As stand-up comedians and content creators, identical triplets Alex, Mitchell, and Sean Virzi spend much of their professional lives in front of audiences and cameras.
A few years ago, Sean realized he was “rapidly” balding. Even something as minor as a gust of wind during a live show became a source of anxiety, he said.
After researching his options, Sean decided on a hair transplant in 2020 and persuaded his brothers to get one, too. Although Alex and Mitchell hadn’t experienced the same degree of hair loss, they decided they wanted to address it early.
“We saw what our future might turn into, since we’re triplets,” Alex said.
How a hair transplant works
The brothers, who were 26 at the time, each paid roughly $13,000 for hair transplants performed by Dr. Ben Talei at Beverly Hills Hair Group in 2020.
In exchange for allowing the clinic to document their experience, the triplets received discounted pricing on the procedure along with two free plasma treatments, which have been shown to stimulate cell regeneration and promote hair follicle growth in some patients.
Male pattern baldness affects about 50 million men in the US. In recent years, hair transplants have surged in popularity, with destinations like Turkey emerging as a hot spot for lower-cost, all-inclusive procedures. In 2022 alone, Turkey drew around one million medical tourists seeking hair transplants.
Fabien Beretta, executive director of Beverly Hills Hair Group, said hair transplants at the clinic typically range from $14,000 to $21,000, depending on the number of grafts needed. Regrowth treatments can tack on thousands of dollars to the overall cost, he said.
Hair transplants involve individually extracting hair follicles from the sides and backs of the person’s scalp and moving them to areas where patients have experienced hair loss or want added density. The full-day procedure is performed with local anesthetics, meaning that patients are awake the whole time, Beretta said.
Dr. Josef Hadeed, a plastic surgeon with the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, told Business Insider that hair transplant techniques have evolved in recent years, leading to less pain and scarring and fewer complications.
All surgeries carry some level of risk though, and the triplets said they were initially intimidated by the process.
“Any cosmetic surgery you always hear horror stories and see videos online of botched people,” Mitchell said.
However, they said the experience was relatively painless and easy to recover from.
Patients can mostly return to their normal routines after about four days, aside from a two-week break from physical activity, Beretta said. Around three weeks after the procedure, the transplanted hair begins to shed, Beretta said. The Virzi triplets referred to that period as the “ugly duckling phase.”
Regrowth begins after about three months, but most of the growth occurs between six to nine months after the procedure, with full results taking up to a year and a half to set in, Beretta said.
However, many patients, including the Virzi triplets, end up undergoing a second transplant to address additional hair thinning. The International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery, a nonprofit aimed at hair loss treatment and restoration, reports that in 2024, the average number of hair restoration surgical procedures per patient to achieve the desired result was 1.5, down from 3.4 in 2019.
“They’re like, ‘Oh, this is great. I got my hair,’ but they forget that there’s maintenance that needs to be done,” Beretta said.
The three brothers are now about 10 weeks out from their second hair transplants.
‘I hated looking in the mirror’
The triplets said they didn’t want to gradually go bald while doing live performances, and struggling with hair loss took a toll on their confidence. Sean said trying to hide the hair loss became a part of his daily life, and he combed his hair in a specific way every day to compensate for the balding.
“Before I got the procedure, I hated looking in the mirror,” Sean said. “I could see my hair falling out.”
Once the transplanted hair grew in, Sean said he felt more confident.
All three said they thought the cost of the first procedures was worthwhile. Since undergoing the transplants, they’ve become more open about the experience — and in the process, realized just how much interest others have in the procedure. One of their Instagram videos documenting the transplant drew 41 million views.
“I think there’s definitely an ego and pride thing associated to it, where people are like, ‘I don’t want to have to go get work done,'” Alex said.
The triplets said they’re currently in the shedding period of the post-surgery. However, after shaving their head for the second transplant, they realized that they didn’t mind how they looked completely bald.
“It was nice to know that the worst-case scenario of being completely bald was not that bad,” Alex said.
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