Why are we so obsessed with celebrity redheads?
X-Files fans, rejoice: Dana Scully (aka Queen of Our Hearts aka Gillian Anderson) will have red hair for the reboot of the show (premiering later this month), just like nature/the fanbase intended.
“There’s a big dialogue about my fucking hair,” she recently told EW. “We shot in downtown Vancouver on our second day during the lunch hour, and there were 9500 people sitting around on their phones taking pictures and videotaping us, and someone tweeted a close-up of my wig. ‘She’s wearing a wig!’ I appreciate their enthusiasm, but goodness me.”
So yes, Dana Scully’s hair will not be her own. (Take a breath, you guys.) Turns out all the dyeing and styling she did for The Fall and Hannibal last year led to severe damage that resulted in her hair actually falling out in a stylist’s hands. And that means that while Anderson was stoked to go red once more, she had to go with a wig. Also, red isn’t what it used to be.
No — this isn’t about the merit of having or not having naturally red hair, or whether you should change it if it’s your natural shade. (Like, if you’re reading this, Jessica Chastain, don’t you dare.) But once upon a time, in the wide world of Hollywood, red hair meant something to certain actresses: success.
Think about it: Julia Roberts went dark red for Pretty Woman (and everybody loved it), Cynthia Nixon did the same for Sex and the City (and everybody remembered her). Emma Stone found success after dyeing her blonde hair red, Christina Hendricks morphed into the redheaded Joan Harris, and Amy Adams has cited her transformation from blonde to red as the reason she landed on directors’ radars. Add to this the legend of Geri Halliwell, Rita Hayworth, Lucille Ball, and Molly Ringwald, and it’s easy to equate red hair with pop culture glory. Just not presently.
If we learned anything from hair colour trends of 2015 (see: the surprise bleach jobs and mermaid hues that defined the landscape), it’s that we’ve begun prioritizing originality above anything else. Over the last year, the likes of Kylie Jenner, Nicki Minaj, Emma Watson, Adele, Miley Cyrus, Jennifer Lawrence, Lena Dunham, Lupita Nyong’o, and Jennifer Hudson (to name a few) experimented with colour and cut unabashedly, making headlines for what seemed like impromptu hair choices and the bravery behind them. And so of course, we started doing the same thing. So, where traditional blondes, browns, and reds once gave celebrities an air of normalcy, these temporary makeovers made them seem even more relatable. After all: we’ve all decided to take a risk and try something new at some point. And by seeing stars doing the same, we’re finally on an equal aesthetic playing field.
Especially since social media has helped us better understand how the entertainment industry works. While aforementioned actresses may have found success as a result of their red locks years ago, the art of transformation has endeared us to actors in a more authentic sense. After all, we know now that actors are supposed to lose themselves in their roles (as evidenced by some of them documenting the process on Instagram or Twitter — like Cara Delevingne or Jared Leto for Suicide Squad), so who we see outside of that realm should reflect only the actor as a person.
So to Gillian Anderson and her wig, I say: welcome. Scully is no less authentic with a wig, because she’s still got Anderson’s abilities to fuel her. Also, because Anderson isn’t Scully, like no actor is the person they play. Red hair is great, but it certainly doesn’t make an actor. Especially since, for the record, we probably still would’ve loved Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman or Christina Hendricks in Mad Men if they’d forfeited red altogether.
