To Play Priscilla Presley, Cailee Spaeny Wore $50,000 Worth of Wigs — See Photos

In The Scenario, reporter Kirbie Johnson takes readers behind the scenes of the buzziest movies and TV shows to reveal how the best wigs, special effects makeup, and more are created. For this edition, Johnson got all the details behind the many wigs Cailee Spaeny wore to play Priscilla Presley.

In the trailer for Sophia Copolla’s Priscilla, Elvis Presley, played by Euphoria’s Jacob Elordi, tells Cailee Spaeny’s Priscilla to “dye her hair black” and “add more eye makeup.” We see a supercut of faux lashes and painted-on winged liner being applied before hearing Spaeny say, “I don’t know if I like it.” Digital Thermal Film

To Play Priscilla Presley, Cailee Spaeny Wore $50,000 Worth of Wigs — See Photos | Allure

Whether or not she ever grew to truly love the look her rock star husband helped influence, Priscilla Presley has inspired decades of hair homages and makeup recreations. Take Lily Collins at the 2019 Met Gala, where she recreated Priscilla’s 1967 wedding look with the help of makeup artist Fiona Stiles and hairstylist Gregory Russell. The theme of that gala was “Camp: Notes on Fashion,” and Priscilla’s massive beehive could qualify for camp territory if you let it. But for the film, hair designer Cliona Furey wanted to ensure Spaeny didn’t look like a caricature of Mrs. Presley.

“Our movie is a small independent film and it's about the intimate moments between the two of them when no one was around,” said Furey. “It’s about her journey as a young girl growing into a woman in that environment and in that relationship. We covered a lot of tender scenes between the two of them when they're getting ready for bed or they're laying in bed and they're talking. There are no photos of those moments available, so I was just careful not to impersonate Priscilla.”

To transform Spaney into Priscilla, Furey used a selection of seven different wig styles — five main wigs and two used for photographs. We never see Spaney’s natural hair. Furey offered up some of her own wig collection for the film. “I have really nice handmade wigs [which I sent] to Stacey [Butterworth, the wig maker] and she put new tops and fronts on them all in like three weeks,” she says. “Then I adjusted the color.” On average, Furey says, the handmade wigs used for the film from her collection were $10,000 each, not including color or additional hair added by Butterworth.

After she read the script, Furey mapped out what moments were being depicted, tried to find any available photographs or videos from those moments, and made storyboards accordingly. Take, for instance, the iconic photo of a 14-year-old Priscilla at a German airport, waving goodbye to Elvis while wearing a scarf around her head. While that and many other instantly recognizable moments appear in the film, “years aren’t listed in the script, so I had done my own research as to ‘What year was that? How old was she then?’” Furey says. Since the movie spans multiple decades, Furey also had to figure out how to take Spaney from 14-year-old Priscilla in 1959 to 27-year-old Priscilla in 1972.

Furey said the film took around 30 days to shoot, some days filming multiple scenes with different hairstyles — up to five looks a day for Spaeny and three for Elordi. Overall, it took around 45 minutes to transform Spaeny in both hair and makeup. Furey started by prepping the hair in the wig cap and would then send her off to makeup designer Jo-Ann MacNeil.

“[It was] very quick,” says Furey, explaining that makeup took about 20 minutes. “Then she's back to me. It takes about 15 minutes to adhere the wig — glue it and pin it on — then I would spend about five to 10 minutes if I had it playing with the style.” Furey says she would be on set with Spaeny and would ask her team to start prepping wigs for the next scene.

While we have a real person to reference historically to how she looked in the past, Furey shared she took creative liberties to help tell Priscilla’s story through the hair, so some looks may not be a mirror image. “Her hair is telling a story,” says Furey. “I went with a lighter color than I know she had at 14. Her hair was quite dark, actually.”

To depict a “very, very young” Priscilla, Furey, who custom-colored all the wigs, tinted one a light brown so it looked more natural and put it in a ponytail for when Priscilla would first meet Elvis. That same wig was used for when she’s trying to appear more adult at Graceland, where a bunch of women and Elvis’s posse, the “Memphis Mafia,” were always around. “She was this little girl, right? We tried to show that in her storyline, so I used that same wig but I put a roller set in it, poofed it up,” Furey says. “She's starting to wear makeup when she goes to the casino with him, she's dating him.”

Spaeny transforms into the beauty icon we know today during a scene where she hits the salon to get her hair dyed black at Elvis’s request. “I knew my second wig was going to be a black wig with the bang,” Furey says. “I wanted to show the difference in time and her change as a human being [once she’s] with him.” For this, Furey utilized the only truly black wig in the film and put her in a beehive or bouffant because she was still a teen.

“Dark hair always reads darker on camera,” says Furey. “The third wig, which I called her ‘Memphis glam wig,’ is longer and it's not quite black — it’s more of a very, very rich dark brown, but I added a nice chestnut into it.” This deep brown wig would be used for the marriage scene.

Furey says she spent four days perfecting the color of what she calls the “family portrait” wig, which is when Priscilla’s hair is a burgundy-cherry color, Lisa Marie is a toddler, and Elvis has the long sideburns. Finally, there’s the last wig, the one Spaney wears when Priscilla leaves Elvis.

“I went with a similar color to her first wig,” says Furey. “I was trying to show [with the hair throughout the film] she's [first] an innocent young girl — she's herself. Then we see her transition away from herself and then back to herself [once she leaves her husband]. She's gone back to natural again — her makeup is more tanned and she doesn't have the big eyebrows and she doesn't have the big eye makeup on, so it’s like going from herself as a young girl growing into something she's not with him and then back to her.”

A big part of making the wigs look realistic on both Spaeny and Elordi, the latter of who wore three hairpieces that were integrated with his natural hair to achieve Elvis’s signature ‘do, was changing the actors’ hairlines. Furey and Butterworth had zoom meetings about it and would draw new hairlines on photos.

“Priscilla Presley's hairline even to this day, it's quite full and round and dense,” says Furey. “It's low. Cailee’s is a little higher and even though I didn't want to impersonate Priscilla, I just felt that I needed to fill the hairline out. I did the same with Jacob. Elvis's hair was also very rounded — rounded corners, very dense, very full — so I altered Jacob’s hairline.”

When Priscilla had her daughter, Lisa Marie, she went into the hospital in full glam. Furey says that Spaeny was in not just a wig but an additional hairpiece to recreate the look. “I used old vintage hair toppers from the ‘50s, they're almost like a three-quarter or half of a wig,” says Furey. These hair toppers, which Furey says were popular for women to wear in the ‘50s and ’60s, are so dense that adding one essentially meant Spaeny was wearing two wigs. “That has to have been heavy," Furey says. “Cailee is tinier than Priscilla, she's very petite, so I didn't want the hair to wear her, so I was careful in the sizes, like how big I put the hair. I wanted it to work for her as well so she could pull it off and I feel like she did.”

To Play Priscilla Presley, Cailee Spaeny Wore $50,000 Worth of Wigs — See Photos | Allure