There is a hilarious moment in Black Panther when Okoye (Danai Gurira) — the general of Wakanda’s all-female and all-bald kingsguard — has to go undercover in a wig. “It’s a disgrace,” she spits to T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and Nakia (Lupita Nyong’o) as they enter an underground casino. She hopes that their mission will wrap quickly so that she can get the “ridiculous” thing off her head. Okoye’s preference for her shiny, bald ‘do is deep-seated and important. Sanaa Lathan, the star of the new Netflix original film Nappily Ever After, falls into a hearty laugh when she mentions this part of the superhero movie to me during our phone conversation. After shaving her own head on camera for this role, the Black Panther scene has stuck with her. For Lathan, Okoye’s disdain for the wig was just one piece of a changing narrative about black women and their manes. “The conversation, culturally, with black women and natural hair — with more and more women in the public eye wearing their hair — it couldn’t have been a better time for [Nappily Ever After] to come out,” she asserts.