Making The Office's Meredith Look Bald Was Trickier Than It Seems
Because NBC's prolific mockumentary series "The Office" primarily focuses on the day-to-day of the office employees of Dunder Mifflin (a paper supply company in Scranton, Pennsylvania), it seems a bit unlikely that the series would ever need to use prosthetics on any of its characters. Indeed, when one thinks of prosthetic makeup in television these days, their minds are no doubt drawn to the intensive prosthetic makeup used on Viserys Targaryen (Paddy Considine) in "House of the Dragon," or the incredibly difficult construction of the Clickers on "The Last of Us."
That said, there was one memorable instance in which prosthetics were required on the set of "The Office" — during the Season 9 episode "Lice," in which Meredith Palmer (Kate Flannery) shaves her head to remove the titular insects from her scalp. In an interview with Mashable, hairstylist Kim Ferry revealed that Meredith's bald head was actually a massive undertaking that took weeks of preparation and involved enlisting help from outside of the production — which might surprise any fans who thought that Flannery was wearing an ordinary, everyday bald cap.
There were many different factors to be considered when building the cap
Hairstylist Kim Ferry (who worked on "The Office" from Season 2 all the way up to Season 9) told Mashable that Kate Flannery's bald cap was the most elaborate hairstyle she ever pulled off within the series.
"That was three weeks of prep for me, and I had to be able to figure everything out, because Greg Daniels wanted [Flannery] to shave her head... And I just couldn't allow it," Ferry said. "[She] was like, 'I don't want to shave my head!' and I was like, 'I'm not gonna let that happen.'" Ferry recruited a well-known makeup artist named Ed French who provided her with all the pieces and prosthetics necessary for the bald cap to look realistic.
On top of actually crafting the bald cap, flattening Flannery's real hair, and crafting a realistic wig, Ferry also had to work alongside the prop department to find a safe (and fake) way to show Meredith Palmer shaving her head in real-time on "The Office." Considering all the different variables that Ferry had to account for, it's not surprising that this prosthetic took so long to perfect. In any case, this story makes the final effect seem all the more impressive since Flannery's bald cap actually turned out quite well despite all the obstacles Ferry had to overcome.