Happy Place · Fearne Cotton

Even the Kardashians have insecurities! Reinvent your identity, with Chris Appleton

February 16, 2026·55 min·1 clip

Chris Appleton reveals he moved to America not for his career but to run away from being gay — and how letting go of that shame changed everything.

Hair starts as the easy subject. Fern Cotton begins with funny memories of questionable cuts and colours, then lets Chris Appleton turn the chat toward identity, confidence, and the versions of ourselves we think we are allowed to become. The mood is warm, but never polished flat. Chris talks about seeing people properly, whether they are a salon client, a cancer patient, or famous enough to be recognised everywhere. The mirror gets less simple as the conversation goes on. He keeps circling the gap between the image people show and the private story they may be trying to understand, repair, or leave behind. Fern follows the emotional thread. When Chris talks about inherited trauma, relationships, friendships, and work, the point is less about blame than noticing the patterns that quietly steer a life. The Instagram shine comes off. Chris says his public version was a lie, a facade, a best-self performance that did not feel true underneath. That honesty gives the episode its pull. The book he describes sounds raw and personal, built from shame, guilt, dark places, and the tools that helped him find another way through. Reinvention is the gentle promise here. He does not frame it as a big makeover, more as permission to stop being trapped by your past, your age, or the version other people expect. Kim, JLo, Kris Jenner, and the Kardashians come up, but the celebrity stories sit beside ordinary ones. Fern brings it back to feeling. By the end, she is moved less by the hair knowledge than by Chris speaking about coming out to his children, trying to take his own life, and beginning again. Style ends up feeling less like vanity and more like a way to become visible.

As heard by us

Hair, identity, and reinvention get a candid, humane airing.

Chris Appleton and Fern Cotton turn a conversation about hair into something wider: identity, shame, reinvention, and the stories people inherit without noticing. The episode works best when it stays with the split between the polished self and what sits underneath.

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Why you'd press play

If hair has ever felt like a biography, this one will land.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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