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Kharl Wirepa: A designer, a pageant advocate, a kharacter. (Image Design: Archi Banal)
Kharl Wirepa: A designer, a pageant advocate, a kharacter. (Image Design: Archi Banal)

Pop CultureJanuary 22, 2022

Gowns and Geysers’ Kharl WiRepa is a Kharacter

Kharl Wirepa: A designer, a pageant advocate, a kharacter. (Image Design: Archi Banal)
Kharl Wirepa: A designer, a pageant advocate, a kharacter. (Image Design: Archi Banal)

The star of TVNZ OnDemand’s new beauty pageant docuseries is a complicated, charismatic, deeply watchable figure, writes Sam Brooks.

If there’s unbridled energy to be found in the new series about the Miss Rotorua pageant, Gowns and Geysers, it’s not to be found spurting forth from the ground. Instead, it’s in the small, suited frame of Kharl WiRepa.

WiRepa, whose wild life story includes being the first Māori designer to be featured in British Vogue – and also benefit fraud, stabbing and addiction – has the kind of presence that TV makers build reality shows around. While Gowns and Geysers is ostensibly about last year’s Miss Rotorua, a pageant he revived back in 2018, it’s really, truly about Kharl WiRepa.

The force behind the pageant, in a role that seems to arbitrarily shift between judge, jury and executioner, WiRepa is the kind of character that reality show dreams are made of. He is proudly addicted to Fizzsticks, a Raro-type product from Arbonne, the MLM that every woman you forgot to delete on Facebook seems to shill. He is a “strong advocate” for deer products. In one episode he gets Botox on camera over the end credits, context free.

He is also, somewhat improbably given his camp affect, a Mormon who drops Lucifer and Satan into conversation as casually as most people reference a slightly unruly neighbour. A direct quote: “We must make sure that we kill Lucifer and make sure that he is not in our house … so I’m not having any food today ladies because I’m preparing for NZ Fashion Week.”

Kharl WiRepa and his delightful assistant Bobby. (Photo: TVNZ on Demand)

It’s unclear whether WiRepa is playing up for the camera or really does live his life as though there is a film crew waiting to catch every gesture, every gutsy attempt at a catchphrase. That lack of clarity means he’s electric to watch – you’re never sure how, exactly, he’s going to act. Is he going to reach out a warm, supportive hand or toss out a withering put down?

The closest comparisons I could come up with are a character in a Christopher Guest film, Jennifer Coolidge in The White Lotus, or some sort of chimera-esque fusion of the entire Rose family from Schitt’s Creek. One moment he’s pure Moira Rose, dancing around the subject of a contestant’s pregnancy, flouting every rule of sentence structure (“I understand that I have heard that you may possibly be pregnant”). The next, he’s Moira’s son David, bluntly, but not unkindly, asking that same contestant if she’ll be skinny when Miss Rotorua is crowned. To be clear: these comparisons are a compliment.

Gowns and Geysers isn’t quite the series it wants to be, though. It tries to cram a lot of material into eight bite-sized episodes – each one clocks in under 15 minutes – and there’s never enough time to deal with all the issues it raises, including the often difficult pasts of the women involved in the pageant, nor with the sheer amount of contestants involved. The short shrift some contestants get is a shame, particularly since the stories of these women, what they’ve overcome and what the pageant means to them is genuinely moving. This is a lens that we don’t often see on the world of beauty pageantry, and even though time limits the size of that lens, it’s valuable nonetheless.

Kharl WiRepa, in the foreground. (Photo: TVNZ)

These issues are reflected in WiRepa as a presence in the series. He’s trying to be everything and do anything, and thus ends up being both the hero and the villain of this story. It’s this tension that makes him fascinating to watch. He genuinely wants the best for the contestants, while also being startlingly inflexible about his idea of fashion and the slightly draconian, deeply unclear, rules of the pageant. He is both playing to the camera and wanting to seem like all of this is coming to him naturally, in the moment.

Am I looking too deeply into WiRepa? Possibly! But I’m sure he’d find being put under the magnifying glass delightful. While his passion for the pageant is genuine, the timing of this series is perfect for building buzz ahead of NZ Fashion Week, and there’s a lot of him in this series.

What makes this different from a vanity project isn’t just his refreshing lack of care for rehabbing his image, but the fact that he seems unsure of what precise image he wants to project. Is he your best friend or a fashion lawmaker? Is he benefactor or dictator? Maybe he’s just a guy doing the thing he loves. Whatever image he wants, I’ll happily watch him build it if it’s this magnetic.

You can watch Gowns and Geysers on TVNZ OnDemand now.

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Pop CultureJanuary 21, 2022

All the Dunedin locations in Netflix’s new rom-com The Royal Treatment

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The real star of Netflix’s new romantic comedy? Dunedin.

