Tina Kakadelis
One of the most memorable lines from Fleabag is a simple one. “Hair is everything,” Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s character emphatically says to her sister. It’s true, hair is everything. Perhaps no one recognizes that more than Moira Frazier, the department head of hair for Abbott Elementary. The charming sitcom follows a group of teachers at a public school in Philadelphia. At the center is the ever-positive Janine (Quinta Brunson, who also created the show) who refuses to let budget cuts, an out of touch principal, and the grind of teaching get in her way.
Two-time Emmy-nominated Moira Frazier sat down with TV Obsessive’s Tina Kakadelis to discuss her beginnings in film and TV, the power of a hair part change, and guinea pig wigs. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
I saw that you used to charge your cousin $2 to braid their hair, which I thought was hilarious. When did it click that this could be a real career for you? And how did film and TV come into it?
Moira Frazier: Oh, God. It clicked when I was a kid. My mom’s a hairstylist and I grew up watching her do hair in the salon. I was like, how is she transforming these people and how does she know they won’t hate it? I didn’t know you had to do a consultation (laughs).
The older I got, I realized that’s what the beauty industry is. People come, they say, hey, I want to get a curl, I want to get a wrap, whatever the case may be. That’s the industry and that’s how it works. I always had a heart for it.
I used to beg my cousins to let me do their hair. Beg my aunties like, let me do your kids’ hair for $2. Well, actually I wanted more, but they only gave me $2.
Did your mom ever do anything with film and TV? How did you decide to not fully follow the salon path and go the film and TV route?
I went the salon path for a while. Years ago, I was on a show called Hair Battle Spectacular, and I met this guy on the show named Bryson Connolly. He’s one of my good friends, and he was working on a show called Vampire Diaries down in Atlanta.
He was like, okay, we need a third for the show. I didn’t know what a third was. When you crew up, you have a department head, a key, and a third, and then obviously a whole team. I had no idea what the third was because I lived in Ohio at the time.
He’s like, come on and drive down here from Ohio to Atlanta, which is something we always used to do. We loved a road trip, so it was nothing to drive down there. We went, and I kid you not, I’m thinking in my mind, I’m just helping out, you know what I mean?
I just have these three days where I’m down here, we’re staying with a friend and I’m going back to my clients. So I did the three days. Didn’t realize it was a trial run. Didn’t realize they wanted me for real, full time. Before you know it, I was back home in Ohio. They were like, wait, where’d you go? They wanted me to come back down. I didn’t go, but I still maintain a positive relationship with them to this day.
We’re all in the union together and they still have my full support. We laugh about that story because I truly was so green then. I’m like, you should have told me this is a third position, which means you’re going to be there for XYZ days.
Now that I’m in my current position, anybody I talk to who comes on my team, baby, they get a full rundown. That was how I got into TV and film. My first day on the set was Vampire Diaries, and it was so interesting. I was so intrigued. The whole experience was great. Shoutout to Daniel Curet, who was a department head at that time for Vampire Diaries. But it was a fun experience.
I saw that you’ve created a digital planner on your website for hairstylists who are working on film and TV productions. That seemed to me a means of wanting to reach down and pull up people behind you. Is that something that’s important to you?
Absolutely! My website is Fingaz Beauty Academy. I have been teaching in this industry since 2009. When I say teaching, I’m talking about being a licensed instructor. I came out here to California now for film and TV, but I also did a lot of trade shows, platform work, and platform artistry work before I came out with my own program, products, and things of that nature.
I love my mom. She’s in the beauty industry, but she can only teach me what she knew about the salon world. I noticed that even though I have friends in the film and TV industry, a lot of people don’t really tell you a lot of things. They kind of let you do things on your own, which is great, but it’s always good to bring someone up behind you with proper training. You want to create a community of people you can be able to trust who aren’t going to stab you in the back just to get that next job.
This industry can be ruthless, but everybody is not like that. I have faith in building up our community as hairstylists and makeup artists so we can come up together and stick together. At the end of the day, when the director needs someone on set, they’re not going to just say one department. They’re going to say hair and makeup. They need hair and makeup. It’s always a combination of the two.
I’ve always had a sense of unity, but a lot of times people don’t share, they don’t talk about how it works. That’s how I went through it. They don’t give those guidelines and steps which are okay. Sometimes you do have to learn it on your own because you get some people who come in and can be a little stubborn. You can only do so much.
I just hope and pray that I’m able to help people who want to join this industry. There were people who helped me. I know what it’s like to go on set and not know where I’m supposed to be or where I’m supposed to go. Then you get the famous line, did you read the call sheet? It’s like, bro, I just got here (laughs).
Not everybody understands how a set runs. They don’t know. For me, I always try to make life as easy as possible. Especially when people come to my show, Abbott Elementary. I always make it a point to set everybody up for success all the way across the board.
With Abbott Elementary, you’ve been there since the beginning. What is the biggest change from day one to the end of Season 4, where we’re at now?
