Over the past few years, many progressive conversations have been happening in the entertainment industry. We’ve been discussing more opportunities for non-white, non-cis, non-male creatives, behind and in front of the camera. We’ve been making room at the table for everyone in many ways. And while progress is never perfect, there were still some clear oversights in the conversations being had.

When she noticed a lack of available makeup artists and hair stylists with the proper training to work on all hair types and skin types, especially textured hair, Samantha Russell didn’t wait around for someone else to push the industry forward. Instead she did it herself, by creating a beauty agency focused on diversity and inclusion, with a specialization in Afro hair.

Cinema Femme sat down with Last Looks Beauty’s founder Russell to discuss all things make up, hair and inclusivity.

I’d love talk about your backstory, as well as Last Looks Beauty’s. How did your career start and how did Last Looks Beauty come to be?

I am a professional actor. I’ve been acting for about…let’s say 20 years. I started in Cincinnati, Ohio, which is where I’m originally from in the US. I worked in theatre and transferred over to film and TV. I wanted to learn more about the craft so I moved to England and studied drama in London in 2018. I got my masters in acting there.

While I was studying, I was met with the continuous question of “Can you come hair and makeup ready?” I kept saying “I’m paying the same tuition as everyone else, why am I expected to be my own hair and makeup artist as well?” and our university said “We don’t know anyone who knows how to work with your hair type or skin tone.”

So, I said, “If I come up with an organization or some type of community of hairstylists who know how to work with all hair types and skin tones, would they sponsor me to stay in the country a bit longer?” And be careful what you ask for, because they said yes.

That is when I went on to start Last Looks Beauty, which is an inclusive hair and makeup agency here in the UK, but available globally. We have hair and makeup artists who know how to work with all hair types, but specialize in Afro and textured hair. They work across the West End, Broadway, film, TV, commercials, anything that you can think of that has a global majority or diverse performer led platform, we’re a part of that. We’ve been around since 2019. Despite COVID, despite industry changes, shut down, strikes…somehow we’re still here. We won best hair and makeup agency in the UK last year.

Our educational arm, Lights, Camera, Afro, is where we go and teach special effects in schools, and about global majority hairstyling and practice, and it lets young people know that hair and makeup are viable careers in the future and creative pathways, rather than being an actor or director. We come to the schools and show them “Hey, you can do this instead if you’re a more practical hands on person”. If you want to make cool wounds and scars, put mud and dirt on people’s faces, and do hairstyling and makeup, because kids know how to do all these things, but they don’t know it’s a career.

So, I’ve been doing that the past ten years! I’m really thankful and happy to be doing the work that I’m doing, and still being able to act in this crazy, ever changing industry.

What does a day in the life look like at Last Looks Beauty? Or what does it look like for one of the stylists you guys employ?

So we have two tiers. Last Looks Beauty is the agency, and Lights, Camera, Afro is the educational workshop arm. For the agency, it’s a typical day on set for the hair and makeup artist. They go in, they do the work, they do it well. My job as the director of the company is finding these opportunities for them.

What I will say, for a long time, we were the people on-call when things went wrong. So you have someone who is Black and they’re not getting their hair cared for. They would start googling to find a hair and makeup artist, and we’d pop up. We would come in as damage control a lot, and that was a lot on our end to pick up the pieces, try to find people available last minute. But now, people know who we are. They come to us first. And sometimes it’s not even a mixed background or diverse cast, it could be all European white, or all Black, it doesn’t matter what it is. They come to us first. That speaks to the organization we’ve built over time and hopefully the legacy that we will have in the future as well.

For the workshops, that’s when we go into the schools. I really enjoy the workshops. We get to meet the kids, we get to show them what it’s like to work on a film and TV set. They get to see a standard call sheet, they ask questions about what it’s like to be a hair and makeup artist. Then they get to do the practical, hands-on stuff. So they get to style the wigs and do the wounds on each other or themselves, and they get cool prizes and a certificate at the end that says junior stylist.

What was the process like finding artists to work for Last Looks?

When we started the organization, I was still very new to England myself, so I wasn’t very familiar with the creative industry. I had always been someone that did my own hair, so I really was the first hairstylist at the agency. As we did more professional acting in London, we would meet more hair and makeup artists on set. Some were still learning how to work with textured hair, while some were already established and came on. We networked that way, we would tell them about the agency. About 70% of our artists, we have about 48 artists on our books, are from me meeting them on sets as a talent, and then they come and join the agency as a makeup artist, which is really cool.

