HEAD OF HAIR DEPARTMENT

AGENT SMITH’S WIGS

MATRIX: How was the number of wigs decided, and how did you go about sourcing hair for the wigs?

JUDITH: We actually we started in the US with twelve stunt doubles for Agent Smith [Hugo Weaving], so we had twelve wigs made for those guys. Then when we came to Australia there was a scene where it was decided that they wanted one hundred dummies, sixty masks, and twenty-five doubles that were real live doubles, so we actually had some wigs made in China. We used one of the wigs that we had used in Oakland for the US shoot as a prototype, and sent it off to China to have one hundred and sixty to one hundred and seventy-five wigs made.

MATRIX: Were the wigs all made from real hair?

JUDITH: Yes, they are human hair wigs, and they are hair lace wigs, which means that the hair is hand tied on a lace front so it can be glued on someone’s skin. They’re all hand tied handmade wigs. The gentlemen who had to wear them had to shave their heads back at least to the ear because of the hairline on Agent Smith, so we did a lot of haircuts - we had a lot of men running around with half haircuts and shaved heads. We have a motto here in the Hair Department that says, hair grows - money doesn’t, so that’s what we had to tell the guys as they were being paid for us to cut their hair off.

MATRIX: What was the reaction when they were told about their unusual hairstyle for the show?

JUDITH: Most of them knew before they got to us. That was something that when they cast them and talked to them they told them that they were going to have to shave their heads, or part of their head. I think they were all still a little shocked though. They probably sold a lot of beanies in town for people here to wear to cover their heads.

MATRIX: How long does it take to weave a wig?

JUDITH: It probably takes about a week to sit and hand tie and make a wig for someone if you work long hours and all the time. So they had a lot of people working to get all those wigs made for us.

MATRIX: Was any hair punching done directly into the prosthetic heads or masks?

JUDITH: No, we actually used wigs that were glued on them. We thought about punching hair, which takes as long as making a wig because someone has to sit with a needle and individual hairs and punch it into the scalp, so that’s why we ended up going with the wigs. The wigs have been made on a very fine net or lace that you can glue onto the skin and it looks like it’s just growing out of the skin.

MATRIX: How did you go about finding the right color and texture of hair for the wigs?

JUDITH: Texture is the hardest one because it’s never the same texture. Color you can get pretty close to because they actually process the hair - they take hair and bleach it down and then dye it back to the color you need. When we send them a color swatch or a piece of hair to match they can pretty much do that by hair coloring and dying of the hair that has been chosen. It’s almost impossible to match people’s texture though - especially with that many wigs. The wigs are all very close on color, but the texture is a little bit different because it was a little harder to match to. For the twelve weeks work we did in the States we had more time to match texture of hair, so the original stunt double wigs were a little closer on texture.

In the end all the Smiths that we did were standing in pouring rain, so our biggest problem was how to keep the hair from going absolutely flat in the pouring rain. I tested about eight or nine different products: we would try it on the wig, and then we’d set the wig in the shower for a couple of hours at the strongest power pressure that we could get in the shower, which was only a slight pressure compared to what they finally used. We finally found that the only product that would stand up under all that water was a product called Estapol, which is a floor varnish. Because we ended up doing all the hair with floor varnish, texture really didn’t matter at a point. When you put the floor varnish on the wig you have to make sure you’ve got the style you want because you’re not going to change it!

MATRIX: Was that a spray?

JUDITH: No, we actually brushed it on then laid the hair down as we worked with it. We would style it and work bit by bit to get the style that we wanted.

MATRIX: Do you recall how many weeks were those Agent Smith were on set for?

JUDITH: They were on set for several weeks, but we did touchup every night because the power of that rain was unbelievable. We had a crew that came in at night and went through all the masks and dummy heads and repaired them. The only way to really repair them was to put more Estapol on it, or to put some mineral spirits or something that softened it a little bit and then we could repair it. It would dry the rest of the night so that in the morning it was ready to go again with the rain.

MATRIX: Whatever made you think of floor varnish?

JUDITH: We had tried so many different things, and even shellac wouldn’t stand up, although on some of the stunt wigs we used shellac, and Estapol was the only thing that worked. It was just one of those things where everybody was standing around making suggestions and someone said, what about floor varnish? And we said let’s try it.

MATRIX: Thanks very much Judy.


CLICK HERE TO READ JUDY'S FULL INTERVIEW

Interview by REDPILL
July 2002