Inside the Intricate Hairstyles of Wakanda Forever, From Floating Wigs to Head-Shaving Rituals

When Camille Friend, the hair department head on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, watched an early camera test involving the sea-dwelling people known as the Talokanil, she immediately knew she had a problem. As soon as the actors went underwater a big white cloud developed around their heads—residue from the product used to keep their hair in place. The executive producer, Nate Moore, turned to Friend and said, “So, Camille, what are you going to do about that?” 

Friend went to work, developing a solution she calls a “glue hairspray” consisting of spirit gum diluted with alcohol that she could spray on the hair pieces, which she then would literally sew into place. “Listen, my favorite store for hair is Home Depot,” she explains in an interview with Vanity Fair. 

As a hairdresser on a film like Wakanda Forever, Friend’s job is stylist, yes, but it’s also chemist and architect. Now, Friend is nominated for a makeup and hairstyling Oscar along with makeup department head Joel Harlow, marking her first Academy Award nomination in a career that has included work with Quentin Tarantino, Hunger Games sequels, and the first Black Panther film. 

Black Panther was nominated for seven Oscars in 2019, but not for makeup and hairstyling; Friend credits her recognition now in part to a shift in the perception of Black hair that Black Panther helped initiate. “I think people have a different understanding of Black hair texture and Black culture now,” she says. In 2021, Mia Neal and Jamika Wilson became the first Black women to win Oscars in the makeup and hairstyling category for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Watching their triumph and then her friend Carla Farmer nominated with the team from Coming 2 America the following year, Friend thought, “Maybe it could happen to me.” 

Preparing to return to the world of Black Panther came with grief, however. Before filming, Friend traveled with director Ryan Coogler, other department heads, and cast members to the  gravesite of star Chadwick Boseman, who died after a battle with cancer in 2020. The ceremony, which featured drummers, united the artists. “It helped us move on past the mourning and get down to work,” she says. 

But sorrow was also crucial to developing some of the looks for the characters who would be suffering the loss of Boseman’s character, T’Challa. Following real-life West African traditions where mourners shave their heads, Friend envisioned that Shuri (Letitia Wright) and Ramonda’s (Angela Bassett) hair would still be in the process of growing out when the story catches up with them a year later.