit of hiding space for the layers around her ears and on her nape. You could see the lace [of the wig] because the hair is so short.”
Then came the moment of truth. Hindsgaul says when the day of the screen test arrived, she had nothing but faith it would work and was exceedingly proud of what it took to get there. The Duffer brothers, on the other hand, still had to be convinced.
“I think they were so against it, and so nervous,” Hindsgaul laughs. “They were very scared when they came to the set and were ready to say no.” When they saw the wig with their own eyes, they were impressed enough to put it on camera. “They were like, ‘OK, we’ll do a real camera test. It actually looks pretty decent. It might work.’ ”
Getting it on Brown was the final challenge.
“There was a lot of hair that had to be flattened underneath — nobody wanted her to look like she had a cocoon head,” Hindsgaul says. “It was so tricky to get it right on her tiny little head. The trickiest part was getting the wrap around her tight enough that her hair completely melts away.”
In the end, the wig-that-almost-wasn’t proved itself convincing, and the final results are as chilling and effective as if Eleven’s hair had actually been shorn. In other words, one of the show’s most memorable looks came back for another stressful spin through the Upside Down, and the rest is hairstory.
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