I Was Picked To Be Extra On A Hit TV Show, But Then I Got A Mortifying Surprise

In early 2023, I had just moved back to the U.S. after living overseas and wanted to try something new that would challenge me. I’m not a performer, but one day I saw an ad for a company that casts extras online and decided to give it a shot. This particular company did the casting for one of my favorite shows, so even though I didn’t pursue potential roles that seriously, the idea of being on the show hovered in the back of my mind. Early this fall, I saw a casting notice that I fit, and I decided to send in my details.

Since the show is set in a specific time period, the casting notice mentioned that a haircut was nearly always required of everyone cast on the show, from the leads all the way to the blurs in the background. I didn’t think too much of it beyond “It can’t be that bad” — and I was really excited when the casting agency told me I’d been approved. 

I had my fitting first, which was a blast, mostly because I love costume departments and the people who work in them, and this particular show has a lot of fun clothing options. So I felt fairly confident when I showed up to my hair appointment a week later, even more so when I saw the woman whose appointment was before mine leave with a basic, non-dramatic shoulder-length cut. 

A few days before, I’d had my regular hair appointment at home to get my roots touched up and my hair blown out. My hair was extra pretty to me at the time, finally so close to my ideal color and length after two years of living overseas. So by the day of my hair appointment for the show, I was feeling like I looked good. 

I let my hair air dry that morning in case it helped the stylist to see my naturally wavy texture, and when I walked in the guy who cut my hair said, “Thank God, this is something I can really do something with.”

That felt good! Positive! But in retrospect, it was a warning sign that I was about to have a very different experience than the woman before me. 

The actual appointment itself was a lot of fun. My stylist was funny and super engaging. I let out a deep breath when he made one big chop to cut my hair to my shoulders (a loss of about 4 to 5 inches of hair) but then felt a release: The length was fine! It would grow! I could do this!

But then he kept cutting… and cutting… and, oh, my God, is that a razor? It was. I hadn’t seen a hair razor since my last emo haircut in 2002 and genuinely couldn’t fathom why one was being used on me now. I began to watch in a state of transfixed fascination, almost as if the person in the mirror was someone else entirely, someone watching her hair — the hair she was so, so proud of — chopped into an increasingly short and shaggy style. 

The end result was a mullet-esque shag that included a layer around my entire crown that was around 3 inches long. There are many people on this giant planet who can and do rock a style like this. I really admire and applaud those people and, at the same time, cannot overstate how much that is not me in this period in my life. I walked out of the appointment stunned, trying to smile, and promptly began to panic as soon as I stepped out of the period of the show and back into the real world in 2024.

The next week and a half was emotional, sad, embarrassing and flat-out exhausting. I had a difficult time looking at myself in the mirror and constantly cycled through feeling ugly, feeling old, feeling embarrassed that I felt all those things, feeling mad that I couldn’t make myself feel better and then going to sleep. I didn’t think I was someone who based my thoughts about myself on my outward appearance and have been startled to find out just how much I did. This was one of the first times I’ve really struggled with self-image in my life, and this was a massively difficult and unexpected way to confront some of my inner demons. 

My partner bought me a beanie that I wore constantly (in the house and out) for three or four days before I began to adjust. The only thing that helped was pinning it back into the tiniest little bun imaginable and trying to forget about it. 

Not only was I upset about the haircut, I was also upset about how bad something as seemingly simple as hair made me feel about myself. I was forced to see parts of myself I had not really considered before, and I had to reckon with my ideas surrounding what it is to be a woman. Where did those ideas come from? What had they been influenced by? I don’t think I ever consciously thought long hair was essential for femininity, but it was shocking how quickly my sense of gender identity eroded during the first 24 to 30 hours after I got the cut. 

I now understand that in the pre-bad-haircut part of my life, I attached a lot of my thoughts and feelings about femininity, softness and my identity to the hair that I had — something that I didn’t know at the time (and wouldn’t have believed if you told me). As with most changes, there was, of course, a life lesson embedded in this haircut. 

I lived with the haircut for two weeks before it was time to film. Luckily, the experience of filming the show was genuinely so fun, and I had such an incredible time, that it almost made me believe it was all worth it. But I still went to my regular hairstylist the day after I finished, and we began the slow process of making this haircut work for me in 2024. 

My hair is the shortest it has ever been. The very top layer has grown out a bit at this point but is still the part of the haircut that causes me the most angst. I’m trying to use the new haircut to explore a new mindset and new choices. I’m trying bolder makeup options I usually wouldn’t consider, different necklines, and am accessorizing with earrings in a way that I haven’t in a long time. 

In the weeks that have followed the initial cut and my stylist’s adaptation, I’ve explored reactions and feelings that both embarrassed me and, strangely, comforted me. As much as I was mortified by both my hair and my reaction to it, I also felt reassured by pages and pages of comments on Reddit forums, all written by people going through the same feelings and also by a few conversations with friends who were only too happy to share their own bad haircut experiences. 

I still have work to do, but I’m coming around on the other side of my pre-built ideas about femininity and hair. My confidence is still not quite where it was pre-haircut, but my understanding of myself is deeper. While it’s OK that my appearance matters to me, I’ve also learned to appreciate the entire sum of who I am as a person.

And maybe most important, I’ve learned that if anything is true, it’s that hair really will grow back.

Eventually. 

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