For every hair lost on Emma Stone’s head in Bugonia, hair and makeup designer Torsten Witte could have used for Jesse Plemons’ Teddy — who wore over 1,000 micro-extensions.
Hair and makeup designer Torsten Witte didn’t have a lot of time to read Yorgos Lanthimos’ script for Bugonia. But he knew there would for sure be an explosion before he even read it.
“I’ve gotten so many scripts in my work history,” says Witte, “and when you get a script from him, you have 24 hours to read it, and then it expires. And literally, your computer goes *poof* like an explosion because he’s, you know, he’s a creative person. So it’s an explosion, and then it’s gone.”
Once he and Lanthimos started working together though, it was an eruption of creativity, with everyone supported by what they brought to the table.
“I didn’t feel like, oh, I have to follow his lead, his vision, and I have to get into his head because I knew that whatever ideas I had, I could incorporate them. So, yes, there are scripted notes where Emma (Stone) is getting her head shaved. It was pretty clear really early on, and I was also a big supporter.”
Everyone has talked a lot about Emma Stone shaving her head for this role, which happens when Teddy (Jesse Plemons) and Teddy’s cousin Don (Aiden Delbis) kidnap Stone’s CEO character Michelle and shave her head in a van.
But Witte’s proudest accomplishment in the film is his work with Plemons.
“I saw fittings from Jesse from New York when he was shooting Black Mirror, and he has a short crew cut in it. And he came from New York to London, and Yorgos and I have been talking about Aiden, and he has these amazing curls, and this is all his hair. We diffused it and crunched it with mousse. But, like, Jesse with his short crew cut and Aiden — I just wanted to marry those cousins.”
Lanthimos wasn’t a huge advocate for wigs until Witte got a hold of him.
“And I was just like, can I at least show you? And everybody goes, he doesn’t like wigs, he doesn’t like anything not natural. And I’m like, yeah, but this is not right.”
Witte ended up putting together a little package with tape and extensions on Plemons, who was thrilled about it.
“He was like, ‘Oh my God, I think this is Teddy.’ And giving an actor something that really helps him to embody the character or to like his character is huge. And making them comfortable about it and happy about it. And I would have stopped immediately if he would have been like, oh, no, I can’t do this.”
But what did Lanthimos think? That was the real test.
“Yorgos sees these photos, and he’s just like, ‘Oh, this is great. What about even more?’ So when I thought in the beginning, I could just do some tape and extensions in the back and call it a day. In the end, Jesse has over a thousand micro-extensions on his head that took, I want to say, 12 to 14 hours to put in originally. They are tiny, tiny glued-in extensions. And blondes are really hard to hand-select. And it’s like toe head, blonde, ash blonde.”
Plemons wore them during the whole shoot, lasting about three and a half months.
“And then taking them out, you crack open that glue if it’s been in for so long.”
Bugonia is now playing in theaters.
