Emma Stone Can Blame Judd Apatow for ‘Superbad’ Choice That Haunted Her Career
Close your eyes and tell me quick: What color is Emma Stone’s hair? If your kneejerk (and incorrect) response was “red,” you can blame Judd Apatow.
Producer Apatow realized he had a problem after the comedy Superbad was cast. Martha MacIsaac and Emma Stone were hired to play our heroes’ love interests, but both were brunettes. Come to think of it, so were Michael Cera and Jonah Hill but apparently their body types were enough to tell them apart. Someone asked Apatow what they should do about two brown-haired girlfriends, according to I AM MCLOVIN: How Superbad Became the Biggest Comedy Hit of Its Generation. He considered the problem, took a look at Stone, and suggested, “Well, maybe it could be red or something?”
Stone, making her film debut, didn’t put up a fuss. “We dyed her hair red, which I think she had never done before,” Apatow said. “And since then, she has cursed me because now people love her with red hair and she’s had to live with that for a lot of her adult life. It was a real tossed-off thought from someone who knows nothing about makeup and hair.”
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Weirdly, hair color played a big part in the early acting career of Stone, who was originally… a blonde? “When I first moved to L.A., I had this agent who thought, because I was blonde, that I only wanted to play cheerleaders," she told The Independent. “So she’d send me out for all these parts where they thought: ‘What a weird 15-year-old. It’s not going to work out!’ I don’t know if anyone necessarily underestimated me as a blonde — I think I just had a crappy agent.” She solved the problem by dying her hair brown and landing Superbad before shifting to red as filming began.
Stone isn’t the only natural blonde who found a comedy future thanks to red hair — at least according to one MGM hairdresser. That stylist took credit for developing Lucille Ball’s signature look, according to MeTV. “The hair is blonde, but the soul, it is fire,” claimed the hairdresser. “We will dye the hair red.”
Ball called it a business decision. “Red was a happy color. It was good with my eyes, and it photographed well. It turned out to be a successful color,” she explained. But as far as the hairdresser’s decision propelling her comedy career? “That story is ridiculous.”
Stone would probably agree. Blonde, brunette or red? She had the final word in a 2013 interview with Stylecaster: “It’s just hair.”
