As a small child of the early '90s, I (along with countless other children) watched Robbin Williams dance around my TV screen as Genie [1] in Aladdin on a near daily basis and marvelled at Jasmine's iconic bubble ponytail and winged liner. When it came to translating those cartoons into live-action [2] characters, the hair was both essential to get right, and extremely difficult to execute.
The makeup and hair designer on the film, Christine Blundell chatted with POPSUGAR about just how the hair of Aladdin [3], Genie, and Jasmine came to life in the 2019 version of the film.
Read on to find out how these characters looks were achieved in real life.
Jasmine
The actress who plays Jasmine, Naomi Scott, chopped her hair into a bun for a role before being cast as the long-haired princess. That required Blundell to use hair pieces to add length, and it couldn't be too heavy either.
"The hardest one was the iconic A Whole New World hairdo; I wanted to do a little nod to Jasmine from the cartoon, but we weren't trying to duplicate anything," she said. "I made various prototypes of the [bubble ponytail] and then put it on Naomi to see if she could work with it while dancing and all that. It was a bit heavy, so I had to use less hair and fill it out with some crepe hair so it was lighter."
Aladdin
Mina Massoud, who plays Aladdin, also went through an extensive hair regimen for his role. "Mina's hair was the biggest challenge, because he has very curly hair," Blundell said. "I didn't want to use too many chemicals, but we did end up straightening it over a two week period, and smoothed down the sides by blow drying them and using a straightening iron on a day to day basis."
Genie
When it came to the most magical aspect of the film, it was a challenge to make sure Genie's hair didn't overshadow Will Smith [4]'s performance.
"We tried a few things, like a mohawk, and then we settles the top knot, since it's quite iconic and it seems to work well," she said. "Will has such an expressive face that we didn't want to overpower it with a big fancy weird hair-do."