Born in Chicago, Kim Kimble has built upon a long family legacy of hair care and styling to create a successful, multifaceted Hollywood career. She has been nominated for two Emmys, worked with performers such as Beyoncé and Zendaya, created her own line of hair products and even had her own reality television show, L.A. Hair.
As Kimble describes it, she grew up in a salon and started off as a "shampoo girl." She completed beauty college and worked at a Los Angeles barber shop before opening her own salon, Phaze II, in 1995. Kimble broke into the world of film and television when actor-director-producer Robert Townsend hired her as key hairstylist on the 1997 movie B.A.P.S, which starred Halle Berry and featured larger-than-life hairstyles. The elaborate hairpieces she designed for the film led to work on television series including The Jamie Foxx Show and Moesha, starring Brandy.
In addition to her television and movie hairstyling, Kimble is an entrepreneur who has created her own line of hair products as well as wigs. When Oprah Winfrey's hairstylist, Andre Walker, wanted a dramatic look for the cover of a hair-themed issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, he called Kimble; she provided the giant wig Oprah wore on the cover of the September 2013 issue.
Kimble received her first Emmy nomination in 1998 for Outstanding Hairstyling for a Miniseries, Movie or a Special for her work on Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella. Her second nomination was in 2022, for Outstanding Contemporary Hairstyling, as department head hairstylist on Euphoria.
Kimble emphasizes that television hairstylists need to be able to handle all kinds of hair needs. "I'm glad that I learned a lot — coloring, cutting, how to do specific styles, extensions, wigs, barbering. You utilize all of this in television," she says. "You can specialize in something in a salon, but on film and television, you should know it all."
Kimble was interviewed in June 2024 by Leah Aldridge for The Interviews: An Oral History of Television, a program of the Television Academy Foundation. The following is an edited excerpt of their conversation. The entire interview can be screened at TelevisionAcademy.com/Interviews.
Growing up, what was your family like?
I grew up watching my mother and my grandmother do hair. My grandmother would be doing hair in the kitchen at home, and my mother would work in a salon, so I come from a dynasty of hairstylists. My mother was more into style — she was a great cutter and colorist. And my grandmother was into hair care and nurturing people's hair, and when she retired from the salon, she would still do a few clients at home, because they didn't want to go anywhere else.
You seem to be a composite of them both.
Exactly. I took something from both of them. I love being a hairstylist and styling interesting and intricate hair. But I'm also concerned about taking care of the client's hair, because hair is gonna look good if it's healthy.
Did you know from childhood that you wanted to do hair?
I didn't, but I think it's more than just doing hair. I had this creative energy as a toddler. I used to create my own paper dolls and create clothes for them, do their hair. I enjoyed making them and working with my hands.
When I was 16, I went to beauty college. I went through an ROP [regional occupational program], and by the time I graduated high school, I got my license. I thought I might want to be a fashion designer, and I interned for a designer — I realized quickly that I don't really like sewing. But at the same time, I started going to hair shows. These hairstylists were flipping scissors, cutting hair — it was showmanship. They were fabulous. I started competing in fantasy hair competitions, doing creative hair, and I got to design the clothes for my presentations, so that fulfilled my thoughts of being a designer. But I was really into the hair; it just took it to a whole other place. Hair is more than just doing hair in a salon.
Was the entertainment industry always a goal, or did you discover it along the way?
I thought when people were on TV, they just showed up with their hair cute. I didn't realize there was someone behind them creating that look, and all the work that went into that. I heard about it through my mother. My mother moved from Chicago to California to work with this woman, Ann Wadlington, one of the first Black people in Local 706 union doing hair for films. She was working with Richard Pryor and people like that. [Wadlington was nominated for an Emmy in 1990 as a hairstylist on Murder, She Wrote.] My mother worked in her salon and knew about what she did. Once I started doing hair, she told me, "You want to get in this union." So that was not my end goal, but it was always in the back of my mind that I would love this opportunity.
You worked in a barbershop?
Yeah, I was coming out of beauty college, and I was interviewing at different hair salons. They all turned me down. Rodney Brimberry was a barber who used to come around to the beauty college, and Rodney was like, "What's going on?" I explained it to him, and he said, "Why don't you come work in my barbershop?"
This is a barbershop on Crenshaw Boulevard.
On Crenshaw. I went to Leimert Universal College of Beauty right around the corner. And I was like, "I spent all these years learning how to do hair; I don't want to work in a barbershop." But I took it, because it was what was in front of me at the time. I had been rejected at all the other places, which turned out to be the biggest blessing of my life.
I started working there, and Rodney started teaching me how to cut hair. So, I learned how to barber. Some of the guys would see me doing hair and say, "I'm gonna send my wife to you," "my mom to you," "my niece to you," and I built a big clientele off of that.
