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When it comes to beauty, Black Panther is a celebration of Black hair. And no one understood that better than the Black Panther himself, Chadwick Boseman.
“When we were promoting the first movie [and] people would ask me a hair question, [Boseman] would be like, Camille, let me handle this. Let me tell you guys about the hair. It’s so great,” Camille Friend, lead hairstyle list of Black Panther and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and Prose Haircare advisory board member, recalls over Zoom. “How proud and excited he was of the hair and how this movie looked…I think about that a lot.”
The highly anticipated sequel, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, takes on a more somber tone and serves as a tribute to Boseman, who tragically passed in August 2020 after a private battle with colon cancer. Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studio, chose not to recast Boseman’s character, T’Challa which meant that grief and evolution became major themes throughout the film. Friend translated these themes into the hair looks for many of the main characters, especially the Black Panther’s family members, Shuri (played by Leticia Wright) and Queen Ramonda (played by Angela Bassett).
“One of the things [director Ryan Coogler and I] anticipated early on was possibly having Shuri and Ramonda cut their hair off in mourning of T’Challa. So [I thought], okay, their hair would be shorter, but how would it look?” says Friend.
Shuri, who wore her hair in long micro braids styled in many ways like half-up half-down updos or intricate top buns in the first film, now wears her hair in short natural curls styled in a mohawk. Queen Ramonda still wears her regal headpieces in the sequel, but is often seen without it. In some pivotal scenes—like when she told her daughter Shuri of T’Challa’s passing—we see her let her natural gray curls down and loose, shorter than the long gray locs seen in the first Black Panther.
Danai Gurira and Letitia Wright in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Photo: Marvel Studios.
Lupita Nyong’o as Nakia in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Photo: Marvel Studios.
Winston Duke as M’Baku in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Photo: Marvel Studios.
Tenoch Huerta Mejía as Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Photo: Marvel Studios.
While the cast and crew lost a dear friend and brother, Friend says it was just as important to celebrate Boseman’s life while mourning. The funeral scene for Wakanda’s King T’Challa featured everyone wearing rich white garments. Friend says it was fun to figure out how to incorporate head dresses and scarves into the looks. Black hair after all, she says, is art.
“We’re so blessed that it just naturally grows out of our heads and we have [that] ability, as Black women, we can change,” Friend says. “We can wear locs one day, we can wear braids one day, we can wear a wig, we can [wear hair] straight, we can be natural, [we can] be anything that [we] want to be.”
As for the male characters, their hair looks serve as inspiration for men in real life, too. Friend says she gets loads of DMs and calls about how to replicate certain looks. “Guys really are the biggest kind of hair fans, believe it or not. [Men] ask [me] about Killmonger all the time,” she says. “How do we get Michael B. Jordan’s hair [in the first movie]? That was the number one question. They were [also] into M’Baku’s look.”
But Friend doesn’t want you sleeping on the other looks featured in the sequel. She cannot rave enough about the new characters that fans are going to meet: the Talokans. “I’m going to say overall the Talokans are my favorite looks, ” she says. Pulling inspiration from Mayan and Mesoamerican mythology, Talokan is an underwater Aztec kingdom whose people have serpent-like features. Hair for the Talokan people moved with fluid motion while in the water and was slicked back with grand vivid colorful edhiadornea on land during fight scenes.
“I love that we are introducing a whole new group, a whole new culture,” Friend says. “We got to explore the Mayan and the Mesoamerican culture in such a beautiful way.”
Products she used religiously on set include the Sexy Hair Style Sexy Hair Hard Up Hard Holding Gel, Prose Custom Styling Gel, and the Unite Hair 7 Seconds Detangler Leave-In Conditioner. But a lot of the added hair pieces and accessories she and her team created themselves, airbrushing a lot of the hair on actors and doing many DIY headpieces.
Angela Bassett as Queen Ramonda in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.
Photo: Marvel Studios
“We created everything from the hair, the haircuts, how we tied it, how we braided it, etc. Every piece was colored and we made everything, even the hair accessories, ourselves,” she says. “Literally [going to] Home Depot, I have all kinds of jewelry-making tools now. I know how to do the soldering, I know how to [use] the drill, I know how to do it [all] now.”
All the hard work though was well worth it. “It was so fun,” she says. “It helped bring the team together.”
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever is out now in theaters.
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