What Do You Do With Your Hair for TV/Film Work?

“A Performer’s World” Transcript: Episode 6 © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Episode 6: “What Do You Do With Your Hair For TV/Film Work?”

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

About Afro Archives

Afro Archives explores heritage and identity within UK society. It investigates images of black women through promotion of self-expression and confidence to be who we naturally are. This project seeks to promote and celebrate afro hair by having inclusive discussions about hair and hair-related experiences with people of all ages, backgrounds, cultures and creeds.

“A Performer’s World”

“A Performer’s World” showcases with comparison the experience of women with afro-textured hair through the eyes of the acting industry, where what we look like, matters. By asking to a diverse group of actors questions like: “Would You Shave Off All Your Hair for a Film?” and “Your Hair Represents Who You Are”, True or False?” we uniquely examine the responsibility of media, and curators of culture, as well as how we see ourselves and how society sees and portrays us.

“A Performer’s World” could not have been made without the time, generosity, and collaboration of the featured artists, and co-creatives. Thank you to all involved.

Big Thanks to our host filming location, The Black Cultural Archives, in Brixton.

Creatives: Africa Fashion (Afro Archives Blog Host), Robbie Spotswood (Photography), Chris Lovell (DOP), Imogen Mackay Dall (on-location Director), Loreen Brown (Photography), Livvy BakerMendoza (Music) Ayesha Casely-Hayford (Editor, Producer).

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Main Creative Team

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Creator & Producer Ayesha Casely-Hayford is an actress, award-winning voice artist and employment lawyer of Ghanian descent, born in London and raised in Kent. With her roots in law, specialising in employment law and discrimination, and as former chair of the board of trustees for The Act For Change Project, a charity campaigning for greater diversity in the arts, she is uniquely positioned to see the social, performative and legal issues facing black women in the UK today.

Photo credit: Helen Murray Photography

Director Imogen Mackay Dall is a Sydney-born writer, director and ‘ginger ninja’ raised in Tokyo, Washington D.C. and London. She wrote and directed the award-winning conservation documentar y Mystery of the Gnaraloo Turtles (2017) and is writing features for Pinewood Studios and Same Name productions. Keen to advance social issues in her work, Imogen is also writing Creative Breakdown Insurance, a book to help artists and freelancers manage their mental health.

Photo credit: Helen Murray Photography

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Featuring in this Episode and With Thanks To

Nicky Goldie

Alice Fofana

Verona Rose

Holly McFarlane

Ayesha Casely-Hayford

India Ria Amarteifio

Simone McIntyre

Ketorah Williams

Š 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

This is a verbatim transcript of our interviews

“What Do You Do With Your Hair For TV/Film Work?”

Part 1 Featuring actors Alice Fofana and Verona Rose with Nicky Goldie VERONA: My hair and continuity. That’s an issue! We had that problem with you on set ALICE: Ok. Do you not remember?

Yes. Just don’t like, throw it in my face.

Sorry!

Basically, what we did…was that with the big afro?

Yeah What we did, was I had to wear a big wig. It was part wig, part afro - my own hair. At the front it was my hair, so basically we were shooting a scene, This is something that I’m filming, and editing and directing and she’s staring in it.

Oh yes! Main actor!

And she’s absolutely amazing in it. So basically we were filming, we’d booked out a hotel of filming.

Oh, no, no, no, no. She forgot the wig.

I forgot the wig [laugh] © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

This wig, it’s like out here [signals massive afro] It’s like Diana Ross. She’s like “oh Alice, just use your own hair” [laughing].

Continuity! The thing is, I’d just paid for the cab to get here, paid for a cab all the way from North London But no one told her to leave the wig Plus the hotel and everything, so I ended up having to get the cab driver - how annoying was that?! - So what I had to do was get the cab driver, my partner had to put the wig in a car, In a cab right, so you put the wig in a cab and then the cab driver was like “no no no you’re gonna have to pay more because I’m gonna have to get out the car and give you the wig [laughing] so I had to go out, find this cab man, and then I got locked out of this hotel [laughing] do you remember?! And it was a bedroom scene we were doing so you So that’s why she thought I didn’t need the wig because it was a bedroom scene, she was like, just act like your hair’s shrunk! [laughing]. She was like just cane row it back But even if you cane rowed it back you can still tell.

