Monsters Hair Dept. Head Karen Bartek Nails the Period Without Kitsch
"I know how to make big hair, and I know how to make it stay.”
Welcome to the wild and wonderful era of Emmy Awards: Phase 1, a time before nomination voting when the arbitrary rules governing what is timely are set aside, and we can discuss projects that were released weeks or months earlier and deserve to be top of mind again. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story premiered on Netflix September 19, 2024.
Karen Bartek knows her way around cartoonish characters. Or rather, her career as a hair department head is rife with characters that might cry out for cartoonish hair but are instead anchored by Bartek’s experienced eye and steady hand. Think of Julia Roberts as big-haired, loud-mouthed Martha Mitchell in Gaslit or Kristen Wiig and Allison Janney in Palm Royale. That’s not including her work on everything from WandaVision to Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
Bartek’s work on Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story does the same for those ‘90s preppies and defense attorney Leslie Abramson, whose tight curls might look like a joke when recreated. They’re of the era but still TV attractive; realism is not sacrificed, but it’s also not served at the expense of storytelling. Still, that Leslie Abramson wig is a lot. Was Bartek nervous to set and forget it on actor Ari Graynor for the one-shot episode between Leslie and Erik (Cooper Koch)?
“Not really, her wig stayed pretty well, and Cooper’s stayed pretty well,” Bartek says. “It was so specific how I set his hair, with a little small round brush and lots of teasing and mousse. It wasn't gonna go anywhere, to be honest. I did go to beauty school in the ‘80s, so I know how to make big hair, and I know how to make it stay.”
As Erik, Koch’s hair didn’t change that much over the nine episodes. But as Lyle, Nicholas Alexander Chavez needed both the perfect dreamboat hair and the startling reveal that it’s a wig; beneath it, Lyle is bald, which gets exposed when Chloe Sevigny’s matriarch, Kitty, rips off his toupee. Not since Valley of the Dolls has a wig reveal been so memorable, partly because bolts in his skull secure Lyle’s toupee. And that detail came courtesy of Bartek.
“They said snaps in the script, but I couldn't find [examples of] snaps,” she says. “But I did find these weird bolts, and I found a picture. This man, he would literally drill like a little bolt, and then the hairpiece would bolt into it. Men losing their hair, they would just shave their head and put this bolt in. It's like a horror movie, to be honest with you. But Ryan [Murphy] really liked that photo—it's a little shock value—so it worked.”
Monsters was Bartek’s first time working with Murphy, so approaching him about that switch was a little “nerve-wracking,” she admits. But she understands the power of hair. More importantly, she understands the balance between appearance and storytelling. For Kitty, everyone wanted her to have a little more glam than the Menendez family pictures might have boasted (besides, what was chic in a previous era doesn’t always read so to modern eyes). As José Menendez, Javier Bardem insisted on hewing as closely to reality as possible, so Bartek made almost a full wig for him. She initially did the same for Erik and Lyle, but Murphy rejected them.
“Ryan didn't want it over the top because you see a lot of kitschy 1980s, and it just looks like bad hair,” she says. “ I originally had little hair pieces for the boys to make sure it all matched, and made it a little bigger. But Ryan nixed that because he thought it just was too much. He wanted the boys to look a little more realistic and not so ’80s. So that was tricky and took a few tests, but I think it came out pretty good. It just looked better, and it was better for the boys as well.”
Karen Bartek is an Emmy Award winner for her work on The Fresh Beat Band and a MUAH winner for her work on Alias. Her credits include many, many Marvel movies. Her go-to at craft services? “The coffee. Lots of coffee. I used to go for donuts, but I am gluten-free now. I'm a pretty healthy eater, so I usually go for the little vegetable pots that they make and fruit. And sometimes a chip here and there.”