A version of this story about the hairstyle of “Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” first appeared in the number of limited series/movies from TheWrap Awards Magazine.
One of the great ironies of Jeffrey Dahmer’s existence is that while his apartment reeked of, in his words, “rotten meat” (we all know what that really was), his physical appearance was initially anything but ragged. He even had a sleek blonde hairstyle, which Evan Peters plays as the cannibalistic serial killer in producer Ryan Murphy’s “Dahmer—Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” for Netflix.
“If you look at a lot of photos, there were times where Dahmer had darker hair and times where he had these blonde highlights and you’re trying to figure out where these highlights are coming from.” said hair department head Shay Sanford-Fong. “But a lot of it is in Ryan’s research: when he was in jail, he was able to get out a lot and he turned into this summery blond.”
He worked closely with lead actor Peters on how the look should progress through the episodes, as his story becomes more and more depraved. “Jeffrey’s first attack was in 1978 and then he didn’t attack anyone for nine years,” says Sanford-Fong, “so in the late ’80s, he was still drunk, very handsome. And then after more and more attacks, Evan said, ‘You know, he should be a little dirtier and a little more sloppy. So, you can see within the series, he started off with very clean, fluffy hair and towards the end, he was very greasy and didn’t look washed.”
Sanford-Fong has been part of the Emmy-winning hairstyling teams for the first two seasons of “American Crime Story” about OJ Simpson and Gianni Versace, so she’s well versed in the controversial figures of the ’90s, right down to the violent and egregious stuff. unseemly. . “I feel like I always end up with these blood and guts shows. But I just have to go in knowing that these are not the real victims, we’re just telling the story. It’s not real people who are being hurt right now. This is what I signed up for.”
Sanford-Fong estimates that they used around 30 wigs for the various members of the cast, which included many incredibly iconic women, such as Niecy Nash-Betts, Molly Ringwald, and Penelope Ann Miller, who play Dahmer’s mother, stepmother, and neighbor. , respectively.
“In the ’90s, a lot of African-American women used a lot of straighteners or flat irons on their hair, because a lot of women weren’t wearing their natural texture at the time. So, we end up buying a textured wig for Niecy, and you do little things to her and she’s beautiful, right? So we’re trying to minimize that.”
Adds Sanford-Fong: “Molly was always known as the redhead, right? But she is naturally brunette and she told me that she dyed her hair red in the 80’s to be different. So we probably tried about five or six different shades of red on her because Shari Dahmer had a color that’s not very glamorous on anyone. And then for Penelope, she wears a lot of wigs in a lot of the things that she does, but Ryan didn’t want everyone to wear wigs, so we ended up doing blonde extensions for Joyce Dahmer.”
And what is Shay Sanford-Fong’s failsafe for recreating these ’80s and ’90s looks? Sears Yearbooks and Catalogs.
“I love buying old yearbooks,” says Sanford-Fong, who recently designed Murphy’s film version of “The Prom,” adapted from the stage musical. “I’m from Illinois, so when I go to the Midwest, I have all these yearbooks that show what the looks were like. And the Sears catalogues, nobody has them anymore, but I remember when I was a kid, the most important thing was to go through the old Sears catalogues, to see all the spreads where they made up and did their hair and you saw exactly how you were going to look.”
Read more of the limited series/film edition from TheWrap Awards Magazine here.
