The hair department on Mr. Irrelevant put David Corenswet through a serious transformation to play John Tuggle, going through dye jobs, two backup wigs and a ceremonial head shave to tell the story of the final pick of the 1983 NFL draft.
Corenswet, who plays the New York Giants running back in the film, required a sandy blonde dye job, a centre-parted fringe, and a thick mustache with overgrown stubble to capture Tuggle’s look. The film is directed by Jonathan Levine and written by Nick Santora, and also stars Isabel May and Michael Shannon.
Getting the David Corenswet Mr Irrelevant Look Right
Nikki Gooley, makeup and hair designer for Mr. Irrelevant, tells GQ that the brief was clear from the outset. ‘John Tuggle had quite an ’80s surfer kind of feel, his hair blonde from the sun and super bronzed,’ she says. Key hairstylist Chrissy Zemura worked from taped interviews from early in Tuggle’s career, as well as footage of the Mr. Irrelevant parade, a public march held in Newport Beach, California, which honoured the final draft pick each year.
Zemura dyed Corenswet’s natural dark hair into a sandy blonde, then reached for Organic Suku’s styling cream to keep flyaways in check without making the result look overdone. The goal was authenticity over product-heavy perfection. ‘Back then men did a lot more to their hair, but he was a footballer at the end of the day,’ Zemura says. ‘He kind of just wore his hair how he wore his hair. So I used a lot of that Suku style cream and I used a little bit of sea salt spray in some of the scenes just to make sure that the hair sits in its own natural pattern.’
The approach sounds straightforward, but the logistics behind it were anything but. Because the film was shot out of sequence, Zemura had to maintain two wigs that matched Corenswet’s blonde shag cut exactly, holding them in reserve for scenes that required continuity.
Why the Football Helmet Demanded Its Own Wig
One wig was kept specifically for scenes involving a NFL helmet. The problem was mechanical: the tight fit of a football helmet combined with the friction from Corenswet’s buzz cut would have wrecked a standard wig. A modified version was built to cover only the visible front and ends of the hair that showed beneath the helmet line.
‘We had to use a specific wig that we just needed the ends and some of the hair in the front,’ Zemura says. ‘So we just ruined one wig throughout the whole filming process.’ The sacrifice, judging by early reactions to Corenswet’s look, was worthwhile.
The buzz cut itself is not a styling choice but a plot point. The film follows Tuggle as he is diagnosed with cancer, and there is a scene where he shaves his head, first into a mohawk and then down to a complete buzz cut. Shooting out of order meant the hair department had to manage multiple versions of Corenswet’s hair simultaneously, moving between the full blonde shag and the shaved-down states depending on where each scene fell in the story’s timeline.
Corenswet, for his part, used the time in the hairstyling chair to prepare. Zemura recalls him repeating the line ‘Tuggle, Tuggle, California’ during sessions, working on the cadence of Tuggle’s accent. The hair work and the character work were happening in the same room at the same time.
Organic Suku’s styling cream features on the product side; the brand’s name comes up twice in Zemura’s account of getting the look right under changing conditions across a long shoot. For anyone chasing a low-fuss, texture-first result, that is a specific and direct recommendation from someone who used it across an entire film production, details available via Organic Suku.
