If you’ve been on TikTok over the past 72 hours, you’ve probably seen Megan Chacalos’s viral video about a series of very unfortunate events that happened as a result of an olive oil hair mask gone wrong. It’s undoubtedly the most popular video to come out of the “Pepe the King Prawn” TikTok trend. Three days after it’s been posted it already has over 52 million views on the app.
I, for one, have been obsessed with this story and Megan’s Oscar-worthy reenactment of the ordeal (complete with home alarm sound effects) since I found it during one of my late-night TikTok scrolls. So, I caught up with Megan to get the full run-down on her newfound TikTok stardom and find out if the olive oil hair mask actually works.
Okay, walk me through this traumatic night. What year was this? How did we get to a soggy head of olive oil in the garage?
Megan Chacalos: It was 2014. I was in high school, and I was a stand-out in my school’s theater program. And the theater kids were vicious. One day, we were talking about auditions for an upcoming show and somehow it turned into like, “Oh, you have to look like the character, you have to look like the ingénue,” and someone said, “Well, your hair looks like hay though, so aren’t you going to do something with it?” And I was like, “AGH, okay!”
And then that comment haunted me the rest of the week. So I was like, “Okay, well I need to fix that.”
Where did you first get the idea to do this olive oil mask?
MC: I come from a large Greek family, and my Yia Yia uses olive oil for everything. I would watch her put it on her hands, put it in her hair, all the things. And I was like, “Okay, olive oil. I descend from the muses, I descend from mythology, I am of that breed, so it must work on my head.”
So I looked up a beauty article on how to do an olive oil hair treatment, and it said that I needed to “drench the hair.” At this point, I had already put some in my hair, but I began to think, “I don’t think that’s drenched enough.” So I flipped my head upside down and started putting the Saran wrap around my head so it made kind of like a bowl on top of my head. So I was thinking, “Let me just kind of fill this cavity a bit so the hair’s drenched.” So once I had this kiddie pool of olive oil on my head, I tied it off so I looked like a Conehead from SNL.
Did the olive oil mask work?
MC: It truly worked. For the next month, I was a goddess. My hair? Impeccable. That was my extreme glow-up from a weird teen to a Greek goddess. I ended up being Prom Queen. It was a true glow-up.
So basically, you’re saying it was all worth it?
MC: It was all worth it, yeah.
What inspired you to share your story with the world after all this time?
MC: I am known for hee-hawing my way into good situations. That’s kind of my tagline. As my day job, I’m a Broadway producer and actor. And literally last week, I was telling my boyfriend, “I really feel like I need to do more social media because every other actor does it, and I never share anything.” And that day that I was pondering, my whole timeline was either Broadway news or the “Pepe the King Prawn” meme. I thought the Pepe photo was just so funny, and then all of a sudden, I was just like, “Oh my god. The olive oil story.” I typed it in, I kid you not, two minutes. I laughed at it myself. I called my sister over; I said, “Hey, is this funny?” She watched it and nearly peed herself. I asked my mom, and she was dying of laughter, too.
@meganchacalosThe olive oil story♬ sonido original – Un Arácnido Más🕷️
And so I posted it. My mom then asked, “Wait, so how did you get the Saran wrap on your head?” And so as a joke, I put it back on. So right after posting the first video, my sister and I did a full reenactment in our house and posted that too.
That same day, I got on a plane to come back to New York [from my parent’s house in West Virginia]. When I got off the plane, I turned my phone back on, but I truly couldn’t use my phone because the notifications were blowing up.
What has been the most surprising or exciting comment or DM that you’ve gotten since posting the video? I saw Red Lobster’s comment, obviously.
MC: Oh my god, they’re sponsoring my birthday dinner on Sunday. I can’t wait.
You’re joking. That’s so funny.
MC: I woke up today and said to myself, “Ooh, it is Monday morning in corporate America and the social media marketing managers are on it.” I had so many messages, so many emails. Two girls dressed up as Graza Olive Oil and appeared at my front door.
The Graza messages are really funny. They were truly like, “Whenever you need olive oil, DM us. We’ll give you more.” And they gave me six bottles. And two of them have custom labels, and the label picture is a cartoon me with a Saran wrapped head in a puddle of olive oil.
@getgraza Should we make hair masks??? (👋 @MeganChacalos)#oliveoilgirl #graza #sizzle #hairmask ♬ sonido original – Un Arácnido Más🕷️
Coco Gauff had this really nice, long comment, and I was like, “Oh my god, this is amazing.” Actually, there have been a lot of brands. SunnyD. UNO. A lot of smaller olive oil brands. Red Lobster, of course. It’s been a little crazy. Someone at Microsoft. Beauty brands have been reaching out. They’re saying things like, “You actually have nice skin too.” And so I’m like, “Oh, cool, thank you.”
My favorite surprise from this whole thing, though, is that I’ve been making content for six years. And people who’ve been watching these videos that went viral have also been going back to all of my old videos. So now, all of them have thousands and thousands of views. I’m getting all these comments saying, “Oh my gosh, you’re so funny, where have you been this whole time?” and I’m like, “I’VE BEEN HERE!”
You’ve teased some other stories that you may share with your newfound audience. Can you please give us a sneak peek of the “decapitating Joseph” story?
MC: When I was very young, my mom got a porcelain statue of the Virgin Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus. And she was very proud of this porcelain figurine. She put it on top of our TV stand. This was Christmastime, and my younger brother had gotten a Little Tikes grill playset, which is such a weird toy. There were toy steaks and toy hot dogs and there were toy shishkabobs in this thing. A weird present, but whatever.
My older sister realized that you could fling things off the shishkabob stick if you held down this button. You had to reel it back in and then throw it like you were fishing, and then the tomatoes would fly. And so I watched her do it and obviously wanted to do it, too. But she said no. So I started to fight with her. I yelled, “I WANT TO DO IT TOO!” but I wasn’t supposed to hit the button yet. I reeled back, and one of the toy tomatoes flew up in slow motion. It knocked Joseph’s head right off.