Netflix’s latest romantic comedy film The Royal Treatment is set in the fictional country of Lavania. Never heard of it? Put your atlas away. Presumably Lavania borders Montenaro and Aldovia (settings of fellow Netflix royal romances The Princess Switch and A Christmas Prince) on the wall map of fictional realms, but Lavania is by far the best fictional country of them all. That’s because Lavania is actually Dunedin.

Filming for The Royal Treatment took place in Otago in February and March last year, with various streets around Dunedin and Oamaru being transformed into New York City and Lavania. The best city in the south has metamorphosed like a commoner about to marry her prince, bringing the Otago region to a global audience of thirsty rom-com fans.

Laura Marano, Mena Massoud and Dunedin star in The Royal Treatment (Photo: Netflix)

The story follows New York hairdresser Izzy (Laura Marano, star of Disney Channel fave Austin & Ally), who after an unlikely mix-up is hired to do the hair for an upcoming royal wedding. Handsome groom Prince Thomas (Aladdin’s Mena Massoud) is preparing to marry American heiress Lauren, but once Izzy and her two best friends travel to Lavania, things don’t run quite to plan.

We all know how this goes, right? Izzy and Thomas have an instant connection. She treats him like a normal person, he encourages her to follow her dreams. They fall in love, but his wicked parents need him to marry well to protect the crown. What’s a prince to do?

Don’t let the stereotype of a Hallmark-style rom-com put you off The Royal Treatment. It’s predictable, yes. Silly, definitely. But it’s also a delightful watch, full of energy and humour and New Zealand acting talent, and it’s a modern take on a classic fairytale. In fact, this is me now, driving in my royal car along my royal road, thinking about when I can watch The Royal Treatment again:

At the very least, you can watch to spy some of Otago’s most well-known landmarks. Here are some of the more recognisable places that pop up during The Royal Treatment.

Vogel Street

Here, Vogel Street is transformed into urban New York with a few magical touches. All of the New York hairdressing scenes were filmed around Vogel Street and the Warehouse Precinct, which shows that when you chuck a digitally enhanced train and a yellow school bus into the background, Dunedin is basically the same as the Big Apple.

Fable Hotel

This is where Isabella goes to cut the prince’s hair for the first time. Fable Dunedin boasts “high speed WiFi” and a “selection of exquisite Pure Leaf Single Origin teas”, which I hope the prince got to enjoy.

Camp Estate at Larnach Castle

This country house at Larnach Castle on the Otago Peninsula became the prince’s glamorous hotel suite. It’s here that Izzy refuses to cut Prince Thomas’s hair when he doesn’t defend his staff, and where bride-to-be Lauren hangs out with her scheming parents. Good news, you can book to stay at Camp Estate and live out your own marrying-a-royal fantasy in your own time.

Otago Peninsula

Welcome to the Lavanian coast, famous for its big trees, long grass and warmish waters.

Larnach Castle

It’s New Zealand’s only castle, but now old mate Larnach’s big house will be recognised around the world as the royal residence of Lavania. This is where Izzy and her hairdresser BFFs spend weeks preparing for the royal wedding, getting drunk in the kitchen with the servants and having a wonderful time at the expense of the poor Lavanian taxpayer. Great views, great hedges.

Olveston

The historic home in Dunedin is now a palace fit for a prince with a good suit and a bad fringe. It’s where Izzy and her friends Destiny and Lola are terrified by real-life Lotto presenter (and sometime Spinoff contributor) Sonia Gray, who gives a memorable performance as Madame Fabre, a French hairdresser with a disturbing perfectionist streak.

Inside Larnach Castle

Like Olveston, it seems little needed to be changed inside Larnach Castle to give off a suitably regal bedroom vibe. Those eiderdowns just scream “royalty”, and those lamps? Pretty sure I saw them in The Crown.

Otago University

It seems there are only two streets in Lavania, and this is one of them. Parts of Otago University around the Registry Building (also known as the Clocktower Building) were converted into the town market, which Izzy visits on her first day in Lavania. It’s like O Week, but without the vomit.

The Victorian quarter, Oamaru

When Izzy wanders down an alleyway and crosses the train tracks, she finds herself in Uber de Gleise, a lively part of town with a bad reputation. It’s here Izzy finds the true purpose in her life. Last time I visited Oamaru’s Victorian quarter I found a free macracon, so we are basically the same person.

Vogel Street, again

It’s Pretty Woman all over again, except this time the heroine has already rescued herself and the prince just bought his horse along for the ride. It’s the happy ending that both Lavania and Dunedin deserves.

The Royal Treatment is available now on Netflix.

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