GLAM MA'AM: Interior designer Shayla Copas is used to working with light.
Only now she's working in the spotlight.
The owner of Little-Rock-based Shayla Copas Interiors is the star of Southern Glam, a four-episode show premiering Thursday on The Design Network. Episodes -- about five to seven minutes long -- can be viewed on thedesignnetwork.com, Roku and Apple TV.
Copas explains, "The Design Network is owned by Furnitureland South, and they do short segments to promote the design world, and they sell product that way as well. ... If I pick out a coffee table that is in my episode, then they would give consumers a chance to buy the coffee table."
After meeting the network owner at a convention, Copas pitched the show. And they liked her ideas for Southern Glam, which is described as "a look that melds transitional design, soft punches of color and a focus on Southern hospitality ... with just the right amount of sparkle." Emphasis on that last part. "I like everything sparkly," she says with a laugh. It's an aesthetic that also will be showcased in her new book, Four Seasons of Entertaining, due out in the spring.
Other Arkansans -- acting as Copas clients -- will appear on Southern Glam, as well, including Gov. Asa Hutchinson's daughter Sarah Hutchinson Wengel and Face Your Day Salon owner Aaron Perkins. Copas says Perkins was a double asset: "He's pretending to be my client ... but he also did all our makeup and hair for the set too."
Copas says the "rooms" she designed for the shows, filmed in North Carolina, were actually a set: "They gave me this square box, and I knew where the windows were, and I got to pick out the paint colors and pick out all the furniture and the accessories. ... It looks like a real room that I designed for these pretend clients. It's really, really cool."
Also cool for Copas: discovering who had just finished using her set. It was Carson Kressley, star of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and, his latest show, Get a Room with Carson & Thom.
"I got to make over his set," Copas says. "It was pretty fabulous."
PATCH REHASH: Speaking of shows, actresses Laura Dern and Issa Rae will star in and produce The Dolls, a limited HBO series inspired by true, if ugly, Arkansas events.
According to Variety.com: "The series recounts the aftermath of Christmas Eve riots in two small Arkansas towns in 1983, riots which erupted over Cabbage Patch Dolls. The series explores class, race, privilege and what it takes to be a 'good mother.'"
In other words, it surely won't portray our state in the best light.
Jill Earnheart Holyfield of Little Rock offered this tongue-in-cheek Facebook explanation: "This is Laura Dern punishing us for Billy Bob Thornton dumping her."
Email: jchristman@arkansasonline.com
SundayMonday on 12/09/2018