Oh God, the story we’re telling through hair. For Quinta [Brunson], it was so important to tell that story in this way. With me being there since day one, having these characters where there was a story to be told since the inception of this show through hair, Quinta knew this. She knew Janine was going to get a glow up in Season 3.
You can tell with the little things that she would write, like Janine’s hair is parted to the different side in Season 2. Then, Season 3, she’s in her district role. Now we’re going to put this part down the middle, which means business. Coming into Season 4, she’s relaxed. She’s matured in her relationship. She knows herself. Now she’s the one giving advice to Barbara. In the past, Barbara was giving the advice. Ava, Jacob, everyone’s given Janine advice, but now she’s the one who’s the voice of reason. She’s matured and it shows through her hair.
That’s why I love telling this story and I’m just so happy I’m able to be a part of it.
I’m curious, because you get to do crazy things like the guinea pig wigs and the Halloween episode, but then it really does come down to just the part of Janine’s hair. Can you talk a little bit about the joy you find from the really small touches and then the crazy stuff you also get to do?
As hairstylists, creators, and department heads, we always want to go above and beyond, you know? We always want to say, oh, we’re going to do a ponytail, but can this be like a 60-inch ponytail?
We’re always thinking of the dramatics of it all, but one thing I love about it is how important the subtle differences are. The hair is a little bit more defined. The curls are more defined. Everything is done with intention, even down to the type of products we use.
If you’re using certain products, and then your hair naturally starts to swell, like natural curly hair does, it swells over time if you’re not using certain products. You’ll see it go from confined to bigger, bigger, bigger. With this season, we wanted to maintain that consistency. That’s why everything has been a little bit more together with her hair.
Those are the things I love to see, even though it can be repetitive. As a hairstylist, you will notice when you watch other shows, you’ll notice continuity. That’s often because we’re so used to continuity. I’m always in continuity mode and it’s harder than you think to maintain continuity when you’re doing the same thing over and over and over again, and then boom, you get hit with something else. We get to have fun with those extreme looks and still tell the story to elevate the characters.
Continuity is such an interesting thing because obviously anyone who watches movies is aware of it, but how does your brain work through the continuity of hair? I’m thinking about the number of times I’ve moved my hair in this short interview. It’s out of control. I can’t imagine what that’s like on a film set.
You can’t control when actors get on the set and they want to move their hair a certain way. They frame in a different way. You can’t control it. All you can do is be that really good hairstylist and be on standby and be like, okay, let me put it back where it should be.
Sometimes I’m like, no, that’s not what it was like in this last frame, it has to be like this. So sometimes it’s good and sometimes they also are telling that story. For example, like you said, how your hair has changed, but that’s the personality of you. If you wanted it to stay still, you’d put some spray on and it wouldn’t move, but you are a very open person. You are very it’s-gonna-go-where-it’s-gonna-go person. Am I right?
You’re 100% right! There’s a little tin of hair cream that I have and barely remember to use that sits right off camera.
That’s what I’m saying! You know where to put it if you need to, but that’s the same thing. That is the hair’s personality. It has to go with the character and its movements.
My last question for you is about the guinea pig wigs, because I just think it’s such a weird, fun thing. How does doing a wig for a guinea pig differ from doing a wig for a human person?
It’s very different. I had to do wig fittings (laughs). First of all, I had to make sure the wig actually fit on the guinea pig and see if the guinea pig was going to be comfortable with wearing the wig. If a guinea pig was comfortable, then I had to make sure I put a little chin strap on it so I could hold the wig in place because you can’t use glue.
I’d rather do it on a guinea pig than do it on anything else, because I am deathly afraid of mice and rats. I thank God they didn’t write a mouse in there because I wouldn’t have been able to do it (laughs).
I have to ask because I’ve never heard of a wig fitting for a guinea pig. What did that entail?
I had to talk to the animal wrangler, and I had to ask them what their dimensions were. I will say this, I was going to go as far as making a fake guinea pig that I could try to put a wig on. I was up looking on YouTube because nobody’s ever made a fake guinea pig before, so I’m like, how can I quickly make this wig so it can be pinned on this guinea pig and still read as Melissa?
That was the other thing. It had to read as Melissa. I had to give the wig to Dustin [Osborne], who’s my key, so he could style the wig, so I can put it on the guinea pig. It was a whole process. I was like, Lord, this is going for the books (laughs).
It’s truly been such a blast as someone who’s, like I said, not great with hair, to watch the hair journey as a novice and just really enjoy it. It’s been a fun time all throughout Abbott Elementary.
Thank you so, so much. We work really hard. My team of Dustin, Christina Joseph, Natita Stribling, and everyone else, we have become a well-oiled machine that makes sure everything runs like it needs to run. As well as all of the hair stylists and artists that came in from the local 706 you know, I couldn’t be more blessed with an amazing cast and crew.
