Today VH1 announced that the reigning Emmy Competition Series winner “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and it’s spin-off, “RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars,” has been renewed for their 13th and sixth seasons respectively. That wasn’t a surprise based on the continuing popularity of the show (ratings were up for both installments this past spring) as well as the fact it’s one of Viacom’s crown jewels in terms of industry accolades. But, nothing is a given in Hollywood as the producers of the once renewed and now-canceled “Drunk History” can now attest. And five months ago, “Drag Race’s” production company, World of Wonder, and the network were hit with a double whammy that could have sunk any other reality show. And a large chunk of the credit for crafting a critically lauded and beloved “Drag Race” season 12 goes to none other than its Emmy-nominated editing team.
READ MORE: “RuPaul’s Drag Race” Season 12 returns with even more Emmy competition
Emmy winners in 2017 for the kickoff of the series’ ninth season, lead editor Jamie Martin and editor Michael Roha found themselves in uncharted territory this past March. One of the season 12 contestants, Joey Gugliemelli aka Sherry Pie, was accused of catfishing and sexual misconduct after a majority of the production was completed. Once the victims came forward, VH1 and World of Wonder quickly disqualified Gugliemelli, but the New York City drag queen had already made it to the end of the competition as one of the top four finalists. How do you get through a 12-episode season and keep the other contestant’s storylines prominent while Gugliemelli was on set and a part of numerous group challenges? The result was a master class in editing spearheaded by both Martin and Roha. Oh, and did we mention the pandemic and stay-at-home orders hit around the same time? With a traditional “live” finale no longer possible? Yes, Martin’s editing team had their hands full.
The two industry veterans took some time to discuss how they overcame such unforeseen hurdles and revisited the gift of guest judges Jeff Goldblum and Rachel Bloom, among other topics, during a conversation earlier this month.
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The Playlist: Can you both explain how the show is edited?
Jamie Martin: Our team is really collaborative, actually. It’s kind of different from a lot of reality shows and reality competition shows in general in that we have a pretty small team. We usually have between three and five editors and we all kind of collaborate on every single episode. So some of us kind of more specialized in the back-end of the episode where you’re looking at both the runways and the lip syncs. Some of us do more reality-based stuff in the front-end of the episode. Then there are people like Michael and I who do it all. We kind of fill in where we’re needed. That’s really different from a lot of shows in our industry in that we are on every single episode throughout the whole season.
The Playlist: I have heard that during a normal season you will continue editing future episodes while the season is airing.
Jamie Martin: We have a really long edit season. We probably start editing in the fall, and then, as you know, “Drag Race” usually starts airing in the beginning of springtime. So we have a solid base of maybe four to five episodes pretty much locked if not completely locked before we start airing. And then that allows us to continue editing the back-end of the season while the front-end is airing. That’s not to say that there aren’t changes made to the front-end. If something happens, comes up throughout the season that needs to be addressed, we will kind of open that back up and make some changes. But we usually have about four to five episodes ready to go when we start airing.
Michael Roha: Because it’s such a collaborative environment, the story team plays such an important role in everything we do. The story as in what we’re telling throughout the series is pretty much figured out where we’re going with every episode. The way the show’s received when it starts airing doesn’t really impact too much of what we are still working on, I don’t think. This season, obviously, has been a little different.
Jamie Martin: Yeah. This season kind of changed that.
Michael Roha: Threw us.
The Playlist: So, the elephant in the room is that one of the contestants, was disqualified right before her debut episode was scheduled to air. I cannot recall any other reality competition series that has had to deal with this from either a production or editorial standpoint. Was there anything that you took as a reference before you figured out how to edit the rest of the season? What was your strategy to minimize her presence?
Michael Roha: We sat down with our showrunners, Steven Corfe and Michelle Mills, and it was all a long hard look at how to minimize her. I don’t think we really had any blueprints. I think the focus became this felt like an important season and an amazing cast. And we didn’t want to sacrifice any of their stories or any of what happened in the competition due to this one other contestant.
Jamie Martin: It was a lot of looking at where we knew all of these really talented queens’ stories needed to be going and kind of them asking us, “Well, what can we do to keep that art alive?” Looking at the footage and at interviews and being like, “O.K. Well, we can still tell their stories by doing this instead of how we would have done it were Sherry still in play.” So that was really challenging. That was a continuing problem throughout the season, especially as they got down to fewer and fewer queens that could help us kind of supplement the stories that still needed to be going without including Sherry. But I think we all really decided it was an important decision to make and how to make it not as, I don’t know, not as obvious that she was missing, but still elevating the other queens, you know?