But the biggest blessing out of this situation was that a lot of the West Angeles Church members came to this barbershop. I overheard them talking about a play they were doing, a theater version of Robert Townsend's The Five Heartbeats. They were looking for people to volunteer to work on the play. I wondered if they needed hair people. I thought this could be an interesting way in to working in production.
It was kind of an extension of your live hair shows.
Exactly. And I knew Robert Townsend had done a few movies — The Five Heartbeats was one of my favorite films of his. So, I volunteered, got the job and was working in a stage play with producers and directors in the industry.
It was challenging, but it was fun for me. And Robert Townsend's assistant made the mistake of giving me her phone number. I kept in touch with her. I was like, "I would really love an opportunity to work on Robert's films."
I would reach out and say, "Hey, do you have anything?"
I think a year went by. I opened my own salon. I was still doing hair competitions. And then I get a call out of the blue from Robert's assistant: "Do you know anybody who does avant-garde hairstyles, or do you do avant-garde hairstyles?" I had spent a year winning fantasy hair competitions, and I say, "Yeah." She said, "Can you send me some photos of the work that you've done?" I sent her pictures and didn't hear anything for a few days. Then I get a call to meet with him. She says, "Bring the pictures so he can see them in person."
He comes to my salon and walks in with Halle Berry. My mouth is open. My client's mouth is open. He looks at the pictures and has me show them to Halle Berry.
I get a call about a week later from his producer at the time, Loretha Jones, who said, "We would love to see if you would like to work on this film that we're doing called B.A.P.S, Black American Princesses." I said, "Yeah, but I want to make sure that I am in the union." I knew to ask. That was one of my deal negotiations. I didn't care what the money was. I just wanted that union opportunity. And the rest is history.
After that, I worked with Robert Townsend on his TV show The Parent 'Hood. I was the key, working under the department head. And I also worked with him on Carmen: A Hip Hopera, a television movie they did for MTV, where I met Beyoncé Knowles. And I started doing other shows. I got picked up on The Jamie Foxx Show, then on Moesha, with Brandy.
After I worked with Brandy and Beyoncé, I started working with more music artists — at the time, a lot of music artists were in television and film. So even when I would work with them on projects like their album packaging, or big productions like Coachella or Lemonade with Beyoncé, I treated it like a film or TV production. Because that's where I come from. I set up my teams and manage the whole process. I like the structure of television and film. When you're talking about millions of dollars, you need structure, you need planning, you need efficiency.
You also worked on Cinderella with Brandy.
Cinderella was a great [made for television] film. I worked with Natalie [Desselle]. After working with her on B.A.P.S, she brought me on Cinderella. It was a multicultural musical. That was very progressive back then.
This was a Black Cinderella.
Yeah, a Black Cinderella, Brandy, and she had braids. I came for Natalie, and Brandy picked me up to work on her as well. And it was interesting doing Cinderella with braids — that was Brandy's thing, braids. I got to create pieces to go along with the braids, to make the hair look different. That's why I really got into wigs and pieces, because it was a fast way to change looks for people.
Have you had experiences where an actor sees you come through the door as their hairstylist and they breathe a sigh of relief?
The sigh of relief is golden. They're like, "I'm so glad that you're here." I think it's important to see someone that's going to do your hair that's going to make you comfortable. I have clients who are actresses going on a movie and they're like, "Listen, I don't know who's going to be there to do my hair, so I need you to make me a wig." "I need you to put some extensions in and have my hair ready to go, so when I walk in I don't have to stress about what's going to happen to my hair." And it's also about hair care. If a person doesn't know how to use the right amount of heat on a certain person's hair, they're going to damage it.
Have you ever had an experience where you worked on a show and the talent looked at you and thought you wouldn't know how to do their hair?
Oh, yeah. When I first got my license, I took a lot of courses to learn about cutting hair, coloring, all those different things. I went to a beauty college that specialized in Black hair, and I went to a beauty college that specialized in Caucasian hair types. But in all honesty, hair is about texture, and in every race there are multiple textures. You've got curly, you've got kinky, you've got frizzy, you've got coarse, you've got thick, you've got thin, you've got fine. You've got to understand how to work with all those hair types. I thought it was important as a hairstylist to do that. Didn't really understand, "Oh, I'm going to need this later on in life." It's what I do. I'm interested in it all. I want to know how it all works.
Let's talk about your work with Zendaya. Your relationship with her goes back to her Disney years.
The first time I worked with her, she was very young — 14, 15. She was also a music artist. I did her hair for her album packaging. Her hairstylist couldn't come and called me, and next thing you know, I've done a couple of red carpets with her. She was also on a Disney show — I didn't work on any of her TV shows at the time. Then I started watching Euphoria and became a fan of the show. For the second season, when they were looking for another hairstylist, my agent put my résumé in. Zendaya is an executive producer on the show, so she definitely weighed in on me getting that opportunity to work with her. That was my first time getting to work with her on a TV show, which was great.
