From the first moment it appeared on screen, Steve Harrington‘s luscious mane has been the stuff of legends and one of the reasons Stranger Things continues to be a pop culture juggernaut. Part of the show’s appeal has been its exacting attention to detail in recreating the look and feel of a small town in the ’80s right down to the wood-paneled walls and, of course, the massive hair.
With four seasons under her belt as the head of Stranger Things hair department, Sarah Hindsgaul has managed a small army of wigs, and now, she’s spilling her secrets for making the Netflix show look like it was plucked directly out of the Reagan years. In a new interview with Mashable, Hindsgaul walks through her process, which includes an extensive collection of wigs that still has to be shared with actors because, again, there’s a whole lot of ’80s hair to get on-screen.
However, when it comes to Steve, actor Joe Keery is one of the few actors who’s not sporting a rug, but he is subjected to a feline grooming trick to unlock his righteous look:
“We put products in [his hair] and then you squeeze like a cat.” Hindsgaul demonstrated by kneading her hand just like a cat paw. “I get all the texture into it and dry it hard into his hair so we get that wave texture. Otherwise, it gets really straight.”
“The cat paw” became a shorthand term on set. Hindsgaul said that if someone other than her was working on Keery’s hair, she’d just ask them to do “the cat paw” and they’d understand. So the secret to Steve’s glorious hair isn’t just four puffs of the Farrah Fawcett spray, as Steve tells Dustin in Season 2. It’s also cats.
On top of sharing the secret to Steve’s legendary hair, Hindsgaul also revealed that while Keery is one of the few actors who doesn’t wear a wig, he does have extensions in the back. Our apologies if your whole world seems like a lie right now.
(Via Mashable)