Diva The will see you now
Radio star. Reality TV anchor. RuPaul’s close friend. MICHELLE VISAGE is one of the most fearsome tastemakers on the airwaves. But, as the New Year clock ticks towards midnight, Lotte Jeffs finds there’s more to this queen of the party scene than meets th
Despite her reputation for annihilating egos with a single hair flick as judge on the TV juggernaut RuPaul’s Drag Race UK there is nothing fierce about Michelle Visage in person: ‘The biggest misconception about me is that I’m scary,’ she tells me over tea. ‘In real life, I’m a softie. I don’t want anybody to feel left out and that they don’t belong.’
In just a few years, Michelle Visage has made her way on to our popular-cultural stage – as a judge on Drag Race, a judge on Ireland’s Got Talent in 2018, a contestant on 2019’s Strictly (she finished seventh), a DJ on Radio 2 (tonight she’s ushering in the New Year live from Los Angeles, playing three hours of floor-fillers) and in February as Morticia in The Addams Family: The Musical Comedy at the London Palladium.
The word ‘diva’ is often fired at strong women by way of insult, but Visage has the word tattooed on her inside wrist and named her 2015 self-help book The Diva Rules. ‘I also wanted to call my daughter Diva,’ she admits. ‘But my husband didn’t go for that because if they can’t live up to it, it’s a lot of pressure.’
Today she tells me she’s got ‘a full face of slap’ on, but if I’d caught her on an off-duty day, she’d be make-up-free, have her hair scraped back in a ponytail and be wearing a Zara tracksuit. She’s proud of how her face has held up over 55 years, and while she takes her skincare seriously, she says she’s never had surgery (discounting the breast enlargements she had reversed in 2019, after believing they were making her sick with an autoimmune disorder).
While Visage is charming when talking to everyone from the waiter to fans asking for a selfie, with me there’s an unexpected
‘THE BIGGEST MISCONCEPTION ABOUT ME IS THAT I’M SCARY’