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Timothy Simons is a tall actor known to play annoying men with improbable charm. Often cast as a guy who feels small and acts awkward—like the hapless fertility doctor in The Hustle or Veep's overbearing aide—he’s spent last month promoting the second season of Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, about a hot rabbi (Adam Brody) who falls for a gentile podcaster (Kristen Bell), in which Simons plays the latter’s brother, a man named Sasha who self-describes as having “a thing about me that makes people wanna elbow me in the jaw.” On-screen, Simons has a mid-life crisis and brown faux-hawk; off-screen, he's elevated the hairstyle to a bleached and sculpted version that’s shockingly chic. “Tim wanted to switch things up,” says Florida Basallo, the West Hollywood stylist behind Simons’s new look, whose other clients include Troye Sivan, Demi Moore, and both Biebers. “We decided to go for it right before the Emmys,” he explained over email, describing the vision as “a silver fox” that “fades into some sort of archaic Breaking Bad maverick.” Simons debuted platinum hair at the awards show in mid-September, where he wore an emerald Brooks Brothers tux with shorts cuffed above the knee. “I got my first spray tan,” he told a red-carpet reporter (his team had told him his legs were at risk of “blowing out the cameras,” he said). The interviewer called the blonded-and-bronzed combo a “Ken transformation,” to which Simons replied he was, “just trying to have fun.” By mid-October, his roots were showing and the faux-hawk looked a bit more serious. When Simons appeared at the Nobody Wants This season two premiere at The Egyptian Theatre, the grown-out blonde was reminiscent of a Roman centurion’s plumed helmet—the bleached ridge set distinctly apart from a darker undercut. Cooler and ashier, he paired his lived-in blonde with a crisp chocolate brown suede suit by Dzojchen and black Louboutin boots. Based on more recent, blonder appearances —on Andy Cohen and The Kelly Clarkson Show—he’s since made it to the salon for a touch up. The coloring process was “quite challenging,” Basallo said. “To get everything lifted evenly, we bleached then toned with a semi-permanent toner to cancel any of the warm yellow tones and fill the cuticle for a glossy finish.” He advises any guy “trying to step into the light” like Simons to “make sure to find a professional to help you with this, so that you don’t burn your hair or scalp off.” Besides the bleach and tone, Basallo buzzed the sides and texturized the top, keeping the ridge narrow and letting it collapse softly at the crown.“High and tight works really well on Tim’s face/ head,” he wrote. At six-foot-five and a half (per IMDb), Simons typically plays bumbling-type guys like Jonah Ryan on HBO’s Veep whose nicknames ranged from Hagrid’s Nutsack to Jono Ono. Often the men he plays have a comically extended sense of self, hovering at the edge of exasperation. A hawk—even faux—elongates his verticality in a cartoonish way that makes him feel less imposing and more adorably schematic. There’s a tenderness to the faux hawk—how it blends into the neckline and softly tapers down the sides instead of the aggressive severance of a hard mohawk—gives it a tentative edge that's very cute-weirdo. Think: Jay Baruchel’s hair in Knocked Up (Seth Rogan's stoner roommate who helps conceptualize a celebrity nudity database called fleshofthestars.com). It’s a style that says you are interested in the aesthetics of degeneracy but are ultimately too sweet to be scary. Like how Timothy Simons’s Instagram bio says he “doesn’t like cocaine but likes songs about cocaine.”
