Black actress suing Harvard theater for race discrimination over scalp damage, hair loss: "The damage is indescribable. It is cataclysmic."
A Black actress has filed a lawsuit against Harvard University's American Repertory Theater in Cambridge for racial discrimination, saying her scalp was left permanently damaged from an unqualified hair stylist.
Nike Imoru said that during the 2025 production of "The Odyssey," she was required to have cornrows installed. However, she said that the company did not hire a licensed hair stylist, instead it had a backstage worker style her hair. She said this violated the contractual obligation the theater has with the Actors' Equity Association.
"The damage is indescribable. It is cataclysmic," Imoru explained. "In fact, it doesn't grow back."
She said that the white actors were given qualified hairstylists, while she was left with tight cornrows that ripped the hair out of her head.
"I did not sleep that night. I slept sitting up, lying, sitting upright. Because of the pain and the tension, I took tablets that didn't relieve it," she explained.
The complaint said that Imoru was given the chance to find her own stylist, but "the short turnaround time that the show schedule required, coupled with Ms. Imoru's unfamiliarity with local hair professionals, made working with an outside stylist unfeasible. Ms. Imoru also believed that the A.R.T. employee was fully qualified to style her hair because the A.R.T. had proposed that she could do so."
"I was confident that a theater of that stature would have qualified, experienced people to do my hair, to do textured hair," Imoru said.
Now, she says she has lost 90% of her hair from the experience and a dermatologist told her that most of her hair follicles are empty. She is now suing the theater for emotional damages. The complaint says that Imoru has lost jobs due to her hair loss.
"I continue to lose it - my hair - it is now permanent," Imoru said.
She said she also decided to stop acting for good as she is unable to muster "the confidence to go on stage again."
WBZ-TV reached out to the American Repertory Theater for comment on the lawsuit, but has not heard back.