In 1947, Nurse Ratched arrives at Lucia State Hospital a psychiatric facility at the forefront of medical and technological advancement. The posh interior features immaculate designs; where the floors always gleam, and Ratched’s fellow nurses greet you donning a freshly-pressed uniform, a bright-red lip, and coifed hair.
In an interview with Awards Daily, hair department head Chris Clark, discusses the various sculpted updos, custom wigs, and retro hair designs he crafted for the show.
Awards Daily: Did you use One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest [1975] as inspiration for your Ratched hair designs?
Chris Clark: Well, the show starts in 1947, so we were several decades before Cuckoo’s Nest. We sort of ignored it at this point. We wanted to build out the backstories for Nurse Ratched and the world that she lives in and the mental hospital that she was working in, so we didn’t have a lot of influence from the film.
AD: In terms of the hairstyling, how would you describe the hospital and the world that Nurse Ratched inhabits?
CC: I think we start with kind of an aspirational, wealthy clinic, and everyone shows up fairly polished. In 1943 women didn’t go anywhere without their hats; their hair was done, the men’s hair was done. It has this very structured shape about it. That’s where we started so we would have a place to go when characters got into unfortunate situations throughout the series.
My process with Ryan generally is about character. He’ll give me ideas. Then we’ll talk about hair colors. We’ll talk about shapes. We’ll talk about what should be a wig and what should be the actor’s own hair. And then, after mountains and mountains and mountains of research, I start creating lookbooks for each character and for Ryan. We’ll talk about the nuances of color. For Cynthia Nixon, I wanted her to be very warm-toned, and we also didn’t want to repeat colors that she had worn in the past and in other projects. We tried to find something that worked for her character without repeating or referencing anything we’ve seen from Cynthia before.
AD: How did you approach the differences in hairstyles inside the hospital vs. what we saw on the outside? How did you go about making those two worlds distinct?
CC: The hospital is a bizarre, polished place. Those floors were glowing all the time. When we were able to stretch outside of the hospital, it got much more naturalistic. We needed a juxtaposition between the people who walked in and were like, ‘Whoa, where are we?’ Everyone’s hair outside of the hospital is a little more realistic; inside the hospital, everything was tough, more polished.
AD: What were some of your other favorite looks to construct?
CC: I loved the opera singer and her creepy, blonde up-do. I loved the character, Charlotte, where we could destroy her hair from scene to scene as she was shifting through different personas. Jon Jon Briones, Dr. Hanover, no one knew that was a wig, which I was pretty psyched about. Each character had their own vibe and their own signature. I loved Betsy Bucket’s bangs, and that was entirely Judy Davis’ idea; she wanted those bangs.
We had this conversation with Judy— this character is not a lady who is going to set her hair; she’s not going to spend any more time with it than just trying to get it out of the way. It was nice to have that juxtaposition between Sarah’s very, very sculptural hair and Judy’s bangs. It created a world for them to be antagonistic to each other.
AD: I spoke with Eryn [Krueger] Mekash about the makeup looks for Ratched, and one word that came up repeatedly for her was ‘control,’ and trying to create a look of a very controlled environment with the makeup choices. Was the same thing true for the hairstyling?
CC: I think we start there. I think the audience is introduced to those characters under a very controlled circumstance. And then, as we get into each individual storyline, things start to break, and things begin to crack apart. And we see the torture scenes with the medical staff and the treatments. I wanted things to break apart, individually, character by character.
AD: You mentioned that you wanted Cynthia Nixon to look different than we’d ever seen her before. That’s certainly true of Sharon Stone as well. What was the idea and the inspiration behind the hairstyling for her character?
CC: I’ll tell you the truth I was away for two weeks getting married in Austin when Sharon Stone started working. My second in command was in charge of all things Sharon. I was kept in the loop with those conversations with her. But Sharon was a hairdresser at one point, and she really drove that design. At one point, the hair was either all black or it was white. It was all a collaboration with Sharon and the costume designers because we had to plan hairstyles around the hat. And around the monkey. The monkey really liked to touch that wig. So there was a lot of maintenance on her throughout the day. But that design was really driven by Sharon. I have to give her credit for that.
AD: You describe yourself as a wig designer. What is the difference between hairstyling on a wig versus on someone’s head?
CC: They’re pretty similar. The advantage with wigs is that I can have it one hundred percent ready to be applied when the actor gets out of the makeup chair. And we’re not hurting the hair. It allows me to really have a process with the wig where I can see, ‘Oh, I want it to fall this way’ Or, ‘I want it to do this.’ It lets me explore without the time constraints of the actor’s time, which I enjoy a lot. I come from the theater, so I’m used to mountains and mountains of wigs for my shows. So, it just a natural place for me to work.
AD: What’s your secret for making sure the audience can’t tell the difference between a wig and the actors’ own hair
CC: It’s all custom, tailored, hand-made wigs. And custom-made to the actors’ head shape and to their hairline. The hairlines are put in individually, one hair at a time. And then we add a little more hair in the back. That gives us a lot of advantage when we’re popping the wigs on their heads for the first time and we can really tailor the look, and the shapes, to that individual actor, and their character’s desires.
AD: Which look would you say was the most intricate or difficult to design?
CC: I would say Sarah’s character. I think Michelle [Ceglia] did a phenomenal job taking care of Sarah and that very hyper-controlled, very intensely styled sculpture. And the few moments where she let it down were a kind of character-driven seduction. For Sarah, I believe we used three copies of that wig. It was never the same day-to-day because there was so much reset that had to be done.
Charlie Carver took the longest to get ready because he had to go through prosthetics for several hours to get that burn put on. And he had to maintain a very specific 1940s, military-inspired cut. He had to get a haircut once a week. And the barber had to come in three to four hours prior to crew and get him ready so that he could go into makeup. And then he would come back for a final polish of his hair. That was extraordinarily time-consuming for them.
For me, I’d come in 45 minutes before the actors so I can do all of my work. We’d prep their hair for about 15 minutes, then they go to makeup, and then they come back to us, and we pop the wig on and any of the hats that we need for that scene.
And Eryn and I have worked together so many times that we have a shorthand with each other, we know how we work, we know what will happen in each little world—it’s really a luxury to have that sense of community.
AD: How does Ratched compare to other Ryan Murphy projects you’ve worked on in the past?
CC: I think if anything, this one’s closer to a Feud: Bette and Joan, where we were doing very specific period stuff, but then it had a little bit of O.J. and Versace in it as well, because it was pretty bloody, there was a lot of effects. This one was kind of a mashup of different ideas for me. I don’t do the gory shows. I’m always on the other shows—O.J., Versace, Feud. So, it’s always fun for me when things get a little gory and there are special effects, that’s always fun to explore. And to get to see how it all works out.
AD: Lastly, this being Awards Daily, I have to ask about your Emmy wins. What’s your favorite Emmy memory? Do you have a standout award show moment?
CC: I’ll tell you. I was nominated for [2014’s] The Normal Heart before I was nominated for The People v. O.J. Simpson a couple of years later. So, my husband is sitting to my left on the aisle when they announced that we won, and he popped straight up, and I was just stunned. I didn’t know what he was doing. I didn’t hear the theme of the show. I had gone totally inside myself. And he was like, ‘Get up there, get up there!’ And I clicked back into reality. [Laughs]. It’s such a wild thing to have your peers honor you that way.
Season one of Ratched is streaming now on Netflix.
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