On the TODAY Show, Kathie Lee and Hoda host a segment called “Plaza Ambush Makeovers.”
With hairstylist Louis Licari and stylist Jill Martin on their team, they wanted to give unsuspecting people from the audience an ambush makeover.
Well, earlier during that episode, Louis and Jill had gone out to the Plaza to randomly choose two women for the makeover.
“So easy to pick out the ladies today, it was a miracle,” Louis said of their earlier task. “We found two ladies so quickly and they were so excited to be made over.”
The first lady to get a makeover was 64-year-old Brenda Macy from Joplin, Missouri. She’s been married for 45 years to Herschel and a grandmother to six grandchildren.
She has never had her hair colored and hasn’t had her cut in years. Brenda was hoping to donate the hair they were going to cut.
“That’s what she’s been hoping for for a long time,” Herschel told Jill during their interview.
When they found Brenda, she had waist-long dull brown hair. She was wearing black pants with a black long-sleeved top with a zebra sweater vest.
Herschel was with the hosts and stylists on camera, with a blindfold covering his eyes, waiting for the new Brenda to come out.
And when she came out, Herschel was moved to tears.
“It takes me back 20 years,” Herschel said as soon as he took off his blindfold.
They told her to finally the face mirror and Brenda’s jaw dropped when she saw her new identity.
“Oh wow,” Brenda said. “[I feel] a lot different!”
And were they able to get enough hair from Brenda that she could donate?
“Look,” Louis said when he held up Brenda’s cut hair to be donated. “And it was actually more because we kept cutting and cutting.”
The second lady to get a makeover was 41-year-old Dr. Lori Nelson from Oakland, Maine. She’s a pathologist and married with three young boys.
She’s in New York with her best friend, Erica, who said she deserves to have a day just to be pampered.
“I just never get to take care of myself. I’m a pathologist, I’m always in the lab and I never see people. This is the highlight of my life,” Lori told Jill during their initial interview.
Before the makeover, Lori had really long and straight reddish-brown hair with waves at the ends. She was wearing black pants, a green graphic shirt, and long-sleeved black cardigan. And when she steps out on to the TODAY show after her makeover, everyone was cheering and clapping.
Erica was standing on the TODAY show stage with blindfolds over her eyes and she couldn’t wait to see her best friend’s transformation.
Finally, they asked her to remove it and her eyes grew wide.
“Oh wow, you look amazing!” Erica said of Lori’s transformation.
And when Lori finally turned to look at her makeover, her eyes grew wide, too. She thanked Louis and Jill over and over.
“How can we make a pretty girl even more beautiful?” Louis shared of the makeover journey. “Those eyes are incredible, they don’t even look real. That’s exactly why I picked the hair color. The [new hair] color emphasized the eyes. A doctor that looks like this? Really!”
Watch how Louis and Jill transformed the looks of these two ladies in the video below.
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