Harry Connick Jr.’s Ridiculous Daddy Warbucks Bald Cap Stole The Show During ‘Annie Live!’

In his 54 years on this earth, crooner-and-sometime-actor Harry Connick Jr. has managed to remain pretty much controversy-free. The New Orleans native began playing a keyboard at the age of three and was performing for the public by age five. He has been happily married to former Victoria’s Secret model Jill Goodacre for nearly 30 years, and the couple has three children. Connick and his squeaky-clean image have made virtually no public missteps throughout his long career, but last night the celebrated singer—and one really awkward-looking bald cap—turned Connick into the most talked about part of NBC’s performance of Annie Live!… and not necessarily in a good way.

Connick, taking on the role of the Daddy Warbucks—a cranky, super-rich dude who begrudgingly provides a temporary home to one lucky little orphan girl, only to slowly be won over by her charms—stayed true to the image we have always known of the fictional industrialist, who is as bald as a coot. But unlike the late, great Albert Finney—who made the hairless thing work in the 1982 feature film adaptation of the long-running play—Connick looked, hmmm… how to put this lightly: downright ridiculous?

Predictably, the ill-fitting bald cap did not go unnoticed on social media.

Daily Beast’s Marlow Stern spoke for many viewers when he called described Connick in a bald cap as “nightmare fuel.”

Fear was a popular response:

Hysterical laughter was, too:

Entertainment Weekly’s digital news director Jillian Sederholm wondered (rightly) why SNL can “put someone in a more convincing bald cap between sketches than this one #AnnieLive had all day to put on Harry Connick Jr. and still didn’t blend.”

One viewer proclaimed that Connick’s bald cap was the “real villain” of Annie!:

Another thought the producers should have just hired Jason Statham and called it a day (which would have made for a bold but interesting choice):

At one point, a seam on the cap appeared to tear—leaving many to worry about whether the plastic headpiece would last the night:

Another singled out the piece of plastic as its own character when congratulating the cast on a job well done:

Even those who praised the production did so despite the unsettling headwear.