Ultimately, Cher was cast as Alex, a sculptor yearning for creative fulfillment, and Sarandon was cast as Jane, a mousy-haired music teacher.
“Cher sort of muscled her way into that part,” Cristofer echoed. To which Sarandon replied, “That’s Jon… [He] and Cher had a past liaison or something, so that was another element.”
The set of Eastwick was a toxic workplace in more ways than one. According to Sarandon, film producer Jon Peters—the self-described “Trump of Hollywood”— reportedly threw chairs in a rage at one point and director George Miller tried to quit twice. To survive the shoot, Sarandon, Cher, and Pfeiffer did their best to bond by having lunch with Nicholson in his trailer everyday. Which feels incredibly mature, given that Nicholson and Cher had beef too. In 2018, the singer recalled receiving a call from director Miller—best known for the Mad Max film franchise—in which she was allegedly told: “I just wanted to call and tell you that I don’t want you in my movie and Jack Nicholson and I think you’re too old and you’re not sexy.” (For reference, Cher was 40 years old at the time).
“There were a lot of reasons why we could not have gotten along, and everybody took a higher road,” Sarandon concluded in conversation with Cristofer.
The Look: While Sarandon’s hair is naturally curly, she famously prefers to wear wigs on set. In one of the shoot’s warmer moments, she recalls Cher lending “a wig and dress for a scene in which Nicholson seduces her,” per Page Six. Throughout her career, Cher worked with legendary wigmaker Renate Leuschner—one of three hair stylists credited in Eastwick. So Leuschner is likely the person responsible, at least in part, for creating Sarandon’s mane of soft copper curls. Somehow managing to achieve the perfect balance of frizz and definition, you can just tell this hairpiece was made by a master of her craft.
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Perms were popularized in the early ‘70s before eventually falling out of style in the early ’90s, so Sarandon’s hairstyle in the 1987 was far from groundbreaking. Plus, she’d had already been a redhead off and on for years before playing Jane in Eastwick. But her scene-stealing spray of fluffy curls is undeniably the cult classic film’s defining image (although her fit during the tennis match scene might be a close second).
