When “The Piano Lesson’s” hair designer Andrea Mona Bowman was first told she was tasked to create a wig for singer Erykah Badu, she was elated.
She immediately began designing what would be fitting for the Queen of Soul’s cameo as Lucille, the rousing bandleader at a jazz club, in Malcolm Washington’s film adaptation of August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play.
“I was so excited because she’s an icon to me,” Bowman, the head of the hair department, tells Variety. “I just love everything about her style.”
But there was a slight problem.
Due to Badu’s touring schedule, she was available for only one day to shoot.
There would be no time for a prior hair fitting, which meant Bowman had to have several wigs ready in hopes that one would work.
“I had to prepare all these wigs but, by her having a red-yellow undertone, I didn’t know the level of the natural color of the wigs — if it had too much dark pigment or if it was too red,” Bowman explains. “So I set out a spread of wigs.”
On the day of Badu’s arrival, Bowman quickly began fitting the wigs she had prepared, but nothing stood out. “We were able to fit some, but I didn’t like how the color looked on her skin. Being in a jazz joint, the lighting plays a little bit different. So when she got in the light in the trailer, it didn’t read. It just made her look drabby. It was too dark. Everything just brought her down.”
Badu suggested her own wigs be used, but Bowman refused. She sent Badu to have her makeup done first, telling her the wig will be ready when she returned.
Determined, Bowman immediately drove to the closest beauty supply store. “I don’t know where it’s at, but I’m going to find this wig. We have to make sure Miss Badu is taken care of,” she says.
Fortunately, there was a store five minutes away from the shoot. Bowman rushed in, going through each aisle. Just when she was about to give up, she found it.
“It was the wig,” says Bowman. “It had a yellow-goldish undertone with a red undertone in the natural color and the kinky, curly hair that I needed for the texture for that period. It literally was the last wig in the store. I was about to have a breakdown. I was like, ‘Lord, what am I going to do? She didn’t like the other wigs, so I gotta have something.’ My spirit said, ‘Look in that corner’ — and there it was.”
She rushed back to set to style it, which, surprisingly, only took about 15 minutes. One of her key hairstylists told Bowman that she looked like she had multiple hands. Bowman says, “My hands were moving like an octopus. I was curling, curling, curling and then set.” When Badu returned, Bowman began the wig placement, styling it around the singer’s face shape, positioning it symmetrically, with each curl perfectly in place.
In record time, the wig was found, styled and placed all within 90 minutes. Badu was so impressed with her hair that she wanted to keep the wig for herself, offering to purchase it, telling Bowman, “Girl, I doubted you, but this is the bomb. I need this wig. I look amazing.”
After all the stress and panicking, Bowman was proud of the end result for Badu’s hairpiece. “I had to go to those lengths to make sure the wig fit her in a way that she felt confident. It gave a trueness and an authentic look of that time period. We were all happy.”