'Overcompensating' hair department head talks Kaia Gerber's nod to mom Cindy Crawford and inspirations for each style
Benito Skinner's series Overcompensating on Prime Video has been easily one of the most exciting new shows of the year. It's brilliant comedy crafted with incredibly entertaining characters, but Skinner clearly went into this project with attention to detail, from the script all the way to the hair details.
"The hair was infused in every aspect of the script from day one," Blake Arsenault, the Canadian to took on the role of the head of the hair department for the show, told Yahoo Canada. "You can read a thousand scripts and you never see the word hair mentioned once, but every page I turned there were hair notes."
So to ... utilize that to tell the story, ... what a pleasure."
Funny enough, the moment that Arsenault got really excited about being part of Overcompensating came from a scene that was cut from the show.
"The opening scene was Wally Baram as Carmen in her bedroom following a hair and makeup tutorial, and she burns her hair off with her flat iron," Arsenault said. "Immediately I said, 'This is the show for me.'"
"I knew that was setting the comedic tone and Benny, ... being such a brilliant writer and comedic genius that he is, infusing that hair gag right from the beginning, I was like, this is the kind of challenge I want to take on."While that scene didn't make the final edit, the character Carmen's journey is so closely linked to her appearance, her hair specifically, as she tries to fit in after showing up to college feeling like a fish out of water.
"We sat down and we discussed it quite deeply, me and Benny and Wally and our amazing showrunner, Scott King, ... and where to bring those changes and how to show her evolution and her overcompensating to fit in with everybody around her," Arsenault explained. "So it was very important for her to be othered and to be separate. So when she walks onto campus, immediately everybody is polished, everybody has long, smooth, sleek, straight, blonde hair blowouts. They really put the effort in and she was completely opposite of that."
"Knowing that she has to pretend that she is somebody she's not, ... straightening her hair was a big part of that. So we took the character through that journey throughout the entire show, and there were very pivotal moments where we wanted to showcase that, and moments where she was trying to fit in more. ... The more she tries to fit in, the further she becomes removed from herself and who she is."
Another character highlight is Holmes as Hailee, one character who really expresses her true self.
"Growing up queer in a small town in East Coast, New Brunswick, I found idols in people like Britney Spears and Christian Aguilera, Jennifer Coolidge in Legally Blonde and Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. So we infused bits of all of that into Hailee," Arsenault said.
"Everybody is overcompensating, except for Hailee. This is who she is through and through. You get what you see with her. And when I looked back at these divas and these empowering female characters, ... they have a look. Their hair is the same. Dolly Parton has had the same hair for years and years, there's a diva look. Donna Summer, Diana Ross, they may change their looks, but their hair is the same, and it's a staple. And that was what I wanted to bring to Hailee's character as well. So we do a few small hair changes, but for the most part her hair is a signature, because it showcases very much that she owns who she is, and she knows exactly who she is, whether she realizes it or not."
One element of Overcompensating is that while the story is inspired by Skinner's real college life, with the early 2010s being a clear influence, it also feel timeless. Arsenault was skillfully able to extended that timelessness to the hair looks we see as well. There are elements that feel like they're from the late 2000s, 2010s and even present day.
A perfect example of that is styling Kaia Gerber's hair with a side part for the show, which also happens to be a nod to her mother, Cindy Crawford.
"Kaia's side part was actually a big moment of discussion for me and Kaia, when she sat in my chair, because we wanted her ... to have this long, sleek hair that's a contrast to Wally. And I said, 'Kaia, how do you feel about doing a side part?' She's a model. She's been a model since she was a kid. She's game for anything," Arsenault shared. "And when we did it I said, 'Do you feel like your mother?' Because her mother practically invented the side part. And she says, 'Yes, very much.' And then she goes, 'I'm embracing it.'"
While Overcompensating is certainly a meticulously crafted and fun show, it's incredibly impressive that Arsenault was so affectively able to really tell a story through his work on the series, amplifying all the core elements of the story with hair styles and hair transformations. But it's a reflection of Arsenault's commitment to hist craft.
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