The most important thing about Game Of Throne's Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) is her admirable voraciousness. The second most important thing about Daenerys is her dragons. (They're hot.) And the third most imporatnt thing about Dany is her sometimes icy, sometimes platinum — but always fierce — hair.
Her long blonde locks are her most recognizable feature, and have come to signify her striking power and beauty. But the lengthy behind-the-scenes process of getting Clarke to look like the fearless Mother of Dragons isn't so pretty. In an interview with Time, accompanying an incredible cover story on the iconic show and its main characters, Clarke's hair designer spills all the secrets about Clarke's hair, including the fact that she has even named her multiple wigs. Kylie Jenner, the self-proclaimed wig trendsetter, can't even say that.
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Kevin Alexander, the show's hair guru who is also responsible for Jon Snow's chocolate brown man bun, explains that Clarke's process is all about covering up her natural hair because she is a brunette in real life. First, he puts on a bald cap and then a mesh cap. And the personality wigs come into play. Clarke has four "character wigs" by the names of: Dany, Diva, Candice (after one of the other on-set stylists, writes Time), and Blondie, (previously known as Bitch).
While Clarke has four main wigs acting as character mood rings, she's had many more throughout the eight years filming. "We started with one [wig], and then slowly over the period of the seven years, we’ve built [more] — they can get ruined really easily," Alexander told Time. "They’re quite sensitive to atmosphere, so if in a fire scene, there’s too much smoke or whatever, they just go gray. You just lose them. They become a really dodgy gray like she’s been rolling around in the dirt." Additionally, it took up to seven wigs for Alexander to first even perfect the color and achieve the right shade of blonde that wasn't too silver ("it's aging") or too creamy.
It's safe to say he did a pretty great job.
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