Update: Free from her time on Riverdale (for now), Camila Mendes is apparently happy to leave Veronica Lodge's look behind her.
Mendes recently posted to Instagram that she went back to the salon just two weeks after she lightened her jet-black hair post-Riverdale. According to the actress, this new look is for her next project (the upcoming wedding comedy Palm Springs), which apparently called for slightly lighter and even shorter hair. It looks like colorist Matt Rez gave Mendes a few more highlights, and hairstylist Buddy Porter chopped a few more inches off Mendes' now certifiably chocolate-brown hair. Veronica, who?
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This post was originally published on April 16, 2019.
Some of our favorite characters on TV have signature beauty looks that we consider iconic. There's Daenerys Targaryen's platinum braids on Game of Thrones, for example. Prudence Night's deep purple lips on the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina for another. Then, there's Veronica Lodge's jet-black hair and dark red lips on Riverdale.
But since these characters have such identifiable looks, the women who play these roles often want to distance themselves from their on-screen personas after the show has wrapped. Take Emilia Clarke, who chopped her hair and went back to her brown roots after filming her final season as Daenerys. In that same vein, Camila Mendes, who plays Veronica Lodge, has gone ahead and lightened things up after wrapping Riverdale season 3.
As she and her stylists showed on Instagram, Mendes is now rocking deep, chocolate-brown hair, which is a few shades lighter than Veronica's jet-black style.
As her colorist Matt Rez explained on Instagram, while this look may not look starkly different, it's the result of several hours at Meche Salon in Los Angeles. "Taking out layers of blue black that we have been doing for her character Veronica Lodge on Riverdale was a six-hour process to keep the integrity of her hair," Rez wrote.
At the same appointment, Mendes also got a trim from stylist Buddy Porter, who put in some long, face-framing layers. According to Mendes' Instagram Story, it took a whole seven hours and had the crew in the salon until midnight to effectively get Mendes out of character and send Veronica Lodge packing.
But really, we should have been anticipating this change. Mendes told Refinery29 last year that she was planning to lighten her look after the season wrapped. "I'm going to do something different with my hair just because I have the freedom to," Mendes said. "Maybe some highlights or go back to a brown color. It'll be subtle, but obvious enough of a change that it will brighten up my look."
Going back to her brown roots puts Mendes right on trend with other celebrities who have decided spring is the time to lighten things up a bit, including Bella Hadid, who swapped her deep brown hair for a shade closer to her naturally light brown. As Hadid and Clarke have proven, sometimes there's really no beating your natural shade.