In Euphoria she plays a teenager who's on drugs, and her hair's never quite right, so it's the complete opposite of what I do with her the rest of the time. The director was like, "I don't want her to look glamorous, because she's already beautiful and glamorous. If you do too much to her hair, it's gonna take you out of what the character is." So, this is where restraint had to come in.
You had an opportunity to reproduce iconic hairstyles for the Euphoria episode "You Who Cannot See, Think of Those Who Can." Rue (Zendaya) and Jules (Hunter Schafer) keep changing looks.
Yeah. When I was going to do Euphoria, I didn't think it was going to be as creative as it turned out to be. But when [creator Sam Levinson] came up with this whole montage of the love between Jules and Rue, he recreated all these love scenes out of different eras. You have Ghost — we had to make them look like Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze, so we created these wigs.
In that episode you did Titanic, Brokeback Mountain, John Lennon and Yoko Ono...
Frida Kahlo and Diego [Rivera]... it was fun to do all that and put the different wigs on and recreate those looks. There was also "The Birth of Venus" – Jules's hair was supposed to be floating. It was the first time I'd ever done an underwater look.
How did you wind up doing L.A. Hair? How did you move from behind the chair to in front of the camera yourself?
I wanted to create something. I wanted to produce a show in the beauty space. I did at one point, and I had given up on it, because I had gotten so many no's. Then a production company reached out to my PR team about doing a reality show. I took a meeting with them, and they were like, "How would you feel about doing a show about your salon?" I was like, "I don't know about that." I had never worked on that type of reality show; I'd only been on stuff like American Idol. So, I was like, "Maybe."
We shot a pilot and a sizzle reel. Then I just kept working. I wasn't really thinking about it. I went down to Atlanta, was working on a TV show called Let's Stay Together. BET had a bunch of TV shows there. That's when I did Being Mary Jane. And then I get a call — WEtv wants to pick up the show. It took a year for us to actually shoot it after it got picked up.
Did they involve you in development?
That's what I liked about it — I was involved with the development of everything, because it was basically a docuseries of what I do. And it was strange, because I'm a behind-the-camera person, and now I'm in front of the camera. And I don't even know how this happened, but I got booked from my agent to work with Miss Piggy.
And Miss Piggy was going to appear where?
I was styling Miss Piggy's hair for the Oscars, the 84th Annual Academy Awards. And I thought, "Would they let us capture getting her ready for the Oscars for L.A. Hair?" And they said yes. I grew up watching the Muppets. It was surreal for me. This is Miss Piggy. I'm working on a Muppet. This is not like anything I've ever done. Talk about stepping out of the box.
And she was such a diva.
She was such a diva. She was in true form. I was like, "Oh no, let me not piss her off, because I've seen how Miss Piggy can get." But it was so much fun.
That's the thing about the reality show — at first, I was a little nervous about doing something like that, but I liked stepping out of the box and doing something different. I still got to do hair. This is what I do. I have a business. It was real. It's authentic. It's not an actor creating a character. It was just me being me.
How did you start your own product line?
A couple things happened. I went to Dudley Cosmetology University, and after you graduated, if you wanted to learn more, Mr. Dudley had a hotel. I'd never seen anything like this. You come and you stay there. They had their school, they had a cafeteria, they had a plant where they manufactured all the products, they sold products and they taught you how to retail in the salon. So, I would buy their products and retail them in the salon. That inspired me. And watching my clients need certain things, I started trying to make products to fulfill their needs. At the time, there weren't a lot of products that I liked.
And then I started teaching classes. I remember this woman said, "You need to have something to sell when you teach." So, all of those things were happening at the same time. It made me start developing products. It's another creative outlet for me.
What advice would you give aspiring stylists who want to be professionals in television and film?
Find someone who can mentor you and teach you the craft; someone who will help guide you, so you are set up for success. Anybody coming out of a salon — if you didn't grow up working in film and television, you need to know it's a different way of styling hair. You need to understand how it operates, from the business to the styling. And you need to be versatile. I'm glad that I learned a lot — coloring, cutting, how to do specific styles, extensions, wigs, barbering. You never know who's gonna sit in your chair.
The contributing editor for Foundation Interviews is Adrienne Faillace.
Since 1997, the Television Academy Foundation has conducted over 900 one-of-a-kind, long-form interviews with industry pioneers and change-makers across multiple professions. The Foundation invites you to make a gift to the Interviews Preservation Fund to help preserve this invaluable resource for generations to come. To learn more, please contact Amani Roland, chief advancement officer, at roland@televisionacademy.com or (818)754-2829.
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The full version of this article originally appeared in emmy magazine, issue #2, 2025, under the title "Foundation Interviews: Kim Kimble."
