Alaric’s journey to her current place in the film and TV industry began when she was a young Yukoner in her early 20s with a desire to travel
“When it’s 3:30 in the morning, you aren’t really ready to eat a breakfast burrito”
Yukoner Kara Alaric is many things.
A proud, hard working Dakl’-aweidi Clan, Teslin Tlingit woman, who is making big waves in the movie, hair and make-up industry, and a makeup entrepreneur who currently calls Vancouver home.
Alaric was back in Whitehorse recently to attend the Indigenous Women Entrepreneur’s Workshop hosted by Däna Näye Ventures, and, to host a workshop on her creative contribution to the 2024 film, The Wedding Banquet, on which she was the head of department for hair.
The film was widely received and critically acclaimed at the Sundance Film Festival in Salt Lake City, Utah, and was even pegged to get an Oscar nod.
“I design the look of the hair department,” she says about her main role and responsibility when it comes to getting an actor’s “look” for TV and film.
Alaric is currently represented by two unions — the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE Local 891), which covers everything from costumes, to grips, to craft services, and of course hair and makeup.
“[It’s] crew basically,” Alaric says. In addition, she is under the The Association of Canadian Film Craftspeople (ACFC Local 2020) in B.C., which covers much of the same positions, though it handles smaller shows with lower budgets.
Having that type of support has allowed Alaric to focus on her work and has kept her name circulating in the industry. And she’s been busy.
“The way it works in film is that a lot of it is word-of-mouth, and you’d work for a different production company every single time you work on a new production.”
As it pertained to The Wedding Banquet, Alaric says she had a friend, who is an assistant director, reach out to her before the film was shot and offered to pass Alaric’s resume on to the people representing indigenous actor, Lilly Gladstone, who stars in the film.
As it turns out, Gladstone is known for her preference for working with indigenous crew wherever possible, and once her team looked at Alaric’s resume, they were sold on her.
“I’m very loud and proud in the film industry about my indigenous roots, and very proud of my Yukon roots,” Alaric says.
Once filming begins, Alaric points out the workload can be high, and crew can often spend 60-90 hours a week on set. But that’s not a deterrent in any way.
“Long hours, but I really love my job,” she says.
She arrives on set, sets up her station in the hair and makeup trailer and then waits for her first customer to arrive.
“Usually you have about a half-hour to prepare and hopefully you can squeeze a breakfast in there — though when it’s 3:30 in the morning, you aren’t really ready to eat a breakfast burrito,” she laughs.
Despite the long hours and potentially questionable breakfast times, Alaric says what makes the experience so amazing is the collaboration between departments on set, but also in prep, leading up to the start of production, which can take weeks or even months. On top of that, she also has the opportunity to collaborate with the actors, directors and producers.
“I think that’s why I enjoy my job so much, is because we’re all artists and we have a vision,” she says, adding, “When we read a script and we get to know all these characters, we all come up with ideas with who these characters are going to end up being on screen. It ends up turning into this beautiful pool of camaraderie.”
Alaric’s journey to her current place in the film and TV industry began when she was a young Yukoner in her early 20s with a desire to travel.
“I travelled around a bit. I bounced around from different city to city, but Vancouver always was special to me.”
Alaric’s grandmother also loved Vancouver, and that made the city even more special, she adds.
After a short stint back in the Yukon, life changed for Alaric. She says she wanted to seek out a path that would allow her to work with others and be a benefit for her and them.
“I thought, ‘What can I do? I need a career. I need to go to school. What can I do, that I get to work with people and I get to make them feel good?’”
She ended up Googling hair schools in Canada, and came across the Blanche MacDonald Centre in Vancouver and thought she would get her cosmetology licence and even move back to the North.
But while at school, she was introduced to the world of make-up artistry.
“That really stuck out to me,” she says.
She showed interest in the makeup program. As it turns out, the school offered Alaric a scholarship to go back and take the program because of her previous schooling with hair.
Alaric was doing hair part-time and attending makeup school when she got a call from a friend working on a film project, who told her the hair team had quit the job and suggested Alaric come in and take over.
“So I packed up what I thought I needed to pack up and I arrived on day one of filming and at the time didn’t know it was as big of a deal as it was,” she says.
Alaric found herself on the set of a western film starring Tom Berenger.
“There I am, doing Tom Berenger’s hair and he’s looking at me like this kid’s never done this before,” she says, adding that he was a total professional and very good to work with.
“He was lovely.”
On top of that, Alaric’s very first credit in film was as a department head on Lonesome Dove Church.
“After that it was just phone call, after phone call, after phone call. I just got looped into this world that I didn’t ever intend [to be in]. It was never my end-goal.”
Now, after 14 years in the business, Alaric has many accolades to her name that include recent work on CBC’s Allegiance, in addition to The Wedding Banquet this past year. Despite that success, she says the plan is to stay where she is and continue with her next steps.
Last year, Alaric and her friend and fellow stylist Micha Gilbert, created a makeup line in 2023, called See Something Say Something or Sumthin Sumthin Beauty for short.
The pair found a partnership that wasn’t just built on friendship, but on a shared trauma in the form of past sexual violence, they had each experienced earlier in their lives, Alaric says.
“We got talking about some hard topics. We both opened up to each other about sexual violence and how that was something we both endured in our past.”
Alaric adds that it was incredibly healing for both of them to share their experiences and how it helped to remove the label of being a victim.
So they thought about what they could do to help people and create community.
“In a very short amount of time, we thought let’s make a makeup company.”
Through the development of the company, the pair decided to share a portion of proceeds (about 10 per cent) from makeup sales, with charities in the Lower Mainland, who support survivours of sexual violence.
Two products — one eyelash makeup called See Something, and one lipstick called Say Something — will see 100 per cent of profits from those sales go to charity, Alaric says.
In the long-run, Alaric says she would like to have their own charity so they can keep helping people through therapy and workshops.
Alaric adds success comes in different layers for people, and though she enjoys the success she’s had in her life, it’s knowing that she can help people or make them feel good, that is the most important thing for her.
“It’s pretty special.”
Going forward, Alaric says she just wants to keep doing good things.
“I just want to keep making cool content that I care about.”
Accolades aside, Alaric is still a grounded Yukoner, who happens to be making a big splash down south, with no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
