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Walton Goggins Addresses His Alleged Feud With ‘Justified’ Co-Star Timothy Olyphant: “We Were Both Obsessed With Our Own Points Of View”
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‘Justified: City Primeval’ Ends On The Highest Of High Notes: [SPOILER] Is Back And Better Than Ever
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Timothy Olyphant Says He Was Rejected as Captain Kirk in the ‘Star Trek’ Films Because “They Wanted Somebody Younger”
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‘Full Circle’ Episode 6 Recap: End of the Line
The complex history of Fleetwood Mac has been told in books, documentaries, and one very memorable episode of (what else) Behind The Music. In 2019, fans who weren’t sated by all of those also got Daisy Jones & The Six, a novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid that fictionalizes the band’s story, imagining scenes that even the famously messy Fleetwood Mac wouldn’t expose to the public. Now, the novel has made it to the screen, in a limited-series adaptation at Prime Video. Staying true to the source material, it is mostly set in the 1970s, which means lots of crochet, lots of bellbottoms, and lots of wigs.
I can’t definitively trace my fascination with TV wigs to any single incident, but if someone suggested that I was radicalized by The Good Wife, it would be hard to argue. Those few who remember FX’s The Strain don’t remember it very fondly, whether because of lingering horror from its worm-eye billboards, or just from the offense we took to star Corey Stoll’s wig, a coif so unconvincing that I once adopted the persona of a Wig Cop, gruffly complaining about the fake-hair crimes some bozos think they can use to bamboozle honest citizens. Last summer, Vox contributor Chika Ekemezie investigated the issue in a piece with a headline as simple as it is provocative: “Why do wigs on TV look so awful?” Dear reader, it is my sad duty to tell you Daisy Jones & The Six has not avoided this curse.
The series is told in a faux documentary style, cutting between the band in their heyday and talking-head interviews that are supposed to have been filmed 20 years after The Six’s last-ever show in 1977. Episode 1 kicks off with shots of each member in 1997, situating themselves and making minor adjustments. At first, I thought, “Maybe they just cut corners on the ‘future’ wigs, since they don’t really need to move.”
Sam Claflin (who plays Billy Dunne, the band’s co-lead singer and songwriter) is right to look this annoyed: I’ve seen Jack Sparrows at Disney World whose lobs were more convincing than this.
And he’s one of the higher-profile members of the cast! (You may not know his name, but you saw him in The Hunger Games, I promise.) Riley Keough (who plays the titular Daisy, the other co-lead singer and songwriter) is nearly the most famous performer in the ensemble, and even her 1997 wig only looks good as long as she doesn’t expose her crown to the camera.
Their fellow B-lister Suki Waterhouse (keyboardist Karen) has an easier time pulling off her platinum ‘do, not just because the color is clearly supposed to look artificial, but because her slightly punky style makes its chunky texture seem intentional.
Pity the up-and-comers who have less power to advocate for themselves! Will Harrison (guitarist and Billy brother Graham) may not be famous, but he’s still a person.
Introducing Josh Whitehouse (who plays bassist Eddie) attempting to straighten his “bangs” is just cruel.
But if you were on Twitter Wednesday, the day the show’s review embargo lifted, you didn’t see any of these wigs on the receiving end of critics’ harshest tonsorial notes.
Is this roasting warranted? As one of the world’s pre-eminent Timothy Olyphant fans, I regret to say it is.
Out of character, Olyphant has one of the all-time great heads of hair among showbiz men. Rare were the moments, on his (incredible, classic, timeless) FX drama Justified, when his Raylan Givens would doff his signature Stetson in a heated moment, and his normally slicked-back hair would fall just a little into his eyes — rare, and precious.
In Daisy Jones, when you see Olyphant’s character, tour manager Rod Reyes, in his 1997 interviews, you might think the production tried a bit too hard to make him look like an exceptionally cool fiftysomething.
Nope, his hair is just that good. Barring some unforeseeable catastrophe, he could be our generation’s Jeff Bridges and just keep rocking a full head of hair into his seventies.
But I digress. Because I am up-to-date on what Timothy Olyphant looks like at all times, I couldn’t tell what the Twitter wags were calling out. It turns out that’s because, in his Rod drag, I couldn’t recognize my beloved Olyphant at all.
It’s a dark club; he has no lines; I’m not going to beat myself. I am going to beat up the hairdressing supervisor, though.
That’s approximately the face I made at this shag. Remember on Flight Of The Conchords when Bret made a helmet that looked like his hair? Same vibe.
In the second episode, the band meets with Rod again. Unfortunately for him, it’s in bright daylight.
Why is it so feathery? Why does it look better slept on than it did when he was out seeing a band? WHY IS IT SO SQUARE?!
Daisy Jones & The Six is a pleasant enough diversion. If you’re into men looking hot and acting sexy, there’s plenty to hold your interest. One of those is Timothy Olyphant. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say we see his bare torso in the second episode. I just feel the public should be prepared for what else they’re going to see. Maybe imagine him in a hat. Shouldn’t be too hard.
Television Without Pity, Fametracker, and Previously.TV co-founder Tara Ariano has had bylines in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Vulture, Slate, Salon, Mel Magazine, Collider, and The Awl, among others. She co-hosts the podcasts Extra Hot Great, Again With This (a compulsively detailed episode-by-episode breakdown of Beverly Hills, 90210 and Melrose Place), Listen To Sassy, and The Sweet Smell Of Succession. She’s also the co-author, with Sarah D. Bunting, of A Very Special 90210 Book: 93 Absolutely Essential Episodes From TV’s Most Notorious Zip Code (Abrams 2020). She lives in Austin.