The Playlist: What I was personally impressed with is that you did while most viewers were unaware that Sherry made it all the way to the end of the filmed episodes. It wasn’t like she was going to disappear halfway through. I don’t know if they were just instinctual editing tricks or not, but there would be a moment where the cast was sitting in the werq room set and the only way the story could move forward was Sherry’s audio was heard. And you’d hear the audio, but you guys wouldn’t show her saying it. Instead, it was the image of what the other queens reacting to it. I don’t want to say other editors aren’t smart, but It just seemed like you guys had figured it out as you were going along how to do it. How do you guys figure these things out? Was it a lot of trial and error in that context?
Jamie Martin: I feel like it was some trial and error. We’d try to find a different way into a conversation if it was available and sometimes it wasn’t. And we decided that we had to include that audio or we wouldn’t be telling the other girl’s story with any sort of justice. So [when] we made those decisions that it was worth it to include her voice because she was in the room and that’s what the other girls are reacting to. Celebrating the other girl’s stories was paramount, I think. And I think there was a decision we have to still be true to their story.
The Playlist: Did you feel like there were any queens that benefited from earning more screen time than they would have if the disqualification hadn’t occurred?
Michael Roha: I feel like the story that we told, I mean, they were already out there and they were already being figured into the episodes. And I feel like the benefit became they got a little bit more time. Minimizing one person’s presence just meant everything else could breathe a little bit more. The episodes, in general, are so jam-packed with content that we’re always struggling to get them to time in the first place. But in the end, it probably didn’t feel any drastically different to us as we were locking.
The Playlist: In terms of the season in general, was there any episode in particular that you were most proud of?
Jamie Martin: There were a few this season. I’m always super proud of the first episode because it’s got such a beat in setting the tone in the season. This one had a lot of political undertones that we were trying to feed and make sure that everyone was on board with. And then also introducing all of the queens. I mean, I know this is a flipped premiere* so there weren’t as many queens, but setting the tone of all of these girls’ stories in the first episode is really always very important. The other episode that sticks out to me is the debate episode. I feel like we had a lot of heart in that episode, a lot of really important discussions that needed to have happened. Jackie Cox talking to AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]. Sorry. That’s not the same episode.
*Seven contestants were introduced in the first episode while the remaining six debuted in the second.
Michael Roha: That’s seven.
Jamie Martin: That’s seven. Those are just specific moments that stick out to me this season.
Michael Roha: Yeah, I was going to say the Madonna musical episode. It was a really good challenge, and we had AOC which was amazing. It all kind of flowed [and] just felt like a really great episode of “Drag Race.”
The Playlist: And then, obviously, I think the debate one you were referring to was the Jeff Goldblum and Rachel Bloom episode.
Michael Roha: Oh yeah, that was pretty good. I loved that one.
The Playlist: How many moments of Jeff Goldblum being Jeff Goldblum is on the cutting room floor because there just wasn’t enough time to include it all?
Jamie Martin: I mean, there are a few just because of the nature of editing, but we included a ton. I feel like every minute we could, we’re like, “Let’s like have more Jeff Goldblum.” Even including the end of the episode, we were like, “Let’s roll the credits and then put Jeff Goldblum in.” But to be quite honest, Rachel Bloom was fantastic too. The professionalism and the quick-wittedness she brought. Watching the raw of her and him together, it was like, “Oh my gosh, this is just gold.” I think we were all really impressed by those judges.
Michael Roha: Yeah, I think we’re ready for Rachel to join the judging panel.
The Playlist: I would 100% vote for that to happen. She can also join the “Canada’s Drag Race” panel if she wants to [Laughs.]. As for Jeff, I did love that moment where you cut in with him just wandering around the set, and I hope you guys do more of stuff like that in the future. I just thought it was irreverent and fun.
Michael Roha: I loved that episode because that kind of challenge, it really feels like something we don’t get a chance to always do which is just really parody something. To really go in that this is a parody. Everything’s kind of wacky and zany and even the judges are in on it. And I love when we can pull the judges into that space and remind everybody that “Drag Race” itself is also a drag version of a competition show where we make everything a parody like it should be.
The Playlist: So, you have to go through and minimize a contestant who, in theory, made it to the finals when the season was shot but has been disqualified. And then COVID happens. How did that affect you guys in terms of just actually physically editing the episodes? Forget about getting to the finale, just the episodes you had left. Were you able to edit them from home?
Jamie Martin: It was one of the things we were kind of scrambling to figure out how we were going to address the Sherry issue and kind of reopening that padding that we usually have those four or five episodes that are ready to go. And it was like, “O.K., they’re not ready to go anymore. We got to go back to rejigger some of this stuff and rethink something.” And then COVID happened. It was literally a Friday. We were all kind of sitting around, like, “I don’t know what’s going to happen. Are we coming in on Monday?” And it was kind of like, “Just hold.” And then Monday came around and it was like, “No, you’re not coming in. We’re going to figure out a way for you guys to work from home.” And I think Tuesday we were all working from home. It was fast. We just kind of had to hit the ground and run because we had so much to do.
Michael Roha: I think we were all wondering, “Are we going to go on hiatus? Are we going to finish out?” We had about episode seven relatively locked or figured out.
