Tracee Ellis Ross And 'Black-Ish' Hair Stylist Talk Celebrating Black Hair

There'S so many styles to choose from roxy's really key on not shying away from the beauty and the power of what is unique about our hair. When i read a script, i go into a fantasyland. I map it out in my mind. It has to make sense to me. I pull from past experiences, we work at a very quick pace, we do an episode a week and they are prepping the next episode when we are shooting an episode. A roxy often spends her weekends. Making. You know she'll come in the next. You know on monday morning and you're just like what happened, but the trailer will be filled with all these heads covered in wigs box. Braids senegalese twists straight weaves down on my wrist, the hair episode, i think, for all of us with clearly such an intimate look into what it is to be a black woman and a black teen and dealing with your hair. So i think we all had a lot of feelings moving into it for me, a lot of feelings around protecting marseille and making sure that marseille felt really empowered to speak up about her own experience as a teen going through that journey. I didn't know this decision was gon na be so hard now i just want to go back to what i know. Well, okay, if you want to go back to relaxing your hair, that's fine i'll support you, but is that really how you feel it wasn't relaxer? It was not her hair, it was a wig and i mixed together a cream hairdress and cornstarch yeah, because realistically you can't use relaxer on someone's hair and do a million takes for myself. I too had a relaxer in junior high. I wanted one so bad and i used to wear the braids that cecily tyson had all throughout the 70s, the braids and the shells and the beads and such so. I went literally from that to a relaxer and it just ruined my hair. So with following the story, i took my journey and many other young girls that i've worked with and just made it true and made it personable for most people to be familiar with with tracy and marseille. We'Ve talked a lot about this about this um episode and i pulled in a few of my local 706 members, everything else. We just hunt out many wigs um a lot of letting the story go with continuity, um a lot of prepping. I feel like i'm gon na, make the wrong choice. No, there is no such thing as a wrong choice and despite what the world tells us, all black hair is beautiful. So often the barber shop is explored. It'S been explored a lot, but black women and our hair have been at the center of economic, social, political, cultural movements in this country. The story of that is not often told, and i feel like part of what we did. That was so amazing on this episode was start to dive into something that we could only scratch the surface of in 22 minutes, but really give the world a mix of all of these different kinds of stories and the conversations between diane and bo. I had a big hand in making feel really authentic and also allowing diane to express the power that she actually has in choosing what works for her and that to me was an underlying message of the episode that was so important. In terms of being a black woman in the context of america, so i'll do twist outs then maybe braids for a little bit, then i'll just cut my relaxed hair when i'm ready all right. That sounds like a plan, diane's finished. Look that i created. I had to find the perfect wig and add texture and hair to it and cut it shape it. I literally did a single strand twist and then pulled it out to give it the shape and she has multiple textures in her hair. So i just wanted to make sure that it was blended properly. I think we've been incredibly purposeful from the beginning to be honest about how we wear our hair. I'Ve been in this business for a decent amount of time. Now a roxy is one of the first people within the union to do my hair. That has a love of an appreciation for and deep experience in, my hair staying in its natural form ability to braid ability to style without using heat with using product. Honestly, a roxy with me, we mostly use water yeah, that's mostly what works to be within. You know six seasons and still have hair. That is not only healthier than when we started, but that grows like a weed is a testament to not only are we doing great styles and telling the truth on camera, but off camera. My hair is also thriving. It'S a lot of work, a lot of work. Everyone made sure that it was an honest production of an honest story that was told we were very careful not to overlook certain things and to be respectful, so we stuck together in sisterhood and tried to express it. The best way we can and no hair was burned. Everything was protected and yeah. That'S it. You