The Boys’ Colby Minifie Discusses The Finer Points of Trichotillomania

At first glance, you might not think that an indie horror movie that explores grief, loss, and our relationships with our parents would have much in common with the gory, satirical superhero show The Boys, aside from the fact that they both star Colby Minifie. However, The Surrender does have an unexpected bullet point to add to the Venn diagram of these two projects – characters pulling their own hair out, root and stem.

In The Boys, Minifie’s character Ashley Barrett works for a company known as Vought International that has essentially manufactured superheroes and made them a commodity in this world. The Seven is the most popular superhero group that Vought oversees, and is led by Homelander (Antony Starr), an incredibly powerful but also incredibly unstable superhero. Ashley’s job is essentially to help keep The Seven in line and their approval numbers high – a task that proves to be so overwhelmingly stressful that she ends up wearing wigs to hide the fact that she has pulled out all her hair.

Long story short, The Surrender isn’t Minifie’s first experience with hair-pulling in a project. While this has become sort of a running joke in The Boys, The Surrender’s depiction is a bit less comedic as both Megan (Minifie) and Barbara (Kate Burton) struggle with the death of Megan’s father and Barbara’s husband, but that doesn’t mean this coincidence wasn’t fun to ask about.

When Minifie, Kate Burton, and The Surrender’s writer and director Julia Max stopped by the Den of Geek studio at SXSW to talk about the film, of course we had to ask about Minifie’s previous experience with hair-pulling on screen, and if she had any tips for Burton, her co-star, who yanks out some follicles in the film.

“The Boys has really figured out how to do it in a very effective way that doesn’t pull as much of your own hair out as possible,” Minifie explains before adding jokingly. “That’s all I look for in a script. Send them my way if there’s hair-pulling.” She even gently pulls on her own hair adding to the jest as she says “This is all a wig, I’ve shaved my head, so it’s all good, we’re good to go.”

While it’s clear that Minifie is kidding about only taking roles that involve hair-pulling, it is nice to know that The Boys hair and makeup team is doing their best to keep her real hair intact. They’ve had years of Ashley’s on-screen stress to master their methods, which now Minifie can impart on any other projects involving hair-pulling that she happens to take in the future.

All jokes aside, both of these projects prove that Minifie is an actor to watch, and we can’t wait to see what she does next, whether there’s hair-pulling or not.

The Surrender premiered at the SXSW Film Festival on March 9, 2025.

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