Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1541402
66 • THE ARTISAN WINTER 2026 we've come to recognize. Knowing that Lewis does the bulk of his stunts, I wanted to be prepared for sweat. I flat wrapped Lewis's hair with a defined side part using Sexy blue gel and glued his sideburns away. I then proceeded to wrap his head in mesh and blow dry to get the wrap dry without accidentally picking up any hairs. After cleaning his skin and prepping it with Sweat Stop, I used PPI diluted with alcohol and proceeded to glue down starting in the center and slowly working my way out on both sides. For Valentina de Fontaine, Cynthia Welles aimed to craft a look that reflected the character's status as a high-level power player. The goal was to strike a balance between femininity and strength, creating an appearance that felt both elevated and refined. They ultimately chose a textured lob with movement custom made by Rob Pickens at Pickens' Studio—contemporary, confident, and perfectly aligned with Valentina's commanding presence. At a certain point in the film, each character comes face-to-face with themselves, often culminating in a fight. This required acting doubles, photo doubles, stunt doubles, and even younger versions of many characters, spread across two full-time units. In total, we managed more than 40 wigs for our Thunderbolts*, six for Pugh alone. What truly set this project apart for me was an unexpected request from our visual effects supervisor, Jake Morrison. As a result of the large-scale stunts and need to comply with safety regulations, I (L-R) Sebastian Stan, Julia Lou- is-Dreyfus as Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, Hannah John-Kamen, Florence Pugh and Wyatt Russell. was asked to create what we came to call "helmet wigs." In the spirit of doing as much as possible practically (hats off to both Jakes), these wigs allowed us to capture the natural movement and direction of the hair during stunts, delivering a far more realistic result than if it had been added later with VFX. We proceeded with props and make-up department sourcing the most realistic helmets we could find, stripping the foam out of them, color matching all the pieces to their skin tone and painting them accordingly. Make-up artist Adam Walls, overseen by Department Head Kimberly Jones, custom-built ears to help us create scale and proportion. We then added wefts to the helmets using Super Baldiez, which we found worked better than most industrial glues out there. Finally, we cut hair to the appropriate length and proportion so that all VFX would have to do is shrink it down to size. We did this twice on the show—for Sebastian Stan's Moab motorcycle stunt (performed by Joe Dryden) and for Florence Pugh's base jump of the Merdeka 118 Tower in Kuala Lumpur, the second tallest building in the world (performed by Katie Hansen Lajeunesse). As many of us know, when taking on a project that essentially takes place across a day, continuity can be deceptively challenging, though there were certainly flashbacks and looks that changed within the context of the "Void" (a paranormal dimension within the Multiverse). Thus, our job was to match and maintain length, dirt, shine, and levels of dishevelment as we jumped around from scene to scene, take by take, and across the many months and multiple state lines of both principal production and reshoots. Overall, my experience on Thunderbolts* was rewarding personally and professionally, and these singular characters and their distinct looks will remain with me for the rest of my career. • THE THUNDERBOLTS* HAIR TEAM Anna Quinn – Key Hair Stylist Meghan Heaney – Hair Stylist to Ms. Pugh Erica Adams – Hair Stylist to Mr. Stan Cynthia Welles – Hair Stylist to Ms. Louis-Dreyfus