Forget “Part of Your World” – her hair is out of this world.
Halle Bailey’s iconic red hair in the live action “Little Mermaid” movie cost a whopping six figures to create.
Oscar-nominated hair department head Camille Friend — who previously worked on “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” — wanted to keep Bailey’s long locs natural and healthy while recreating Princess Ariel’s famous red hair and declared, “I knew a wig just wasn’t going to work.
Halle’s locs are down to her waist, over 24 inches. And putting her in a wig was going to look crazy,” Friend told PvNew.
“I’m not guesstimating, but we probably spent at least $150,000 because we had to redo it and take it out. You couldn’t use it and we’d have to start again. It was a process,” she continued.
Instead, Friend changed the color by taking three shades of custom-colored red hair and wrapping it around the locs, fusing it with Keratin. She then added loose pieces of hair so the hair would seemingly float in underwater scenes.
Despite the high price tag and laborious process, fans on social media took issue with the shade not being quite red enough for Ariel.
“If they spent $500k on hair anyway the least they could’ve done…” one social media critic tweeted with a picture of Bailey with bolder hued hair. “Fr even if they wanted to be natural it could’ve been this instead of ginger-brown,” another commenter agreed.
One person explained, “no offense but it would look really weird in the film, it’s unnatural compared to the scenes she’s in,” to which another joked, “She’s a mermaid with talking fish how tf is it unnatural.”
“Not this clown ass Ronald McDonald shade. Y’all have NO taste,” an indignant fan tweeted in response.
Despite the controversy over her hair color – and the racist messages Halle received about her casting – the “Little Mermaid” made a splash at the box office on opening night, raking in more than $48 million.