What are you most proud of up until this point? With the brand or personally?

Meeting people like you. I think people who are interested in meeting the small times like my self, and just kind of chatting about what it looks like to be a creative right now is one of my favorite things. It’s so difficult, but if we keep the conversation continuing between people like ourselves, it builds something for the future. I think that’s what really gets me excited, the continued conversations amongst creatives.

What’s your favorite project that Last Looks has been a part of?

My favorite this year was I’m Every Women – The Chaka Khan Musical. So for the West End production we did the first run of that. A couple months ago actually. We went on tour for a while and now it’s back up on the West End, and we got to meet Chaka Khan. Fantastic. The hair and makeup artist who was on it from our side got to do her hair and makeup as well, so I think that was my favorite this year.

All of the big West End shows we’ve worked on, like Come Alive, The Harder They Come. We’ve done some really cool stuff. I’m a bit biased when it comes to stage stuff. We get to meet these people who are up-and-coming actors, and then they get to go on to do something great and we can say we did their makeup and hair.

You recently did collaborations with WIFC and Camera Ambassador. I’d love to learn more about what those entail.

Oh gosh, I just love those guys.

Literally, I mean, they were just all hands on deck when it came to us working together. We did a series where we did two online masterclasses talking about diversity, inclusion, community, and culture care within global majority organizations. And then we had an in-person, hands-on masterclass working with textured hair at Camera Ambassador, it was a partnership between the three of us. It was just such a brilliant, welcoming – I mean it was so seamless. Everybody was there, no one was being paid, it was just something to benefit the communities and help people understand about diversity and how we can be more inclusive and give people the time to train and learn textured hair.

It’s probably one of the best collaborations we’ve had when it comes to doing masterclasses because everyone genuinely wanted to be there. It was just a great time, I wish I could go back to August when we did it because it was so amazing. We’ve worked with a lot of organizations globally as well, but there’s just something about coming home and feeling the warmth and the spirit of “Let’s do it together.”

Where do you hope to see both Last Looks Beauty and the makeup and hair industry in general in the next ten years?

I hope Last Looks is one of the pioneers that’s still making changes in terms of being inclusive. I want us to also be more of a sustainably led organization as well. We work with people like Hair Without Harm, where there’s no chemicals, the carbon footprint is different. I hope we have a bigger sustainability aspect to the organization, while also building the organization in general.

And I hope, when it comes to hair and makeup, diversity and inclusion isn’t just a conversation that we’ve been having these past two years, but that it’s something that’s just a permanent staple in what we do when it comes to working with talent.

Especially when it comes to consultations. This is just something that’s being talked about, but I want everyone to have a consultation no matter what their background is. Let’s figure out the hair history; Do you have Alopecia? Any allergens? Do you have Psoriasis? As we go through life there’s so many things happening with the foods we are putting in our bodies, it effects our scalp and our hair, so anybody can have issues and we need to be mindful of that. So, I hope the industry changes to fit everyone, not just a few people for the time we’re in now.

Cinema Femme is focused on uplifting female and gender expansive creatives in the industry. We’ve also focused a lot this summer on creatives breaking barriers, and that phrase really reminded me of you and Last Looks Beauty. What does that phrase “breaking barriers” mean to you?

Walking in your purpose when it feels like it has a trap door that you need to find. I think a lot of people, especially now, are leaving the industry and finding it so difficult because we’re used to working and finding opportunities in traditional ways. You apply for the job, you get it, but now those jobs are gone or have moved elsewhere. I want us to continue to find new ways of working, even if we’re not doing the things we once thought we’d always be doing.

What’s coming up next for Last Looks Beauty?

We have a lot coming up! We are doing our next masterclass in October in London. Sadly we won’t be in the US, but we have a lot of online masterclasses where we share about what it looks like to be inclusive, understanding how to not have microagressions in the workplace when working with global majority.

Next year we will be launching another part of the Lights, Camera, Afro in schools in the US, so hopefully we will be seeing people in the US in their high schools.

For more, follow Last Looks Beauty on Instagram at lastlooksbeauty