The Great is Ripe With Epic Hair Moments — Courtesy of More Than 500+ Wigs

Show us someone who didn't love quirky Aunt Elizabeth (played by Belinda Bromilow) in the series, and we'll show you a liar. The character was decidedly lovable, if not obscure — a fact that Coles playfully gave nod to with her hair.

"Certainly with Aunt Elizabeth, we had fun playing with the shape of her wigs, giving her some of the masculine pieces used during that time," she said. "Her hair had a lot of taxidermy in there as well — real, preserved butterflies, bees, beetles, feathers. If you get a close look, you'll see all kinds of things in her wigs, and was hysterical trying to figure out what to put in there next time. Certainly at the parties we would go to town with the bees and butterflies, the idea being that these butterflies flying around her would land on her head, live out their lives, and then just stay nestled happily there. Obviously, we didn't find that in any of our research so it was completely fictional — we just thought it would be fun."

Every detail of each of the 500+ wigs was taken into consideration: "Back then, wigs were made with horse hair, so those were much more textured," said Coles. "The majority of our wigs were a mix of human hair and then yak hair to give it that rougher feel that was more realistic to the times. Some were also made with acrylic hair, like for the parties, and we had to be careful with how we styled those because if you take a normal iron rod to it, it would melt. Acrylic hair gets steamed the shape into the hair."

In a lot of the bedroom segments, where the wigs were apparently off and the actors were showing their "natural hair" — even those were wigs, too. In fact, in some cases, sometimes it involved two wigs, laid on top of each other.

"It was important for us to have both stories on what they looked like when they weren't done up for the extravagant parties, where it feels more vulnerable and raw," she said. "With Catherine the Great, she was different from the other characters. Her being so bohemian and a little out-there compared to the others, we wanted her style to be a smaller reflection of that. We decided to keep the same curly texture [in those scenes] and had hair pieces made for her in three different sizes of curl, so it created a wild texture that made her look, I think, really sweet. It was important we showed that side of her."

With all the heat styling and hair finessing that went into the making of each wig, you can only imagine the damage that might follow. To remedy that, Coles swears by the Vitapointe Creme Hairdress & Conditioner, which helps add back moisture to the hair when it gets dry.