Leslie Bibb’s character Kate has been going viral since the third season of “The White Lotus” began.
From her grimacing smile reaction to Kate’s unexpected political leanings, even Bibb’s haircut has had fans of the hit HBO show reeling.
Bibb tells TODAY.com she first heard the vulgar name of the hairstyle from a friend of her co-star, Aimee Lou Wood, who plays Chelsea on Season 3 of “The White Lotus.”
“Aimee Lou is British. Aimee Lou is like my sister. So we’re very close, so we talk a lot, and do voice memos to each other,” Bibb says. “I think it was maybe the first episode or something, and she sent, ‘My friend wanted me to tell you that he’s f——- loving you and your c—-y little bob.”
Bibb then went to her hairstylist, Chris McMillan, whom she worked with on this season of “The White Lotus,” to get a haircut after the season began airing. (McMillan is also the mastermind behind Jennifer Anistonโs iconic hairstyle on โFriends.โ)
“Chris had been cutting my hair for the whole thing, he’d fly in and out, and he would just maintain it, which was so nice of him to always find time,” Bibb says.
During the appointment, Bibb says she told him: “Oh, there’s ‘The Rachel,’ which is a nice name, and then there’s the c—- little bob.”
โI walk in … and I say it to him, and it made him laugh so hard, so I didnโt really think anything of it, right?โ she adds.
Bibb says she didn’t realize McMillan was filming, and that he “put this amazing video together.” He posted it to Instagram earlier this month, and their candid moment quickly went viral.
“It really took off … ,” she says, referring to the name of her signature bob. “But I like that everyone’s not being so precious about that word. I am not that precious around that word. I look at it like the British folk do, and yeah, it is really a perfect description of that bob.”
McMillan’s post has garnered more than 43,000 likes, and details exactly how he cut Bibb’s hair to make a short, blunt bob.
โContinuity plays a big part when you do a TV show and/or film, so having something really easy and simple to maintain, especially in that humidity of Thailand, I think we nailed it,โ McMillan says in the video. โAnd then we also created a kind of iconic look.โ
Bibb adds: “I think Chris cut it a little shorter in the back, but a little A-line so it’s not so heavy. OK that’s the scoop! That’s the secret, not so heavy!”
Some fans have likened the cut to a photo of a dog with a blunt cut, which she responded to live on TODAY on March 27.
“Look at this dog,” she says as the photo was put on a monitor in the studio. “Wait, I have the same haircut!!!”
“I sometimes will look at people and go, ‘Do I look like a Cocker Spaniel?’ When I saw it I was like, ‘I do have a Cocker Spaniel essence!”
As for the future of the cut in real life, Bibb tells TODAY.com she’s open to anything.
“This is a version of the (bob) โ it’s gotten longer,” she says of her current hairstyle. “I don’t know. We’ll see. Hopefully I’ll get something fun. I’m doing this other show, ‘Palm Royale,’ so I get to wear a wig, which is really fun, but it’s sort of nice to change.”
“I’m not attached to hair,” she continues. “I’ll cut it, I’ll color it, you know, it’s just hair. It’ll grow back.”
