There’s a reason Rachel Brosnahan‘s character in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Miriam “Midge” Maisel, always has the same hairstyle.
Jerry DeCarlo, hair department head for the Amazon Prime Video series, told Refinery29 that getting a dramatic haircut (or any kind of hairstyle change) wasn’t common for women in 1958.
By the late ’50s, almost every woman rocked a permanent wave, Jerry explained. Midge’s curled-under style — aka the pageboy — is a classic example of the time period.
“Back then, you’d keep the same style for basically 10 years or beyond,” Jerry said. “Women in that time didn’t change their hair on a daily basis. They had it washed at a salon, or would do a clean curl set and brush it out at home. [On the show] we keep it pretty much the same.”
Jerry noted that Midge’s hair did change a little bit from the first season to the second, but not much: “There had to be a perkiness to Midge. We shortened the wig from the first couple of episodes of the show to make it more perky. She has a perky quality as a character, so we wanted the wig to match.”
Jerry added that the passage of time from season one to two isn’t that long, so Midge and Joel (Michael Zegen) have only been separated for about a year at this point.
“If she changes her look, it would have to be in season three,” he teased. “By season two, she’s still discovering who and what she is. The dramatic thing about her now is that she looks one way, but sounds another.”
Season three of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel premieres on December 6! Watch the trailer.
Pictured: (L) Rachel Brosnahan filming The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel with Michael on Thursday (August 29) in New York City, and (R) with Kevin Pollak on Wednesday.
