From motorized swans to glistening pearls, the many wigs of Golda Rosheuvel’s regal Queen Charlotte have practically become characters of their own on Bridgerton. 

But the process of creating the hairpieces, dearest gentle readers, is more laborious than Lady Whistledown’s efforts to conceal her identity from the Ton. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of Shondaland, Erika Ökvist, the hair and makeup designer on seasons 2 and 3 of the spicy period drama, takes Entertainment Weekly behind the palace walls to share some intel about the process and unexpected hair crises, including the time one of the Queen’s more memorable wigs — a hollow headpiece, decked out with motorized swans atop a lake — unexpectedly disrupted production.

The wig in question (spotlighted below in the video) is featured in the Penelope Featherington-led season 3, though Ökvist had initially masterminded it for the season prior. She sourced a 3D-printed clockwork, operated via battery pack, and placed four transparent swans atop the clockwork to create the illusion of the elegant birds circling a lake. While the wigs that Rosheuvel generally don tend to be on the heavier side, this particular creation was not, as it was hollow on the inside to make room for the lake.

“I did the technical prototype with the clockwork going around, but there wasn’t really a scene where that wig fit in season 2,” Ökvist shares. “And then when we came into season 3, I read the script and I was like, ‘Oh! It’s going to be perfect for this because she’s sitting quite still.’” It took about three weeks for Ökvist to complete the finishing details, only for a very unexpected issue to arise. 

“With the swan swimming around, there was a sound issue,” Ökvist recalls with a laugh. “I had to soundproof the swimming so that the sound man would still befriend me at the end of that scene. And that’s something you wouldn’t have thought about. I had to put sponges and stuff inside of it to sort of buff it up so that you couldn’t hear the click, click, click. And she could still have it on whilst doing dialogue.”

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It’s these little unforeseen details that made Ökvist’s work day all the more interesting, which led to pretty atypical lessons learned by trial and error. The sheer height of Queen Charlotte’s wigs, for example, mean that Rosheuvel is unable to travel by car in between sets with them on. “Obviously she doesn’t fit in the car, so whenever we are on location, we have to put the wig on in the actual location,” Ökvist says. 

Crafting the Queen’s elaborate hairpieces, ones that every so often tell their own stories, is an art form in itself. For the recent third season alone, Ökvist created at least 20 hairpieces for the eight episodes, though not all made it into the season. As opposed to human hair wigs, the crew sources synthetic wigs, which are generally much more lightweight. Still, wearing the headpieces is certainly not as seamless as Rosheuvel makes it look. “A lot of times we might have two or three wigs to make up one wig,” says Ökvist of the dense looks, all of which are shaped and held up by a metal cage. (It’s the same tried and trued method used by women of those historical periods.)

The hairpieces, as with the world of Bridgerton as a whole, are inspired by “but not dictated by history,” says Ökvist of the historical and modern inspirations. “The Queen’s wigs are like a hundred years prior to the Regency era, a look that’s called Georgian. So we’re just taking that inspiration from history. You’ve seen in Georgian times a lot of women who have got ships in their hair and maybe even got a bird cage with real birds, mind you. It’s history, mixed with something you [would] see at the Met Gala. And the other [element] is surprise, so that every time you see the Queen, it’s like, ‘Oh, this is new.'”

How those women managed to move around in those things, on the other hand… “It’s a little bit like when you’re carrying a bucket of water on your head,” Ökvist says. She also makes note of how that balancing act translates into Rosheuvel’s subtle mannerisms on screen. “When she turns, she turns her whole body, and that just makes her look even more regal,” says Ökvist, before noting, “But it is out of necessity to maintain this really heavy weight.” But Rosheuvel, Ökvist says, is “such a trooper” and carries the looks “like a queen.”

Long wig the Queen!