So then I had this wrap, I don’t know why I had a head wrap in my bag, with all the camera men, I had this head wrap in my bag and I was like can you just try and put this - it was just like a big long black satin piece of cloth, I was like can you wrap that around your head, do you remember that? And that other actor The other actor was in stitches [laughing] Sorry, forgive me! See I was just trying to work, this is continuity, I was like, “we just need to get this done! Ok, we have got to get this done tonight”. It was a night shoot, we’d been there for hours, I’d been waiting there for hours for you to get there. She was late I was a bit late And then the other actor was late as well It didn’t work I don’t know what I looked like It was just this black bandana and all you could see were these little bits of my hair sticking.

I was like, this isn’t gonna work, we need the wig.

Last year I was shooting a film in Bristol and with other people or other casts, if the black girl has straight hair, it’s just straight, and there’s no problem with that.

But with afro hair it changes half-way through unfortunately and there’s nothing you can do about that and she was like “oh what are we going to do?” and I was like “if anyone’s got a blow-dryer we can sort it out?!?

I just felt so sorry for the girl! [laughing] the girl didn’t know what to do, she was like ‘er, we’re going to have to go and buy one” Cause it was really short! [ laughing] © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Ah, did she go and buy one?!

She had to go and buy one!

NICKY: I did this one show in the time when I had my mohican and nobody said anything which really surprises me, because the show was with a company called “age exchange” who do stuff like, reminiscence theatre with old people.

And the show that we did was called “can we afford the doctor” which was about the rise of the National Health Service and it was actually filmed by Channel Four, so I was actually able to see myself on screen, you know in the days before I had done any bloody television whatsoever.

And I thought “Oh my God!” there’s this woman who’s meant to be a mother and various parts in the 1940’s and 50s with a punky hairstyle and it didn’t seem to matter because it was stuff in community centres and old people’s homes and nobody ever commented on it actually And I didn’t even think it was a problem at the time, though when I look at it now I think “oh my God! You look such a gorgon!” Honestly.

Can I just, stop for one moment. There’s a fluff. There actually is. It’s beautiful. This is what makes our hair. There’s always a white bit of fluff.

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Part 2 Featuring actors Ketorah Williams and Simone McIntyre with Holly McFarlane SIMONE: When you start a shoot, you might have just had your hair straightened, for example, So your roots look bone straight and it looks really fresh, But then you might have an issue cause say you’re shooting a scene that takes place on the same day but say you’re shooting it a week or so later, or something, The roots aren’t going to look as fresh or as straight, and so erm, you’d be improvising with straighteners and things, It’s a bit irritating.

KETORAH: It can be quite damaging for your hair as well So when you’ve got say a centimetre, or two centimetres of afro hair and the rest of your hair is relaxed and you’re there with the straighteners trying to press just the roots Trying to get the relaxed bit, to try to get the same texture.

It gets very tricky I think.

You do end up really damaging your hair and that’s when it starts to break up a bit.

HOLLY: It’s interesting I suppose because I do think that me as a person, my hair does very much represent me, who I am as a person, massively, But also in a way I think when it’s changed, particularly, a few months ago I did a role where I wore, like a Uma Thurman Pulp Fiction wig, short black wig, bobbed, and that was brilliant, It was such escapism, It felt so good and I think partly, because my hair is so bound up in the way I am actually if my hair is slightly different, it’s exiting and it helps to get in to character Because any slight change, even if someone puts it up in a slightly different way that I would never have it in, So I guess it’s different if you’re working on screen and you have someone doing your hair rather than the theatre that I’ve done anyway, you do your own.

So there’s something nice about having your hair done and having it be slightly different, even if they just part it in a slightly different way. © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

And it’s always interesting working with make-up artists and seeing what they decide to do with your hair because it’s often so different I think from the way you have it, or the way you’re used to having it and the way you feel comfortable doing it, I think someone else would have a completely different take.

So I think as an actress I find it great. I mean obviously there have been moments where I’ve been like “my hair looks really rubbish” but again, I’m just like “ok, my character has rubbish hair” I’ve just got to get on board with that.

