George Fenwick chats to the hosts of House of Drag

New Zealand’s latest reality competition is sure to cause a stir.George Fenwick chats to the hosts of House of Drag

AS WE

walk up a driveway to a lavish, secluded mansion in Okura, I can imagine it as the location of a new season of The Bachelor; with its gleaming surfaces and regal entranceway, the awkward introductions and quiet tension of that show would seem right at home here. However, when two drag queens drop their Burgerfuel and spring up to greet us at the door, clad in just their underwear, it’s clear there’s something much more colourful going on here.

That’s how we meet Kita Mean and Anita Wigl’it, the hosts of House of Drag, TVNZ’s new drag competition series. The glamorous queens say they’re embarrassed to be caught during a break — but they don’t seem it. They’re on form immediately, firing jokes back and forth as they welcome us into the mansion.

Inside looks like a bomb went off in a Look Sharp party store; there is colour strewn everywhere in the form of feathers, glitter, makeup, items of clothing and other bits and pieces. The contestants are working on a challenge where they must construct a costume out of trash. Spread into different rooms of the labyrinthine house are drag artists in various states of readiness — some have their makeup fully done while they’re furiously sewing together outfits; others are already strutting around in artfully created looks.

The crew hover as the contestants work away, capturing moments of laughter and light shadethrowing. (In another room lies the Shade Cam, which is where really juicy stuff is saved for individual interviews). There’s a sense of camaraderie in the house, as contestants share materials or seek fashion advice from others. Producers explain that’s down to the small size of New Zealand’s drag community — some of the contestants were friends or performed together before coming on the show.

But apparently the house isn’t always this jovial. Anita says she thought the smallness of New Zealand’s drag community would cultivate a supportive atmosphere in the house. She wasn’t entirely wrong — but some fierce personalities surprised her.

“You would think that with [drag] being such a niche thing, especially as part of the gay community, it would all be, ‘We’re going to support each other and we all love each other, we’re all friends,”’ she says. “But actually there were quite some strong rivalries. It was amazing how, in a short time, people develop strong opinions about each other. It was very interesting to see the drama unfold.”

The structure of the competition creates inevitable tension and rivalries; the winner of each challenge must choose the bottom two. It’s then up to Kita and Anita to decide who is eliminated.

“The moments that stuck out for me would really be the raw emotions you see on people,” says Anita. “Even though people were friends and they were all enjoying themselves, the competition really was the reason they were there. With high levels of competitiveness, there’s always going to be drama, and people were playing quite tactfully.”

Kita and Anita are the owners of Caluzzi on Karangahape Rd, a drag and cabaret bar, and they also host regular competitions such as Drag Wars. Both say more and more people have been paying attention to drag as an art form over the past few years, in no small part thanks to reality TV phenomenon RuPaul’s Drag Race — the 10th season of which just clocked the show’s highest ratings, without even counting those who stream it on Netflix globally. The effects are noticeable on a local scale, right down to Kita and Anita’s work at Caluzzi.

“You’d get mostly corporate functions and hen parties, that was the extent of what we got, and you’d get the occasional birthday — maybe a homosexual birthday,” says Kita. “Now we’re getting young girls having their sweet 16th birthdays.”

But where RuPaul has fallen short on inclusivity — earlier this year saying he “probably” wouldn’t allow a transgender woman on Drag Race — House of Drag is working harder. Two of the contestants on House of Drag identify as trans. “Some people, historically and probably today, have started off doing drag maybe because they feel inside they’re a different person and they want to pursue and explore that area, so people have transitioned through the drag phase,” Anita says. “Drag these days is so different; a girl can be a drag king, or hyperdrag, where they dress up as a drag queen as well, and every gender in between boy and girl is a spectrum now.

“I think anyone and everyone wants to give it a go, and who are we to say that this person can’t be on the show because of their gender identity?”

Anita says she sees House of Drag as an “evolutionary” moment in New Zealand television history — and she looks forward to our country’s reaction. “Typically, you look at New Zealand, it’s always just the man in the singlet, in the gumboots, in the Swanndri, and I feel as time’s gone on . . . the images have evolved,” she says. “Because I live in Auckland and I work in the gay community on K Rd, I’m used to that colour, and I have to stop myself from thinking that the whole of New Zealand isn’t as used to what I see on the daily.

“I think it’s going to cause quite a stir, not necessarily a good stir — it makes people uncomfortable sometimes because they’re confused and they don’t really understand it,” she says. “They don’t really know how to accept it or if they want to accept it. But I think that’s always really good for a TV show. As long as people are talking about it, they’re having a strong reaction.”