RDA Forum

It's called a mullet. It's short in the front (and on top of the head) and long in the back. Best might be you take a couple of headshots of Mac (front, side) with you to the hairdresser

Sure "MacGyver" was seen with more or less highlights - that changed over the years.
In the first season or even better in "Ordinary Heroes" you can realize best the hair's color which I think is natural, with less highlights.
Later on in MacGyver, it went more and more blonded ("bleached"?).
The mullet was quite trendy in Germany in the 80ies, but not everybody had these highlights. Often, the color remained natural - depending on taste and perhaps money, or the quality of the hair...
... which seems to be no problem for MacGyver / RDA

would it be bleached?? I dont know if he would do that, could be lots of sunlight to, he sometimes was nicely sunburnt

Oh yeah it was bleached all right and got more and more light over the years because they (his producers or whatever) did not like his natural brown hair. And I guess he started going gray too later. So they kept making it more and more light. RDA once said he was told he looked like 'Shit on a stick' with his natural hair and so they made him bleach it :p

But I guess the question was rather about the cut, not the color if I got it right.

Anne wrote:Oh yeah it was bleached all right and got more and more light over the years because they (his producers or whatever) did not like his natural brown hair. And I guess he started going gray too later. So they kept making it more and more light. RDA once said he was told he looked like 'Shit on a stick' with his natural hair and so they made him bleach it :p

But I guess the question was rather about the cut, not the color if I got it right.

Thanks Anne, Really didn't know!!

Macgyver1989 wrote:Was Mac's hair thick, Straight, Wavy, Curly ??

I'd say it was straight. RDA's hair is straight. I don't know whether it's thick... or was thick... it seems soft and a bit wavy now.

Yes and the longer it gets the more wavy it gets

Anne wrote:

Macgyver1989 wrote:Was Mac's hair thick, Straight, Wavy, Curly ??

I'd say it was straight. RDA's hair is straight. I don't know whether it's thick... or was thick... it seems soft and a bit wavy now.

Annelies wrote:Yes and the longer it gets the more wavy it gets

This 'conversation' is getting more and more interesting every day ,thanks

And it all depended on which season of MacGyver you saw as to how long his hair was.....

Early seasons - it was relatively short in the front and in the back:



Later seasons, it was medium to long length -







(I liked the medium length the best - but that's just me).

Anne wrote:Oh yeah it was bleached all right and got more and more light over the years because they (his producers or whatever) did not like his natural brown hair. And I guess he started going gray too later. So they kept making it more and more light. RDA once said he was told he looked like 'Shit on a stick' with his natural hair and so they made him bleach it :p

I don't know that they necessarily "made" him bleach it. A lot of the hair and wardrobe choices came from RDA himself. He did mention the "shit on a stick" comment in an interview once, although I think that may have been more a reference to the generic unstyled cut on a tall skinny guy, not necessarily the color alone. When I was visiting the set, I was talking to the producer's wife, who was also the publicist, and the topic came up of the changes in hair and clothing styles over the seasons. She said they would often make recommendations but that in the end they usually let him make the decisions, (the switch from the brown leather to black leather jackets, for example). Her comment: "What can we do? We like to keep him happy."

I mentioned the episode in which his hair changed color right in the middle of the episode. (That's a good trivia question - go back to first season and identify the episode in which he changed color in the middle of shooting and so the scenes flip back and forth from dark brown to lightened highlights in the same episode.) She said that had been right around his birthday, he was starting to show a little gray, and he decided he wanted to try lightening it a little. At the time, the mullet (or "hockey hair" as RDA usually called it) was in fashion, and so from the end of the first season on, his hair became increasingly longer and lighter, often just depending on who the hair stylist was on set. You'll also notice that his eye color lightened toward the end of MacGyver as well.

Despite the fact that many people wore mullets back then, MacGyver sort of became a symbol of the time and the style. I can remember my hairdresser back in the 80s saying that it was very common for kids to come into the salon with a picture of MacGyver and say they wanted their hair cut just like his.

Then when he did Legend, he went back to his original brown color, although he had a bit of help from the bottle to maintain his "natural" brown. (For comparison, Past the Bleachers was shot at about the same time, and his hair was already becoming silver.) He was definitely coloring it brown in the beginning of Stargate, until he just couldn't be bothered anymore, and he let the natural silver come through. I think he'll agree to hair and fashion recommendations for a particular role, but in the end, I suspect those decisions are mostly RDA's own. For better or worse.

Kate