If you’ve stumbled across any poster, behind-the-scenes pap shot, or trailer for Apple TV+’s upcoming thriller series The Crowded Room, it’s impossible to ignore that Tom Holland looks… different. He’s got a tortured look in his eyes for his role as criminal Danny Sullivan, but the real shock is that you can see his eyes at all. Because Tom Holland has bangs.
The Crowded Room takes place in 1979, an era in which long, luscious locks reigned supreme and natural hair textures were celebrated. Holland fits right in with a curly shag a la Billy Dunne from Daisy Jones & The Six. Celebrities have been helping bangs make a comeback for a while now, but bang icons like Zooey Deschanel and Dakota Johnson have nothing on Holland’s open-parted fringe. The whole look screams of psychedelic rock and the hippie chic of the ‘70s, but the question remains: Is Tom Holland wearing a wig in The Crowded Room?
Surprisingly, the answer is no. Holland’s hair in The Crowded Room is all natural, baby. Although you wouldn’t know it from his signature smoothed-back style, Holland has quite curly hair like the rest of his family (although he dyed it darker for the role). The Crowded Room is the first project since his MCU debut that lets his grown-out waves flow onto center stage. Holland told RadioTimes.com that he struggled with his new look: “I don’t like my hair being that dark,” he said. “I really like how my hair is like my mum’s, kind of red. Yeah, it was tough. That was a part of the show that I don’t miss for sure.”
The haircut itself isn’t super flattering, but Holland was actually the one who insisted on it to make his character come to life. He told Stuff, “The studio wouldn’t really allow me to cut my hair in the way that we did. Ultimately, I just took an executive decision to say, ‘I’m going to do it anyway because this is how I think the character should look.’ I’m delighted that we did, because I think the hair is the icing on the cake for the character.”
He may have been happy with the final product, but there was someone who wasn’t as much of a fan. “Bless Zendaya, she had a lot to put up with, with me looking like that for 10 months; it was rough,” he joked.
Zendaya and other anti-bangers can breathe now: The series’ press tour shows that Holland’s hair is back to normal. Prepare to see Twitter roasts and a lot more shaggy bang inspo on your Pinterest feed when The Crowded Room premieres on Apple TV+ Friday, June 9.