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Part 3 Featuring actors Ayesha Casely-Hayford, India Ria Amarteifio with Verona Rose INDIA: Continuity, depending on different hairstyles is really difficult, because as I said when I had these massive thick curls, they curled my hair with a curling iron, They thought that just by putting soft clips in would keep it back.

Say, we were doing a take and all my curls are out, because I didn’t have it in a hairband, it was just in a loose fitting band, at the top.

They thought if they just put a pin in it, it would stay.

And it would fall, but that’s not my problem, I mean I didn’t touch it, it just comes out of the curls, because that’s what afro hair does, it comes out, it doesn’t stay.

So that was a bit of a nightmare AYESHA: I can imagine. For me, it was because our hair is changing - do you have it every morning you wake up, is your hair quite different?

It depends what I’ve done the night before.

Because, sometimes if I’ve had it up all day and I haven’t taken it down at all then I’ll comb it twice before I go to bed and then when I wake up, it will be almost back to normal.

So it depends.

Ok that’s good.

Yeah, my hair’s a bit different, I would need to braid it, nothing complicated, I would do two little braids.

It’s like an extra responsibility of that hair maintenance, because our hair is that little bit more changeable.

A little bit more of its own life. It got to a point, I got really upset, I was like “is it just that black women are not meant to do films?” [laugh] our hair’s [excluding] us from this industry in a way?

Does that sound really silly?

It does a little bit [laughs] considering how much people have done work wise!

But have they had their own hair?!

A lot of the time, it’s wigs to be honest. Because it’s easier.

I mean I’ve never worn wig before © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

No me neither I mean at halloween and stuff, but I mean like not properly, I just think it’s probably easier just to whack it up or to straighten it or put it in a style where it will just stay.

Where as to actually step over the boundary and do something else, cause every time I do TV work and stuff, they’re always like “oh I’d love to do something different to your hair” and There’s no point right - No, well they say “I’d love to do something different to your hair” but yet it’s still back to how I normally have it.

So like I think they should just be taking a risk. Do you know what, also, they always obsess over little bits of hair, but that’s what would happen normally Yeah In real life, I mean, unless it was something where your hair had to be perfect but if you’re just walking down the street, I’m saying not if half your hair’s out, but I mean like if just a little bit is out there, It’s normal and they take it out.

That’s normal, that’s what afro hair is like It’s like a stylistic thing Yeah VERONA: I have to say for a very long time I did think that in order to get roles, I needed to have weave, I needed to have straight hair, I needed to look as “European” - if that’s possible - I needed to look as European as possible.

And that was just ridiculous because when I wear my natural hair or my braids or whatever, that’s when I get more roles.

I went to a casting director workshop and they said to me, I just mentioned about my hair and other things, I said when I go to a casting I think about this, and they said to me “That’s baggage, that’s baggage. If you’re going in that casting room and before you go in, you’re thinking about this and you’re thinking about that” And I need to be in the second circle.

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

I’m going in, in the wrong frame of mind and there’s these different circles you should be in, there’s the first circle and I would be going in, in the first circle because I’m so aware of myself and what I’m doing as opposed to being in the second circle and being there, in the now.

And I didn’t book many jobs then and I book a lot more jobs now because I feel a lot more comfortable with my hair and with who I am and my identity, Because I’m from a small town I feel like erm, and where I grew up I knew no other black people apart from my family, I do feel like, I had an image to live up to in terms of my hair, I did feel the need to just stand out. I did.

I really did.

I knew I stood out anyway, but I felt like I needed to stand out even more. I did end up flattening my hair and having weave but for me, if I’m honest, I think that was more because I looked up to people like Left Eye [laughs] and other black women in the arts that had straight hair.

One person that I love, and still love to this day and if I was a lesbian would marry but not for sexual reasons, just because I think she’s amazing, Is Lauryn Hill, [she] is beautiful, a beautiful person, and one thing I love about her is she’s always had her natural hair. I feel like if you can [sic] be a performer and just be happy for who you are, I think that’s amazing. I really do think that’s amazing.

I’ll call this part “my truth”.

© 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford