You’d think Nat’s seemingly effortless hair look would, in reality, require immense amounts of hairstyling, as TV hair often does. Thatcher explains, however, that before she started wearing the wig, the Sophie-to-Nat process wasn’t all that complicated.
“My hair is naturally pretty straight, so they put a curling iron to it because Juliette’s hair has a nice wave to it,” she says. The pièce de résistance to creating that eternally cool, roughed-up quality, Thatcher reveals, was Oribe Dry Texturizing Spray (the on-set hairstylist gave her a bottle, and she hasn’t stopped using it off-camera).
Obviously, Thatcher and the show’s producers are fully aware that young Nat’s hair is way too polished for the brutal forest environment in which the crux of the show takes place. They’re “working on that” for when season two rolls around—hopefully, sooner than later. “There was a little bit of a disconnection. I think for the next season, we’re going to rough it up more,” Thatcher teases.
Currently, in real life, Thatcher’s working with a brown-black color and a full-blown mullet that ends around the nape of her neck; that length is no doubt the result of all that bleaching she mentioned earlier. “My hair was so, so damaged,” she recalls. “So many pieces in the back were falling out.” She’s currently relying on “lots and lots and lots of Olaplex” to revive her hair’s health between seasons—specifically, the No. 3 Hair Perfector.
She credits Yellowjacket‘s hair team with putting her on to silk bonnets, too, which she now sleeps in every single night. “I tend to move around a lot in my sleep; I would wake up with the worst rat’s nest,” she laughs. “[The bonnet’s] not glamorous at all but helps.”
After wrapping the show’s first season, Thatcher also had to amp up her skincare routine because working outside in the forest for long hours gave her “the worst acne of my life.” (In fact, she says all of the actors who play younger counterparts experienced way more acne than usual at the time.) She washes her face daily with CeraVe’s Foaming Facial Cleanser, then moisturizes—but not before applying her be-all, end-all acne treatment. “I started using the Mario Badescu Drying Lotion… that’s actually helped the most.”