WHY HASN’T ‘RUPAUL’S DRAG RACE’ CAST A HOUSTON QUEEN?
“DRAG RACE” STAR ALASKA HAS PERFORMED IN HOUSTON.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” is a bona fide phenomenon.
The campy and creative reality show, currently in its 10th season with a growing cult status, had made superstars out of performers once relegated to nightclubs. For the uninitiated, the show tasks a group of carefully selected drag queens from across the country with challenges involving acting, music, sewing and impersonation. The winner, as selected by RuPaul and her judges, is deemed America’s Next Drag Superstar. Though, that doesn’t mean the runners-up don’t become stars in the process.
And in many ways, it’s become a blueprint for real-world success.
Former “Superstar” Bianca Del Rio tours the world as a stand-up comic, selling out venues usually reserved for more traditional acts. Adore Delano, who didn’t win, is a Billboard-charting pop star. Trixie Mattel and Katya host their own show on Vice TV. Alaska and Alyssa Edwards have become pop-culture superstars. And it really just seems to be getting started. “Drag Race” made the move last year from Logo to VH1, resulting in record ratings and continued socialmedia domination. The recent “All Star 3” edition became the No. 1 original cable program in its time slot earlier this year and the show’s most-watched season overall. RuPaul has even earned a pair of Emmys for outstanding reality host.
Houston — with its wildly diverse, creative drag scene — seems perfect for a “Drag Race” glow up.
There are no rules here in H-town. There are pageant queens and comedy queens and macabre queens and bearded queens. You can see drag shows every day of the week all over the city: JR’s, Hamburger Mary’s, Scandalo, Michael’s Outpost, Rich’s, Guava Lamp, Barcode (formerly TC’s) and even The Room Bar &
Lounge in Spring.
So why has a Houston queen yet to appear on “Drag Race,” which claims to celebrate all forms of drag from all over the world? Let’s explore the mystery.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” debuted in 2009. The stakes were low, and the Vaseline on the lens was heavy. A Texas queen, Shangela, first appeared during Season 2. The Paris (Texas, not France) native returned for Season 3 and went on to be robbed of the “All Stars 3” crown. (No, we’re still not over that.)
Since then, only four other competitors have repped Texas, including the current season’s Asia O’Hara from Dallas. By contrast, Season 10 alone has five New York queens in the mix.
So what’s the tea, henny? It’s not like Houston queens aren’t star worthy.
Chloe Knox has pursued drag full-time since 2015, winning a slew of local competitions and awards. Darius Vallier, known onstage as Blackberri, performs and emcees multiple nights a week and was named AbOUT Magazine’s 2017 drag illusionist of the year. Violet S’Arbleu was crowned Miss Gay Texas America 2017, frequently sings live and has designed stunning looks for “RuPaul’s Drag Race” favorite Kim Chi.
Any one of them, along with several others, seem primed for a “Drag Race” debut.
S’Arbleu auditioned for a few seasons but says she pulled back after another Violet — Chachki — won Season 7. She figured having the same name might be held against her. Still, a 2012 YouTube video titled “Violet’s Audition Tape for RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 5” has more than 54,000 views. And S’Arbleu will appear next month at RuPaul’s DragCon in Los Angeles.
“Our scene here is so big and so diverse, but it’s hard to pigeonhole us,” S’Arbleu says. “The established names don’t just do one thing, so we’re all a bit of a wild card. And when you’re filming a reality competition and trying to fill it with character types, they’re not likely to cast someone unpredictable.”
Names like Kofi, Kara Dion, Lana Blake and Kourtney Paige Van Wales are legends in the Texas drag scene — and could have made a big splash on early seasons of “Drag Race” if given the opportunity. If we’re being technical, Season 9’s Farrah Moan was a Houston native who attended Klein High School. But she moved to Austin before settling in Las Vegas, where her drag career flourished and she landed on the show’s radar.
“‘Drag Race’ wouldn’t let me say I was from Texas because I lived in Vegas,” Moan says. “But everybody knows I’m from Houston, Texas.”
And she’s confident the Bayou City will be represented on “Drag Race.”
“The drag in Houston is so fierce. I know it will only be a matter of time,” Moan says.
Knox, who has earned a reputation as one of the city’s most creative performers, thinks there’s still plenty of time for a local queen to slay the “Drag Race” stage. Her pick is S’Arbleu, who has done the work and knows many of the contestants and people involved with the show.
But it could also very well be Knox, who has auditioned three times and progressed rapidly over the past few years. Her frighteningly fierce take on Pennywise, from last year’s “It” film, went viral via a series of photos and videos.
“It’s tough because there are many fierce queens who don’t get on, simply because they don’t know how to summarize the best of their fierceness in a video,” Knox says. “I think most people think getting on the show just takes being fierce or relatively successful or having a social-media presence. But there are endless other factors they take into consideration.”
Knox says she’ll keep sending in the audition tapes — “and eventually, they’ll have to give Houston its representation.”
Because, in the words of Mama Ru, if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?