This year, the US and UK editions of Drag Race have been airing simultaneously for the first time, and fans have been busily comparing the merits of the two. “I remember Lily Savage being on primetime telly and no one batting an eyelid.” I grew up with Kenny Everett, Dick Emery, Les Dawson, Stanley Baxter, to name a few, plus we had the dames in the panto every Christmas,” he says. “Drag, normally comedic drag, has always been loitering around the UK entertainment mainstream. Carr points out that the UK has a different relationship to drag than the US. If the US version is sometimes overly sincere, then the British one, which began in 2019 on BBC Three, brought a smutty sense of humour and scrappy ethos from the beginning. The international spin-offs each have their own flavour. Its cocktail of high glamour, high drama and earnestness has been a stage for open and honest conversations about gender, identity and gay rights.Įllie Diamond (left) and Lawrence Chaney get ready for their shoot. In 2018, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, dropped in to the workroom (the show’s backstage area where the queens put together their looks) to urge viewers to vote. Celebrity guest judges have included Christina Aguilera, Ariana Grande and Whoopi Goldberg Lady Gaga turned up in drag, as a tough-looking boy called Ronnie. By the end of this run, there will have been 173 episodes of the original Drag Race and 41 of its spin-off series, RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars (in which favourite past contestants compete for a spot in the hallowed Hall of Fame). This year’s US season, its 13th, set a record for its largest audience, with 1.3 million viewers. It created catchphrases, stars, and shoved drag towards the American mainstream. The queens compete against each other in a variety of challenges that might require them to use comedy, dressmaking, singing, dancing, or the whole lot combined – so long as the results are delivered with Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve and Talent. The show was a partial parody of popular reality series such as America’s Next Top Model, using drag’s strong sense of mimicry and mockery to send up the element of competition but it did it so well that it became a gripping competition in its own right. The early episodes, which aired on the LGBT network Logo, were low-budget and soft focus but over time, it became a genuine pop culture sensation. RuPaul, the most famous drag queen in the world, drew on his own experience to launch a contest, changing the fortunes of queens from across the US, and giving a national spotlight to performers who had previously appeared only in local clubs. When RuPaul’s Drag Race began in the US it was cult, niche viewing. Tayce: ‘I’ve got pictures of me from a baby to 10 years old in wigs, dresses, anything I could find.’ Photograph: Perou/The Guardian What’s the best version of RuPaul’s Drag Race? It’s UK, hun. The contestants launched UK Hun, a Eurovision parody song and inescapable earworm that became a bona fide Top-40 hit. Covid tore the season in half, inserting a seven-month break into filming one contestant did not return after a positive test. There was H&M-gate, in which host RuPaul berated a contestant for performing in a shop-bought dress, inciting a fierce debate about the economics of drag in a pandemic. There was a perfect Katie Price impression, asserting that “nipples are the eyes of the face”. Alan Turing as a high-concept trouser suit. The final was filmed in November, but with multiple endings, like Game Of Thrones – meaning none of them know who has won until the episode is broadcast. So far, the second season has been spectacular. (The queens use the pronouns she/her in drag out of drag, Bimini is non-binary and goes by they/them, while the others use he/him, hence the joyous jumble.) This is the anglicised, rough-around-the-edges, wildly spirited spin-off of the US mothership. “Live it up,” he says, grinning.Īlong with Ellie Diamond, Bimini Bon Boulash and Lawrence Chaney, Tayce is about to compete in the final of Drag Race UK. But for now, they’re at home, like everyone else. In ordinary times, the queens taking part in what he calls “the Olympics of drag” would be out in the world, watching at viewing parties in pubs and bars, appearing at Drag Race-themed events. “She’s upstairs now,” Tayce says, in his nimble Newport lilt. One of his flatmates, A’Whora, was also on the show, just missing out on a top-four spot. The experience is a little different for Tayce than for most viewers he is also one of the finalists in this year’s competition. “We sit around, get some food, watch the thing, then have a couple of bevs after,” he says, talking from his bedroom in London. O n Thursday nights, drag queen Tayce settles in to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race UK with his housemates.
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