Halle Bailey’s Hair in ‘The Little Mermaid’ Is Worth Over $150,000

If anyone knows how to find the perfect shade of red for dark hair, Camille is a friend. The head of the Oscar-nominated hair department, to their credit, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” tried adding color to Lupita Nyong’o’s hair, and now she’s doing it again. This time, it was for Halle Bailey in Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid.” But doing so was not cheap.

Her challenge was to take Disney’s most famous red-headed princess, Ariel, and create a Bailey look that worked. On top of that, keeping Bailey’s natural hair was an important requirement for her to meet.

Bailey, who sports long locs, wanted to stay true to her black heritage. And Keeping Them Without Wigs heralds an important moment for representation and Bailey’s identity, as the film features Disney’s first black Ariel (and the first black princess in a live-action film).

talk with various, Her friend says she started with Bailey’s roots. “I went to meet Hale’s family. Her mother is spiritual and they are a kind family. “I began to understand who she was and why it was important to preserve the natural hair element,” she added.

Disney and director Rob Marshall had no problem.

After her friend realized this, she started the creative process. “I look at the shape of the face, the color of the skin and the color of the eyes. And what color the dress is going to be.”

The friend was determined not to cut any of Bailey’s natural hair or use a wig. “I knew the wig wouldn’t work,” she says.

A friend’s dilemma was creating a red-haired princess look without cutting Bailey’s locks. The wrapping process takes 12 to 14 hours. Bailey says she was a “trooper,” and a friend got the process down to a reasonable amount of time. She says, “Halle’s locks are up to her waist, over 24 inches. And putting her in a wig looks crazy.

She returned to play with red. “If we take her hair and wrap it around her, we don’t have to cut it and we don’t have to dye it. We can change her color without changing her inner hairstyle. Her build and her hair are her,” a friend said of her thought process.

The 30-inch long hair was custom colored and integrated with keratin tips. “It’s three shades of red,” says Freund, who got his hair done at Extension Plus in Chatsworth. “I’m not guessing, but we spent at least $150,000 because we had to spend it again. They can’t use it and we have to start over. It was a process.”

After knowing that, she has to deal with the element of water. “Locs don’t float,” says a friend. And Ariel’s hair needed to “dance” when he was in the water. Her solution? Adding soft hair pieces.

As Ariel lost her voice and transitioned into a human, her friend changed her hair slightly to show Ariel’s vulnerability. “You don’t know what it’s like to be human.”

The hair pieces were straight with a slight sea wave. A friend says she uses an oval-shaped GHD iron. I still wanted to feel like an ocean wave.

As for Ariel’s hair flip when she comes out of the water, the friend isn’t prepared for that – Covid and scheduling conflicts prevented her from completing the film. “Tiffany Williams jumps in there and takes the movie all the way through… This is what I know, Hale flipped his hair, and it was aided by CGI.”