Shalita Grant recalls Black hair mistreatment on NCIS: New Orleans leading to the threat of "balding" and emotional damage

The Mary Sue

The You star says she suffered because the now-canceled CBS drama had hair stylists who were inexperienced with Black hair. “I had started documenting some of the physical damage that was going on — it’s harder to document the emotional damage," she said in an interview on The Tamron Hall Show. The physical damage was that the wigs she was required to wear were causing damage to her natural hair. “In six months time, I had already had a bald spot in my head from season 2,” she said. The continuation of that had gotten to the point that, by Season 4, Grant said she noticed the “threat” of balding at the front of her hairline. “Everybody on Twitter let me know, ‘That looks like a helmet!’ by that point I didn’t care anymore, because I was protecting myself," said Grant. She added: “When you get a show and it’s a multimillion-dollar show, and you see that your treatment in the hair department is totally different from what’s going on with your co-workers on a granular level you’re like ‘Okay like that sucks like I have to pay for my own wigs. I have to come with my hair done. But this is the multimillion dollar production,’ but then to get blamed for production, right?”