Inside the Intricate Hairstyles of Wakanda Forever, From Floating Wigs to Head

May 05, 2023

By Esther Zuckerman

When Camille Friend, the hair department head on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, watched an early camera test involving the sea-dwelling people known as the Talokanil, she immediately knew she had a problem. As soon as the actors went underwater a big white cloud developed around their heads—residue from the product used to keep their hair in place. The executive producer, Nate Moore, turned to Friend and said, "So, Camille, what are you going to do about that?"

Friend went to work, developing a solution she calls a "glue hairspray" consisting of spirit gum diluted with alcohol that she could spray on the hair pieces, which she then would literally sew into place. "Listen, my favorite store for hair is Home Depot," she explains in an interview with Vanity Fair.

As a hairdresser on a film like Wakanda Forever, Friend's job is stylist, yes, but it's also chemist and architect. Now, Friend is nominated for a makeup and hairstyling Oscar along with makeup department head Joel Harlow, marking her first Academy Award nomination in a career that has included work with Quentin Tarantino, Hunger Games sequels, and the first Black Panther film.

Black Panther was nominated for seven Oscars in 2019, but not for makeup and hairstyling; Friend credits her recognition now in part to a shift in the perception of Black hair that Black Panther helped initiate. "I think people have a different understanding of Black hair texture and Black culture now," she says. In 2021, Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson became the first Black women to win Oscars in the makeup and hairstyling category for Ma Rainey's Black Bottom. Watching their triumph and then her friend Carla Farmer nominated with the team from Coming 2 America the following year, Friend thought, "Maybe it could happen to me."

Preparing to return to the world of Black Panther came with grief, however. Before filming, Friend traveled with director Ryan Coogler, other department heads, and cast members to the gravesite of star Chadwick Boseman, who died after a battle with cancer in 2020. The ceremony, which featured drummers, united the artists. "It helped us move on past the mourning and get down to work," she says.

But sorrow was also crucial to developing some of the looks for the characters who would be suffering the loss of Boseman's character, T’Challa. Following real-life West African traditions where mourners shave their heads, Friend envisioned that Shuri (Letitia Wright) and Ramonda's (Angela Bassett) hair would still be in the process of growing out when the story catches up with them a year later.

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For Lupita Nyong’o's Nakia she went a different direction. Nakia, who didn't return to Wakanda for the funeral, now lives in Haiti and wears locs colored a shade that Nyong’o and Friend have deemed "Nakia red." "She had left her life," Friend says. "So, I want to leave her short hair behind." (Nyong’o recently posted a video to Instagram of the process of putting on her Nakia wig, which thrilled Friend. "All you actors, post for your hair and makeup artists," she adds. "We really appreciate it.")

Friend reached out to the company NappStar to provide the locs for the wig she would build and dye herself. "It's a company that's owned by two Black sisters," Friend says. "I’ve been looking at them for a long time and I was like today's the day I’m going to call them and I’m going to change their lives."

Even for the Dora Milaje, the female warriors who are proudly bald, Friend's work is intricate. Shaving the actors’ heads is a multistep process that involves applying witch hazel, ingrown-hair solution, and a scalp treatment to prevent bumps. And Friend works to create a "safe space" when the shaving occurs. "We have very comforting music," she says. "I hold hands. We pray. It's a lot. I don't care that you’re going to be in a movie; it's a lot to cut your hair off." Friend also offers up wigs to the Dora performers if they want to wear something out on the weekends.

Wakanda and Talokan are both fictional places with fictional cultures, but Friend wanted to root the hair in real traditions. In the case of the characters from Talokan, which is based on Mesoamerican civilizations, she worked with Professor Gerardo Aldana, who was a consultant on the film.

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Each Talokanil hairpiece was colored to get the correct tint Friend wanted, and she even learned how to be a jewelry maker to craft adornments. She had to start from scratch. "I said on the first [film], there's no way to call 1-800-WAKANDA," Friend says. "Well, there's no way to call 1-800-TALOKAN. Everything has to be created." Including a special spray to make sure each hair stays in place.

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