Tara Nova Reflects on Canada’s Drag Race: Fair Pay, Newfoundland Pride, and Drag as Art
Canada’s Drag Race Season 5 is in full swing, showcasing some of the country’s most talented and creative queens. Among them is Tara Nova, from Newfoundland, who brought her unique perspective and artistry to the national stage. We had the chance to sit down with Tara following her time on the show to discuss her experience, her love for Newfoundland culture, and her fight for fair pay for performers. From designing her own looks to advocating for the drag community, Tara opened up about the challenges and triumphs of her journey.
TEM (The Extra Mile) : Tell us about the Newfoundland drag, scene What’s been like representing the East Coast on the national stage, like Canada’s Drag Race?
Tara Nova: Well, it means the world because like, we don’t get this opportunity often. Like, there’s only every so many people here that get that opportunity. And it’s actually only been two of us. So, and we’ve both been from St. John’s, Newfoundland. So I do think that it’s time that we get somebody from like Nova Scotia or New Brunswick because there’s so many talented and resourceful queens all throughout the Atlantic provinces. And I’d like to see more of us get this exact opportunity that I’ve been given because like, I’ve only been here for two episodes while I was given the platform and I’ve made such a big impact.
TEM : As a proud Newfoundland queen, like, what do you, what’s one thing that you wish that more people knew about Newfoundland and the drag scene.
Tara Nova: I just wish that they knew more of how creative everybody is. The drag here is so, so, so different. We really do make these crazy mixes. Our shows are always themed around something that is usually culturally relevant, and we really, really draw from creativity. You go to other scenes and usually people are performing like the top 40 of us, and there’s some 40 of them that’s really cute. This is the unique thing about St. John’s. I think that’s why they selected two queens from here already, because we are just so different. We carry a different air of Prisma.
TEM : Did you create the looks that we got to see on the show? Wht was the inspiration behind the looks?
Tara Nova: I did it , yeah, I made all of my looks the music video look was in collaboration with all my good sisters But every other look that you’ve seen I created completely myself and a lot these Inspirations were centered around Newfoundland like I talk about Newfoundland a lot You know, but Newfie pride is real and we really really appreciate and love where we come from So I really wanted to sell like each one of my runway looks like hey This is me. This is my heritage, but I didn’t do it and I didn’t always do it in like super obvious ways Like my entrance look specifically was from a trans queer artist here in the city so like I wanted to inject like Newfoundland art throughout each of the looks and then if you had to look at my Runway from the first episode ‘you ought to know’ runway You would see that that is the water and like water surrounds us here in Newfoundland water is life, I was ready to give you guys some more life. I want you guys to live.
TEM: I wanted to bring up an important conversation that You had in episode one was about representation about performers rights and fair pay. For those, who may not understand like the work that goes behind drag, Can you talk about the time the effort and the money that goes into just creating one performance?
Tara Nova: Yeah, well, there’s there’s so much like you’re going to sit there And you might make your own mix, but that one mix you make might take you an entire day just to make one Single performance you may have visuals to accompany that which will take even more time I might take another entire day to like sync everything up. Then if you look at like actual cost and like budget with drag I mean it ranges, but like make up is a great like baseline to base it off of some of our foundations are at least $40 up to $60 dollars. So like the booking fee that we were receiving here that I spoke out about would only cover half of that or all of that so I my booking fee goes to just foundation . But what about our concealer what about our blush what about eyeliner what about mascara what about lashes like everything that even takes To make the face of drag Would be so expensive like there is such a high budget then think of wigs think of outfits I mean outfits can be thousands of dollars just like hundreds of dollars if you’re just using it for like a stage performance. So it, drag is expensive, drag is not cheap, drag will never be cheap and not in this economy certainly.
TEM: Looking you know back at the competition like would you say there’s anything that you would have done different and like what were you like the most proud of?
Tara Nova: I think that there is a little part of me that’s like okay maybe I could have like outsourced a look or two but the issue is is that it takes a really long time to get anything here like you’re on this island as well as like I wouldn’t be able to do fitting so it could be an issue that we run into of like oh and something that I can’t fix either if there’s like it’s too hard to deconstruct and fix again before I have to actually leave for the race. So I wish that there were more designers here. that I could like select from like the one other drag designer was stuck in production for something else and I had to do everything myself but that’s the part that I’m proud about. So that is how like we wrapped this up is that I’m proud about what I was able to present because everything I presented 95 of what I presented was completely me. It was me. It was my drag.
TEM: What advice would you give to aspiring queens especially those let’s say that are coming from smaller communities like St. John’s like who want to follow in your footsteps? I would say that like you really really got to make sure that you have budget yourself. Doing something like Drag Race definitely requires you to have either connections or a budget that you can draw from. And when I say connections it’s like connections with like other designers. country that may already have your measurements know your body so like even networking at this point like in saying that is like Make sure that you’re networking that you know who you can draw from for when your time comes So that you don’t have to sit and ponder about it too much because you know Well, this person had made this for me before so now.know that they’re a reliable source for me to draw from.
TEM : My final question is there the last so we’re all here all about going the extra mile. So what do you do whether it be as a drag performer or just in your personal life?
Tara Nova: I feel like right now just like even speaking in this conversation and like something that’s very relevant in our community right now is Sticking up for the performers like really really going that extra mile to make sure that I’m taking care of the community Like I was given this platform for a reason. Canada’s Drag Race seen something in me. It’s seen something in the 11 of us in my past. And I knew that when I went there, I was going to make a splash and I was going to do something that would shape my community. I was going to put my community even before myself. And I think that that’s been very evident. And that’s the extra mile that I’ve pushed towards is doing something better for my community.
Canada’s Drag Race airs every Thursday (9pm EST on Crave)