‘Mare of Easttown’ Had a ‘Bed Hair’ Rule That Fit Kate Winslet’s Ban on Unattainable Beauty
Zack Sharf
“Mare of Easttown” has stirred up so much buzz because of its Philadelphia accents and dour atmosphere that even “Saturday Night Live” delivered a parody of the Kate Winslet-starring detective drama over the weekend. Now comes word from the HBO series’ lead hairstylist Lawrence Davis that his one marching order when starting work on the series was to give everyone bed hair, no exceptions. Davis spoke about his work on “Mare of Easttown” during an interview with Insider.
“When I came on board, I was told bed hair for everyone,” Lawrence said. “I was basically told that everybody has bed hair…Everybody was basically, you know, get up and go, and that was the whole feel of it. But I was basically told from day one: ‘Bed hair,’ and I had to ride with that.”
The “bed hair” rule fit into Winslet’s new career mantra of refusing roles that play into unattainable beauty standards. As the Oscar-winning actress told The Times of London in April before the debut of “Mare of Easttown” on HBO, “Yeah, I am older. I look like crap sometimes. Because what I observe are people spending a huge amount of time worrying about how they look, with filters. Looking at pictures of impossibly glamorous places to have holidays. I worry about that, for younger generations. These unattainable ideals. And I do not want to play roles that feed into anything unattainable anymore. I’m done with that.”
Winslet told The Times that after HBO executives saw early footage from “Mare of Easttown,” they asked the show’s creative team about her unglamorous looks. The actress explained, “HBO said, ‘Does Kate have to look so…’ And I said, ‘What, like shit? Yes. Kate does have to look like shit.'”
“Mare Sheehan is — she’s kind of disgusting,” Winslet told IndieWire earlier this month. “She’s a hot mess most of the time, she doesn’t give a shit what she looks like, she’s kind of stopped caring what people even think about her…We made decisions creatively that this was a woman who looked at herself in the mirror when she brushed her teeth in the morning and would not look in the mirror again [all day]. That’s just who she is. That’s like most busy mothers I know — that’s like me. It really is.”
“Mare of Easttown” continues airing Sundays at 10 p.m. ET on HBO.
