Yesterday, the world stopped spinning for a split second when we all saw Kristen Stewart's new platinum buzz-cut. As everything aligned again, and we had time to process the drastic change, Stewart explained to the Today show hosts that the look is, in fact, for a role.
"I'm doing a movie in a couple weeks called Underwater," Stewart explained to hosts Savannah Guthrie and Willie Geist. "And I play a mechanical engineer that's working on an oil rig that's on the bottom of the ocean floor." Why the buzz? Stewart explained it was for more practical reasons. In the film, which she'll start filming later this month in New Orleans, she spends a lot of time wearing a helmet. Think of it as the ultimate way to avoid a case of helmet hair.
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"For me it's practical!" she continued. "I'm not going to have touch-ups once I got the helmet on. I must shave my head!" Plus, she did it on her own accord. It wasn't actually written into the script, though the film's producer was toying with the idea.
"I've been wanting to do this for a long time, just for novel's sake," Stewart explained. "Just because at some point in your life you just want to be able to do that. The producer suggested it and I said, 'That's a great idea! I am game!'"
It's a vastly different role from her character Maureen in Personal Shopper, Stewart's latest film. In it, she plays a medium looking for her dead brother — yeah, the ghost-talking kind of medium — she is also (you guessed it) a personal shopper.
"She's utterly isolated. She's a foreigner in every sense of the word. She's an American living in Paris, but she's also in the midst of the most devastating grief and loss," Stewart explains. "She's lost her twin brother and, therefore, feels like a fractured half of a person. She doesn't really understand what existence is, therefore, she can't exist until she sort of rebuilds herself after that devastating loss."
Stewart also noted that she didn't have a lot of time to jump into the role. In fact, she had just days to get in the mindset of Maureen after filming Woody Allen's Café Society. "I had three days to go in-between that character and the next," she said.
And what about those ghosts? While the Today hosts describe the movie as a horror flick, you're not going to see any cameos from Casper. "The movie is scary because it's lofty and heady," Stewart said. "The ghostly aspects are confronting in a really realistic way. That's scarier."