Jamie Martin: Yeah, we were all working on that.
Michael Roha: And it was like, “Do we air half the season and then go on hiatus?” But it was “Nope. We’re going to just move ahead.” We are very fortunate in that we have an amazing post team. We have a great supervisor and assistant editors that I think really, given the lack of time to figure it out, really worked to figure out a solution. We worked remotely through a web app interface for a week, but that was a real struggle. And then we all started working from local media at home where they basically copied drives upon drives upon drives for us to work off of.
Jamie Martin: I just think that audiences would just be amazed to know what conditions we were editing in. I feel like, “Did anyone know that all of us were editing in little rooms in our house?” I have a little room in my backyard and I had a toddler running around my leg for the last part of the season. That’s kind of what we were all faced with. All of us kind of went home and we’re like, “Okay, let’s figure this out how we’re going to do this from home.” And it’s just, I feel like the show still came together and we were still able to deliver something fantastic. But no one would be like, “Oh, you put this together in your shed.”
The Playlist: Were hard drives of the files couriered to you? Or were you actually downloading all these files every night to work?
Michael Roha: It was a little bit of both. The main show media was put on a hard drive. I think it was like two episodes a drive so we’d have to swap drives depending on how many we could connect to our computer. But as we’re putting it together, I do all the graphics. So, I’m making stuff and we have to send it to our assistant editors to ingest into the system. Then we use Google Drive to upload back to us. Then re-download and save it to a specific drive so everyone would have access to it in the same way so things would just connect back at World of wonder. It was a real “MacGyver” experiment. I’m sure there were some paperclips and gum in there too.
Jamie Martin: Also things like music and everything. Because we have such different challenges every season, you want to edit it differently. Nothing feels the same in our show. It’s not like it’s every week is a singing challenge or every week is an acting challenge. So you have to kind of adapt every single episode with its own feel and that was continually changing at home. That was hard too. But that’s part of the fun of our show, I think. I love that aspect of it, but it’s not like, “Here’s your music library and that’s all you’re going to use.” It’s always growing and changing in different ways.
The Playlist: Granted, you’re editing the rest of the episodes. We’re in God knows what month, April, May. Nobody knows yet when this is going to end. In theory, the show was supposed to shoot the live finale as they normally would, because of the pandemic it became a virtual finale. What were your concerns going into that from an editing perspective?
Jamie Martin: My initial concern as it is with all the finales and reunions is just time. This one was just exponentially more worried because we don’t have a playbook. Usually, our reunion finales are kind of a live state cutting. We’re just kind of doing a “studio cut.” We were tweaking things and cut them down, but it’s not graphics-based. It’s very straight-lined. And even that is usually very tight to get to air in a week. We have a week to get that. So this was teams from all over the country creating their own content, sending it to us, us having to get this media in a timely manner, and then kind of figuring out how to go together. There were a lot of segments that it was like, “I don’t know what I should do with this. Let’s be creative.” And I love doing that type of stuff, but in a very limited time, that’s a lot of pressure.
Michael Roha: I’d be talking to Steven, our showrunner, and showing him examples of things I was coming across. Even just like music artists streaming live performances and the way they would cut up the screen in different ways. That became that sort of like, “Why do we need to stick to any one convention?” It kind of felt very hysterical.
Jamie Martin: There was a lot of trial and error when you were creating the graphics, Michael. I remember that. It was like, “Let’s try this type or this format or this format and see what works for what we’re trying to talk about and highlight.” I remember you having to do several versions of that.
Michael Roha: It’s not fun to work with 13 camera angles. Thirteen on the screen at one point.
Jamie Martin: But to highlight that, you have the cleanest audio you could ever want. I was like, “Well, that’s a nice bonus. Everyone has the cleanest audio because no one’s talking over each other.” So if you wanted to isolate something, you could really easily.
The Playlist: Now that you’ve been through this season and all the challenges thrown at you, do you feel like nothing could ever be this hard again?
Jamie Martin: I don’t want to attempt to fate with that. I really don’t. [Laughs.]
Michael Roha: That’s almost the question we face every season. And I feel like there’s been something every season in the past couple of seasons that has made things feel more difficult.
Jamie Martin: And you know, this season, it was just kind of a continual. We started our season extremely rough. We lost one of our beloved EPs, Jacqueline Wilson. We had this like, “How are we going to get through this?” And then things just kept coming up throughout the season. I remember we had a really bad AVID crash at the beginning of our season. We had to take a break for that. We were like, “Oh, this is going to set us back. How are we ever going to get this done?” And then the Sherry thing happened. It was like, “Well, this is going to set us back. How are we ever going to get this done?” And then COVID. And it’s like, “Well, O.K.” So I feel like I don’t ever want to tempt the gods of thinking it can never get worse because we definitely had different ways of it being an extremely challenging season for everybody involved.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” season 12 is available on VH1’s streaming app and iTunes.