What Do You Love About Your Hair and Being An Actor? by Ayesha Casely-Hayford

Episode 3: “What Do You Love About Your Hair and Being An Actor?”

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).

Main Creative Team 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

Featuring in this Episode and With Thanks To

Jasmeen James

Alice Fofana

Verona Rose

Nicky Goldie

Ayesha Casely-Hayford

India Ria Amarteifio

Anni Domingo

Simone McIntyre

Ketorah Williams

ÂŠ 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

This is a verbatim transcript of our interviews

“What Do You Love About Your Hair and Being An Actor?” Part 1 Featuring actors Alice Fofana and Verona Rose with Jasmeen James ALICE: What do I love about my hair and being an actor… That it’s mine! VERONA: I got hair It separates me from other black actresses because you see a lot of them with straight hair and it’s quite nice to have my own hair out, so yeah That, you love! That, I love! I love that as well because my hair’s natural underneath my erm, my braids, my Ghana braids I just love that I’m able to be versatile so if I want to have afro hair I can have afro hair If I want to throw on a wig or weave and have straight hair, or if that’s what the role requires, we can Like we went to a casting the other day and the person was like (I had my hair like this) And the casting director was like, just to ask can you take your braids out and can you have afro? can you have - and I was like yeah! I can have a wig, a weave, yeah you know © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

JASMEEN: So, I think having afro hair and being natural in the acting industry Is actually a bit of a benefit, from my experience. I haven’t been out in the industry that long probably only a few months, so maybe this opinion might change. But what I found from going to castings and stuff is that people love it. If anything I’ve gotten auditions and gotten things because of how I look And I think because I’ve had natural hair and especially because a lot of black actresses don’t maybe, I don’t know But from what I’ve seen when I was going through headshots and trying to get ideas of how to wear my hair, I couldn’t find one black actress with a natural head shot. Maybe one or two. So I think it’s actually been a benefit for me. I’ve had so many compliments on my natural hair. I think it makes me stand out. So yeah, personally, I haven’t really gone through anything within the industry that I’ve felt a bit ooh, umm, apart from obviously a bit of ignorance from cast mates asking questions and stuff like that But in terms of the actually industry, I haven’t faced any difficulties. You have beautiful hair Thank you! And a beautiful face So do you And a beautiful nose So do you!

Part 2 Featuring actors Ketorah Williams and Simone McIntyre with Nicky Goldie SIMONE: I think it’s really cool, you know you get a part and you think - oooh, how would she wear her hair? So, right now I’d quite like to get a part where I could have braids. I would really like that. Just to give it a rest But then another time you know that your character, she probably would have it straighter. So I think it helps to inform your character choice KETORAH: Definitely, and you know it’s so easy for us to change our hair. We can have different colours, different textures, styles. Plaits, straight curly. We can have our own hair There’s a range of different wigs out there that actually don’t look that wiggy, as well. Yeah so it does help you to change up your character, and as I said inform your character, it’s cool. NICKY: My hair actually is sort of versatile. This I think makes me look an awful lot older [pulls hair back] And quite often now I do play older, much older than I am And people seem to believe it, which is quite upsetting really! Because as soon as this (hair) goes, I look about seventy or eighty and quite a lot of the Shakespeare I’ve done they hide the hair because I’m in some sort of Elizabethan or whatever sort of thing And it’s weird and I’m not sure if I look it but afterwards, nobody recognises me without my hair I’ve been in shows where people have stood next to people and a group of people and someone in the audience has said “oh my God that was good and whose that women who played, you know, the Duchess of blah-di-blah" And I’m, standing there! People don’t recognise me if my hair is not out on display and I feel a bit weird about that © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

But on the other hand I think I should be quite grateful Because my definition of a really good actor is somebody who is a chameleon and people come out and say “Oh God, I didn’t even recognise you”

Part 3 Featuring actors Ayesha Casely-Hayford and India Ria Amarteifio with Anni Domingo AYESHA: What I love about my hair and being an actor After you Inds INDIA: I need some time to think about it Okay, after me I love that it enables me to be me. I changed my hair half way through drama school because a friend said “why don’t you have your afro?” And I think she said that because she thought it would be cool And it would be cooler It was like I had something I could be and I was pretending not to be it. Like I had the power, to be a thing and for some reason I was hiding And I really do get that now. Like the colour of my hair matches my skin and… Why are you looking at me like that?! No it doesn’t! It’s like really dark No it’s shades of the right shades. Cause if you get an extension - you won’t know this because you haven’t done it If you get an extension, you have to try and find the right hair colour, like there’s 2B, 2A, there’s all these different gradings And you try and find the colour that matches your hair But it might not exist Because no one else has got my hair but me You were saying this last night weren’t you? That only you have your hair What do you mean? You said “I’ve never met anyone whose got my hair” © 2018 Ayesha Casely-Hayford

No So how can you go to a shop and buy hair that looks like your hair. Like only my hair looks like my hair, like colour, the exact tone, so when I say it matches my skin, I mean it Compliments everything Yeah it compliments, yeah ok What I love about my hair and being an actor is that I can have it different ways for different character roles. Like a role I did this summer. They like curled it with curlers and that basically showed, it made me look a lot younger than I am. So I can use my hair to make me look older, to make me look younger and I can make my hair look straighter and add extensions in And it will look like I’ve got long hair ‘Cause I’ve done it before, I tried it out once. It didn’t look great. But I can do it, if I wanted to. That’s why I just don’t feel the need to relax it. That’s why a lot of people when I’ve done like costume and stuff, they’ve gone, “never relax your hair” Have they? Yeah, they think it’s also a bonus because it’s easier to think of styles, because, I’m not sure, but with European hair it might be actually their hair might be a bit long to do pin curls or something. ANNI: If I wanted to grow my hair. It can grow. But I just don’t like the hassle of long hair. I used to have up to shoulder-length hair and spent hours at the hairdressers. I live out in the country, I don’t live in London There’s no black hairdressers around here So it was quite a lot of kerfuffle for me to look after my hair So the best thing about my hair is when it’s short I can cut it quite close and it looks good and neat without too much trouble.