David Corenswet wore two blonde wigs to play John Tuggle in Mr. Irrelevant, and one was reserved for helmet scenes. The setup gave the production a way to hold the same blonde shag cut across a shoot that did not unfold in sequence.
Chrissy Zemura’s blonde reset
Chrissy Zemura dyed Corenswet’s hair into a sandy blonde and kept the finish moving with Organic Suku styling cream, plus a little sea salt spray in some scenes. She said, “Back then men did a lot more to their hair, but he was a footballer at the end of the day,” which fits the film’s split job: look period-correct without letting the style drift into overdesign.
Nikki Gooley described John Tuggle as having quite an “80s surfer kind of feel,” with hair “blonde from the sun and super bronzed.” Corenswet is not a natural blonde, so the team had to build that look around him rather than simply lean on his own hair, and that choice kept the styling work central to the performance instead of treating it as a finishing touch.
Two wigs, one helmet
Two wigs stayed on standby because the film was shot out of order, and one of them was used specifically when Corenswet wore a football helmet. That solved a practical problem that plain styling could not: a helmet scene can destroy the continuity of a carefully shaped cut, so the production kept a duplicate ready to preserve the same silhouette from shot to shot.
Corenswet also repeated “Tuggle, Tuggle, California” during hairstyling time to get the ups and downs of John’s accent, which shows how much of the role was being assembled before the camera rolled. The film also includes Tuggle shaving his head first into a mohawk and then into a complete buzz cut, so the wig work had to track a character who is moving through visible changes rather than staying fixed in one look.
John Tuggle in Mr
For readers following the John Tuggle trailer, the takeaway is simple: the blonde look was not a single hair decision but a controlled system built for continuity, helmet scenes, and an actor who was not starting from blonde hair. That leaves one useful open point: how much of the finished look came from Corenswet’s own hair versus the wigs is not spelled out, and the styling credits matter because the film’s period texture depends on that balance.
