“I went with a similar color to her first wig,” says Furey. “I was trying to show [with the hair throughout the film] she’s [first] an innocent young girl — she’s herself. Then we see her transition away from herself and then back to herself [once she leaves her husband]. She’s gone back to natural again — her makeup is more tanned and she doesn’t have the big eyebrows and she doesn’t have the big eye makeup on, so it’s like going from herself as a young girl growing into something she’s not with him and then back to her.”
Sabrina Lantos/Courtesy of A24
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A big part of making the wigs look realistic on both Spaeny and Elordi, the latter of who wore three hairpieces that were integrated with his natural hair to achieve Elvis’s signature ‘do, was changing the actors’ hairlines. Furey and Butterworth had zoom meetings about it and would draw new hairlines on photos.
“Priscilla Presley’s hairline even to this day, it’s quite full and round and dense,” says Furey. “It’s low. Cailee’s is a little higher and even though I didn’t want to impersonate Priscilla, I just felt that I needed to fill the hairline out. I did the same with Jacob. Elvis’s hair was also very rounded — rounded corners, very dense, very full — so I altered Jacob’s hairline.”
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When Priscilla had her daughter, Lisa Marie, she went into the hospital in full glam. Furey says that Spaeny was in not just a wig but an additional hairpiece to recreate the look. “I used old vintage hair toppers from the ‘50s, they’re almost like a three-quarter or half of a wig,” says Furey. These hair toppers, which Furey says were popular for women to wear in the ‘50s and ’60s, are so dense that adding one essentially meant Spaeny was wearing two wigs. “That has to have been heavy,” Furey says. “Cailee is tinier than Priscilla, she’s very petite, so I didn’t want the hair to wear her, so I was careful in the sizes, like how big I put the hair. I wanted it to work for her as well so she could pull it off and I feel like she did.”
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