Today Show Stylist Apologizes For Natural Hair Model Disaster

Remember this post that went viral last week with the TODAY stylist that made that huge hair disaster style on a natural hair model on national TV?

Well since then they stylist Deepica Mutyala got wind of how everyone was feeling about her efforts and has since issued an apology:

Personally, I think the stylist was just under a ton of pressure and I believe it was never her intent to make the model, who we now know is Malyia McNaughton, look crazy.

At the end of the day, it was pretty funny and many of us still wanted to hear the back story. In an interview with The Cut, Malyia was very forthcoming about what happened that day and how she felt about the stylist who did her hair.

Read a snip below:

Was this your first time working with Deepica?

Yeah, this was my first time working with her. I was invited by the producers of the Today show and I’m very grateful they had me. They had already done a dry run that night, but I wasn’t included because they were still trying to find someone that fit what they were trying to do.

So they reached out the night before, and I was really excited for the opportunity to go. We [Deepica and I] met backstage and she was super-sweet. We practiced the style that we intended to perform live on air and I actually liked it. I even told her that I looked forward to trying it when I got home.

When you practiced it backstage, did your hair look completely different?

It was essentially supposed to be a curly ponytail that kind of goes high on the head and kind of combines with the bangs. I had never tried the style before, but once she showed me the inspiration photo, I knew my hair could do it.

As the segment was airing live, did you get a sense that your hair wasn’t panning out to what you and Deepica had planned?

Unfortunately once the cameras rolled live, the pressure just kind of hit. I kind of knew halfway through that it wasn’t coming together the way that we initially intended, but I knew that we just had to keep going because at the end of the day it’s live TV.

Did Deepica say anything to you on set right after the segment aired?

Right after our segment she had to do a Facebook Live segment. After that she came up to me; she hugged me and said, “Thank you so much for jumping in last minute. I really look forward to working with you again.” We talked about possibilities for the future, so it was definitely a bonding moment and I was, again, grateful to her for including a woman of color, a black woman, on the segment.