In The Scenario, reporter Kirbie Johnson takes readers behind the scenes of the buzziest movies and TV shows to reveal how the best wigs, special effects makeup, and more are created. For this edition, Johnson spoke with Barry Lee Moe, Kari Hill, and Alex Pardoe—the hair team behind Sarah Pidgeon’s look in “Love Story”—to break down the cost of becoming Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy.
When Ryan Murphy Productions, the team behind FX’s much-anticipated limited series Love Story, shared a first-look image of actor Sarah Pidgeon as Carolyn Bessette-Kenedy, it caused a public hair crisis. Bessette-Kennedy is an icon because of her effortless style, but anyone with eyes could see the wig placed on Pidgeon was anything but: It was too blonde, too too flat, too fake. The wig looked nothing like CBK’s buttery ’90 blonde, and it sent the internet into a tailspin.
Murphy would later reveal to Puck News that he posted the photos to get the press off the actors’ backs, but the decision had the opposite effect. The outcry to CBK’s fashion and beauty was fast and fierce, resulting in the production company removing the images from the internet and bringing in a new behind-the-scenes team. “We knew that the wig wasn’t going to sell the energy of this,” says Barry Lee Moe, Pidgeon’s hairstylist on the project, who started on the show after Wiggate, along with costume designer Rudy Mance, colorist Kari Hill, and extension specialist Alex Pardoe. “We came in as ‘Team CBK,’ and had a week to overhaul everything. With Carolyn, she is the epitome of lived-in luxury—easy, effortless, carefree—and it needed to feel like it was her hair.”
Moe, who also transformed Lily James in her turn as Pamela Anderson in Pam & Tommy, said it could have been possible to craft the perfect wig for Pidgeon if they had more time. But given the time constraints, they had to build the character utilizing Pidgeon’s natural hair. “We were looking at a six-month shoot and changing the hair color throughout,” says Moe. “[We wanted] Sarah’s hair to be healthy. It had to look effortless. It had to look real. So how do we get there?”
Actor Sarah Pidgeon at the “I Know What You Did Last Summer” Trailer Launch Event, sitting in a dirfector’s chair and holding a mic.Getty Images
Kurt Iswarienko for FX
Creating Two Versions of Historic Color
The trio had their work cut out for them. Pidgeon came in with a brunette bob, which, given the length of her natural hair, could be detected if left to inexperienced stylists. The passage of time also posed a challenge, as the bleach and dye used to create Bessette-Kennedy’s sunny blonde in the ’90s have come a long way. Everything from how Moe styled the hair and the color technique Hill used, to the amount of hair used in each bonded extension Pardoe applied, had to be purposeful and exact.