She’s no negative Nancy.
Nancy Wheeler ended “Stranger Things” with a short haircut – and the show’s Emmy-nominated hair designer, Sarah Hindsgaul, told The Post that actress Natalia Dyer herself brought in the reference photo.
“We felt like Nancy has a tendency to cut her hair off when she needs a change. So we knew we needed something shorter,” she explained.
The retro Netflix hit “Stranger Things,” which recently ended after five seasons and nearly ten years, followed Nancy, Steve (Joe Keery), Nancy’s brother Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and various other friends in the ‘80s as they dealt with threats from the sinister “upside down.”
By the end of the show, Nancy became proficient with weapons, and she also broke up with her long-term boyfriend, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton). Despite the will they / won’t they with ex-boyfriend Steve, she ended the show single. She set out to make a life for herself, and ended up working at a newspaper. The final scene showed her with shorter hair.
“We played a lot with some really short haircuts, and it just didn’t feel feminine enough. It was this whole balance about her. She’s a boss girl,” Hindsgaul explained.
“She is hardcore, and I don’t think she feels she needs to attract male attention, but she’s quite soft at the same time. So how do you get these two elements into the same person?”
Hindsgaul said that Dyer sent her a reference photo, and Cara Buono, who plays Nancy’s mother, Karen Wheeler, also sent the same photo.
“I was like, ‘We can’t do the same to both of you!’ But it says a little bit about how those two women are also alike, mom and daughter, and both coming out super strong on the other side.”
She explained that Dyer found an old photo of Julia Roberts “when she had that short hair,” in the early ‘90s, shortly after “Steel Magnolias,” “Pretty Woman” and “Flatliners.” At the end of “Stranger Things,” it’s 1989.
“We went with that inspiration. We went a little bit shorter on it [than Roberts had], but it’s the same energy of a soft wave and a little bit of pretty. But also, I think Julia Roberts also had those oversize suits in the early 90s. So that was [Dyer’s] inspiration.”
Sigourney Weaver in the “Alien” movies was also an inspiration for Nancy’s mid-Season 5 look, she confirmed.
“Yes, that was definitely my big reference this year. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is so perfect.’ Because when we find these references, it’s really important that it has the same hair type as the character. I can’t just go and find a reference and then suddenly they have a different curl pattern and a different color. It will take you out of who they are. So it has to fit within the frame.”
She described Nancy’s look as, “so kick-ass.”
