We had the good fortune of catching up with one of LA’s most happy go lucky rising stars, Kara Royster. Kara moved to LA seven years ago. Since then, it’s been a wild ride – you’ve seen her in Pretty Little Liars (Yvonne) and Faking It (Brandy). She’s working on an exciting new film called Mono, which releases on July 8th.
The film features a ton of social influencers playing major roles, including: Christian DelGrosso, Jake Paul, Brandon Bowen and Eric Ochoa. The film starts with all the popular kids getting together for a party which leads to a huge outbreak of mono. As a result, all the popular kids leave to recover and a group of outcasts navigate their way to lead the school. Christina (Kara’s role) is the mean girl, queen been with crazy fake lashes who is on the dance team and is one of the students who come back and try to disrupt the new order. It’s a feel good, coming of age movie that we couldn’t be more excited about.
While discussing the movie with Kara we learned a lot about her personal journey.
Kara’s older sister had already moved out to LA to pursue acting. When Kara visited her she instantly fell in love with the city and knew this was the place for her. She soon made the move, continuing her education at Los Angeles County High School for the Arts.
“It was such a fun experience, I got to do school plays, write my own plays, take classes and workshops all while auditioning for shows, playing a role on a few shows on Teen Nick and I even worked for the Dodgers for a bit.”
She played Yvonne, a smart, classy woman who had a romantic interest with Toby (one of the leading characters). When Kara showed up for the audition, she already knew all of the characters, the full story and plot line because she was a huge fan of the show. Her familiarity paid off, she got the role and soon her fandom began to take off.
She also played Brandy on MTV’s Faking It. It was an award winning show about two girls who were social outcasts, but get mistaken as lesbians and suddenly are seen as cool (and so they run with it). “It was awesome working on a show that helped increase LGBT community awareness.”
She just wrapped up K.C. Undercover, a show where Kara plays Abby, K.C’s (Zendaya) cousin who is thought to just be a long lost relative but is actually a member of The Other Side along with her mother Erica (Jasmine Guy) and father Richard (Rick Fox).
She joked with us the all she needed to be happy was to one day be the subject of a GIF – well Faking It and KC Undercover have resulted in many GIFs for Kara. In our conversations with Kara we were blown away by how down to earth and likable she is. “I just can’t help but to be happy,” she shared, and we can understand why – her talent and hard work are paying off and she’s living the LA dream.
Kara works with some of LA’s most talented artists and professionals including:
Photographer: Samantha Annis
Makeup Artist: Erin B. Guth using Sigma Beauty
Hair Stylist: Bradley Darling
Check out some of their work below:
