The Olympics have come to an end. “House of the Dragon” has finished its second season with a whimper. You’ve probably already binged “The Bear” and are (possibly) bored by your current Netflix offerings. We’ve got good news. if you’re a fan of “Drag Race” and flamed out on the recent non-elimination “All Stars” season there is a new RuPaul Charles hosted spin-off arriving with some of the most talented contestants in the world, “RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars.” Oh, and it also just happens to feature the return of one of the most popular queens ever, Alyssa Edwards.
READ MORE: “RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars” Is Finally Here: A full cast breakdown
Featuring 12 contestants from every continent but Antarctica and Africa (give it a few years), “Global All Stars” is a dream season for anyone who is a fan of the often, cough, superior international “Drag Race” spin-off franchises. This initial season features finalists from every franchise outside of one queen, “Drag Race Germany’s” Tessa Testicle (yes, that’s her name), and they are bringing not only their charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent but a taste of their native culture which helps set them apart from many of the contestants on the original, American recipe.
Earlier this month, we caught up with the cast of “Global All Stars” and touched on everything from being judged by RuPaul for the first time (for most of them at least); to whether they felt they had anything to prove after not winning their initial seasons; if national pride was at stake; and, for all those viewers who don’t like subtitles (every contestant on “GAS” speaks English) why American viewers should watch. Oh, and honey, “Drag Race France’s” Soa de Muse has a response to that last subject that should be framed in the Louvre.
We start with “Drag Race Italia’s” Nellehenia, a Miss Congeniality, and runner-up on her season who was, well, often emotional on her season. Good news. She hasn’t changed.
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Nellehenia (Drag Race Italia Season 2)
“I’m a crybaby. I cry all the time. You need to wait and watch that. I’m crying right now. So, don’t worry.”
Alyssa Edwards (RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 5 and RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 2) on why she returned to Global All Stars
“I really wanted to challenge myself. This was the perfect opportunity for me to really click the refresh tab and here’s the thing, I didn’t come back for validation or vindication. I say this and I’m going to keep saying it. This was a personal goal for me. I’d already lost and then got the bigger win in the end. This was an opportunity for me to be gay and have fun. This is a celebration of drag and this is the world’s largest drag competition, officially 12 queens from 12 countries. This is a celebration of drag and it just made sense for me to represent the red, white, and the blue.
Pythia (Canada’s Drag Race Season 2) on being judged by RuPaul for the first time
“Oh my God. So nervous. The few moments before I stepped on the runway for the very first time to see Ru, I will always remember, literally engraved, tattooed in my brain. I’ve never felt more anxiety in my entire life, but the lights hit and the music started and I was like, ‘Listen, you’re here for a reason so you better make it work.’ And I did and it happened and I was just like, I had to get out of my head and I just had to have fun and I feel like I really did it this time around.”
Gala Varo (Drag Race Mexico)
“I was more concerned about making myself understandable in my English. So, I didn’t care if she laughed or not. I just wanted her to understand me.”
Kitty Scott-Claus if being judged by RuPaul previously is an advantage
“Everyone’s always like, “It’s going to be like you’re going to have such an advantage on the other queens.” And for me personally, I remember just feeling like, ‘Yeah, I’ve been judged by them before, but that means they know what to look out for. They know all the flaws, they know what they’ve critiqued me on before.’ And so going back, it felt like all the time in the world had passed, but then at the same time, no time had passed. It felt like I was just like, ‘Oh my God. Right. What did they say? What do I need to remember? How do I need to…’ Oh, it was like hell but incredible.”
Alyssa Edwards
“There was a part of me that was like, maybe there’ll be other judges from other franchises, but it always is a learning lesson to be in front of Ru. I mean, she, after all, is the mother. I mean, she championed this show at a time when drag wasn’t being celebrated and here we are now. It’s the most decorated series on television and we’re now celebrating drag all around the world and ya, ya, ya. And that’s what brought us all here together. So, I’m definitely very grateful and thankful.”
Soa de Muse (Drag Race France) on living up to France’s runway reputation
“They have this kind of cliche of ‘Yes, if you come from France so you are fashion queen baby.’ I’m a fashion queen, but for the no-go zone of Paris, I mean it’s a new fashion style. So, you can forget Nicky Doll, La Grande Dame. We have the French Caribbean Black Association, let me tell you! So, it’s going to be something new. Forget all the things you know, all the white girls. No, no, no. It’s a new thing now. You welcome! So, I think I’m going to bring something new because I was like, ‘O.K., La Grande Dame. You see she’s super perfection. She looks like a mannequin.’ So me, I’m, I’m going to bring something new, but of course, I’m going to give you the runway. No shade, on the runway. No shade. Of course.”
Kitty Scott-Claus (RuPaul’s Drag Race UK season 3) on the pressure of Global All-Stars
“It was a piece of piss babes. Walk in the park. [Laughs.] No, I’m joking. It was so much harder because also in the UK the drag scene is relatively small and everyone basically knows everyone anyway. And I remember walking into ‘Drag Race UK’ thinking, ‘Well, she can’t sew and she can’t sing and she can’t dance. So, there’s 1, 2, 3, gone.’ So you could work it out like that. I remember thinking, ‘O.K., well this is when she’s going to go.’ So yeah, this time it’s like everyone is a finalist. Everyone is so fierce and everyone is so bloody talented that it was just the best of the best. So, it made it hard.”
Miranda Lebrão (Drag Race Brasil) on joining Global All-Stars while her season was airing
“The morning that I got the call, I had to take a moment to think about it because I would miss half of my season. I would give up on being on my finale here in Brazil celebrating the last episode of ‘Drag Race Brasil’ and all the things that were really important to me, to go meet people and to see the episodes together, I had to give up. But come on, it’s global and it’s in dollars and it’s worldwide, so I just have to think for two minutes. And then I was like ‘O.K.'”
Tessa Tessticle (Drag Race Germany) on RuPaul saying her iconic name
“I mean, I had certain expectations and I feel like Twitter had them too. I feel like the internet was very much [waiting with] the same bated breath as you about RuPaul’s rendition of my name. And I guess you’ll just have to watch the season to find out how she says it. We’ll have to see.”
Alyssa Edwards
“I mean, I was on season five and All Stars two, I was in the early seasons. The world of drag has evolved. Families are watching it now. It’s completely mainstream. All eyes are on you. I’m knocking everything over, I’m getting nervous again. See in true Alyssa Edwards form fashion, but this to me is the pinnacle. Truly. When I say that, I mean it. And the stakes are so high, the werq room is bigger, the stage is larger. And I think now that we have, you’re not being judged just by the judges on set, but everybody at home, it’s like, here’s the thing. I remember being a child going, ‘What is this fascination with American football and sports?’ And my father was one of those avid sports followers. Now it’s drag and ‘Drag Race.’ And so it’s nerve-wracking because you’re putting yourself in your work and your art and your heart to be viewed by millions of people. This global idea, when they told me that it was going to be a global, not a ‘Versus the World,”‘ I had to really pump the brakes, pause and pray about this, and ask myself, ‘Are you ready for this? Are you prepared for this?’ And I didn’t know if I fully was, but I knew I would take the floaties off and dive in the 12 feet. You got one or two options, you’re going to sink or swim. So lady, you better kick it into high gear gal.”
Miranda Lebrão on the popularity of drag in Brazil on a scale from one to one thousand
“Probably 4,000 because we have been following ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ since season one. I mean we are watching this for 16, 17 years and we have our own history with drag queens here in Brazil. We have been doing drag since the dictatorship in the sixties. And we [have been] doing this over 45, 50 years probably? And we still have 80-year-old Queens working as drag queens and we have teenagers doing drag. We have millions and millions of people following drag queens. We have Pabllo Vittar, the most beautiful and amazing singer here in Brazil that’s a drag queen. So, we are like a continental country. We are huge. And our passion for drag queens is probably the same size as the country.”
Vanity Vain (Drag Race Sverige) on her biggest fan, Alexander Skarsgård
“Yeah, I think he is actually. The thing is that I’ve met him a lot of times. He comes to my club a lot of times and Stockholm is not that big. People run into each other all the time. But Alexander is a wonderful person and he supports drag and I am maybe going to put him in drag soon, you’ll see. And the thing is that he said yes to do the ‘Paparazzi’ performance live with me and I can’t wait.”
Eva Le Queen (Drag Race Philippines) on living up to Marina Summers run on UK vs the World
“When I received a call, of course automatically they said, “Eva, do you want to compete again?” It’s like, “Yes, of course.” I didn’t even know what I was competing for. It could be “American Idol,” I have no idea. But they said I’ll compete again. Yes, yes, yes. And, because Marina and I are best friends. We are the best of friends. I was a part of Marina’s journey preparing for UK versus the World and as much as she’s a part of my journey at Global. She’s part of the stoning team. So she stones my things and so I knew of her st-UKory, I knew of her run. Now that I think about it, it is huge pressure, but I think it’s also a matter of people need to know that I need to own this journey. My global journey is mine. Of course, people would definitely compare me to Marina or how it went, but we are entirely two different artists. Different people have different things to offer in this world and that’s what we are trying to show the world that there are many types of drag, beautiful, talented drag queens on that side of the world and we broke glass ceilings for our fellow Filipino queens. We tell them that there’s a new place to go, a new mountain to climb and it’s just a matter of time for the world to see it.”
Vanity Vain
“When we did ‘Drag Race Sweden,’ it was the first time for everyone, the production, the queens, every single one. So, we tried together to figure out how we were supposed to do it. But when I came to ‘Global All Stars,’ it was a production. Like, it was so precise. And that is something that I really, really appreciate. I hate, hate waiting but doing TV, something we usually say here in Sweden is ‘Be on time so you can wait.’ That’s how we say it. ‘Global All-Stars’? It was more fun. And all the culture in one room and all the girls that I got to meet and like create a family with is so nice. It’s just so nice and lovable.”
Eva Le Queen
“Honestly, I think the pressure is the same for everyone. We are all there to represent our country. We always say it’s the Olympics of drag, but more so for me, I am the only Asian queen in the cast. So I’m not just representing a country. It’s a whole damn continent. But also there is pride in it. I think I would say this, before you’re even able to represent anything in this world, first you have to represent yourself. So, even with that amount of pressure, whether I’m Asian, I’m Brazilian, or I’m British, we are there for ourselves first. And I think that’s what people will fall in love with. You bring your nationality, your passport will be the same, the culture and everything. But, I am proud because it was me. There are so many other queens that it could have been there, but it was me.”
Soa de Muse on why Americans should watch Global All Stars
“Sorry. America is not the center of the world baby, so you need to open your f**king eyes and see the diversity of drag around the world. So, sit down, drink water, eat, and watch this f**king TV show. Because it’s going to entertain. Yes, that is what we’re going to bring. You’re welcome. Yes, American people.”
Pythia
“Like Soa says ‘No shade.’ Listen, America could really open its eyes and educate itself into the rest of the world. And I think this will be a great history lesson for everyone, not just America. And I think you just have to watch it with an open mind and just absorb everything like a sponge because it’s going to be like a little queer history lesson from around the world.”
Gala Varo
“Not just to Americans, but the rest of the world, that they need to watch the show because we are sharing the thing that we need more at this time, that is love and sharing between countries. So they need to learn something about the LGBTQ community competing but at the same time sharing our love and all our art. So, it’s not for America, is for the world.:
“RuPaul’s Drag Race Global All Stars” drops every Friday on Paramount+ beginning August 16