Jane Don’t finally did it. On her fourth audition tape, she followed her Seattle sisters Bosco and Irene the Alien and was cast on “Drag Race.”
“You know, to be honest, I actually thought my season 17 tape was A little bit better,” Don’t admits. “But I think the difference was that this time around, I wasn’t overthinking it. The girls always say that. That’s so cliche, but it is true. I just was very like, ‘Don’t let perfect be the enemy of the good.’ Just get it down and let’s keep moving.”
A practicing lawyer by day, Don’t, like many of her fellow competitors, was relieved when she discovered how many of the queens were over the age of – gasp – 30.
“One of my biggest fears going into all of this, more than, like a challenge or whatever, Michelle being mean to me, was being stuck in a room with like, 14 other 22-year-olds,” Don’t says. “I am not 22. We actually could talk about stuff for real. We all have lives. We all have like interests. You know? We’ve all been doing this for a while, too. So, the approach to drag was just very professional. Production was like, ‘You’re one of the nicest casts we’ve ever had,’ because I think we weren’t scared 24-year-olds. None of us are gonna have a meltdown because we can’t do something. Like, we all do this. This is our job. We’ve been doing it. So, everybody just was very, very pro, very on it, and that was lovely.”
As technically the sixth Seattle queen on the cast, Don’t wants to make it clear that times have changed. And so has the city’s drag scene. Legends such as Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme are “sort of a different generation” (also, neither lives in Seattle any more).
“Seattle Drag has changed kind of significantly. And they’re old f**ks,” Don’t says sarcastically. “And they started really burlesque heavy, and I started in, like, the weirdo bar. I used to perform in this club under the freeway called Kremework. Um, on a little stage. It’s like a Berghain kind of, German-esque, like techno club. We used to do the show, and then afterwards, the later techno show would happen. So you’d be finishing the show and the bitchy, straight guy DJs would be standing backstage tapping their feet, ’cause they have to . They’ve got to play like Da Hool or whatever. And, um, so I think that I always say I love the diva storyline, the woman who makes her way in the castle and still fears the sentries. But, like, the Bette Midler of it all. Coming from the underground, and sort of polishing the edges enough that you can, like, Trojan horse your way into sort of a mainstream space.”
