“Sinners” hair designer Shunica Terry remembers the first time she saw a photo of Miles Caton, one of the movie’s stars. Looking at his “hair,” she thought, “Yeah, he’s going to have to cut it.”
This was after director Ryan Coogler asked him to work on a supernatural thriller in which Caton would play the son of a preacher. Sammy (Caton) is called by his twin cousins Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan) to sing at their latest venture, a juke joint. Vampires descend upon the community, except when the sun sets.
The film is set in the Mississippi Delta in the 1930s, so Terry wanted every detail to be accurate. “Once Miles agreed to commit to it, he cut his hair,” she says. Texture was important to Sammy’s story. Before he sets out on his journey, he works out in the fields to pick cotton. Reflecting on this, Terry says, “After Miles had his hair cut, we created little coils in the twists of his hair because we wanted to represent that he was working in the hot sun.”
As Sammy hopped in the car with his cousins, Terry said, “We fluffed it, took it out, and patted it smooth.” She added that those details were small, but nonetheless important to Sammy’s journey.
A pivotal scene in the film is when Sammy sings “I Lied to You” at a juke joint and the tone changes. He pierces the supernatural veil and the dance floor is filled with timeless musicians and dancers from past, present, and future. Terry calls the West African griots featured in Juke Joints one of his “favorite pieces.” She wanted him to feel “very ancestral.” She researched various images and sent them to a team in New Orleans to create the character’s hairpiece. “Texture was important,” she says. “I want it as high as possible. When he moves his head, I want to see it move.”
