‘Hunting Wives’ Star Malin Akerman Explains Why Margo Has Multiple Wigs

Malin Åkerman knows one of the biggest mysteries to come out of the “The Hunting Wives” is exactly how many wigs she wears throughout the series.

At the onset of the Netflix drama, Åkerman, who has shoulder-length blond hair in real life, dons a brownish-red wig to portray scheming and seductive Texas socialite Margo Banks. That wig, which was actually Åkerman’s second, later got swapped out for a third.

“First of all, I had a wig fitting in LA. Then they go off, and they make a wig that is sized for my head,” Åkerman explained during an interview on the Aug. 19 episode of the “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast.

“We get to North Carolina (to film the series) and we put the wig on, and it fits great and whatever, but it’s not quite the color or the shape that we had talked about,” she continued.

The Swedish-born actor recalled showrunner Rebecca Cutter frowning when she saw her model the wig for producers. Åkerman agreed the wig’s throwback 1980s look wasn’t right for wealthy wild child Margo.

“It looked a little bit like I had walked out of ‘Dallas’ or ‘Dynasty,'” she joked.

A stylist for the show took Åkerman back to a trailer where they searched through a “box of wigs.”

The pair found another wig that wasn’t the right size for Åkerman. “But the color is good and it’s really long, and we can do something with it,” she said.

“Anyway, that ended up being the wig that we had to go with because we had no time to make a new one,” she explained, adding that it “takes weeks” to create a proper wig.

That second wig was then sent to a wigmaker to be sized for Åkerman. “But when it came (back), it was a different color,” the actor recalled, laughing.

Åkerman said a scene was added to the series that showed Margo getting her hair colored as her husband, Jed (Dermot Mulroney), gears up to run for governor.

“You see me getting glammed up, and I’ve got like tin foil in my hair on the wig – the tin-foiled wig hair — because the new wig was lighter,” she said.

The series’s behind-the-scenes wig dramas were no big deal to Åkerman.

“It happens,” she said.

As for why she didn’t opt to simply dye her own hair to play Margo, Åkerman explained that because of a thyroid issue, her “hair quality” at the time “wasn’t great.”

“So thinking of like dyeing it and putting extensions in and stuff, it was just going to start falling out,” said Åkerman.

“If we get a second season,” she added, “we’re going to go with the dyeing.”