A non-specific number of queens stand before me in the fabled work room of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” O.K., maybe they aren’t exactly standing. Perhaps a proper way to describe their posture is lounging. But even for a casual fan of the Emmy-winning VH1 series this is akin to having been on the set of “Game of Thrones” and witnessing the meeting of Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Show for the first time.
Yes, as I look through the one-way mirror on “Drag Race” set there are contestants sitting on the new pink tables of the fake room where much of the show’s drama take place. It’s late in the game for the 10th season of “Drag Race” and while they will be filmed for hours by two camera crews on this familiar set even during this 15 minute interlude tensions between a number of the queens are clearly evident. What else would you expect when the title of “America’s Next Drag Superstar,” $100,000, a minimum of a year’s bookings and worldwide fame are on the line?
On a sunny afternoon last October I trekked out the outskirts of Los Angeles (Simi Valley to be exact) to visit a series of somewhat secluded sound stages. “RuPaul’s Drag Race” had spent most of its first nine seasons and two “All Star” seasons in a familiar studio in Hollywood. Still unbeknownst to the general public, however, Netflix has either acquired or secured long term rentals on a ton of Hollywood production facilities forcing long running series like “Drag Race” to find new homes. Hence, a 40-minute drive to a relatively suburban neighborhood with the last house directly across the street from a large and modern production facility proudly displaying confederate flags. The irony of confederate fans in California, of all places, living across the street from where one of the most progressive gay series on television is filming writes itself.
You might think the show’s production company, World of Wonder, to be unhappy with their new surroundings, but seemingly nothing could be farther from the truth. Sure, it’s a longer drive for most of the behind-the-scenes crew, but the facility has a standing city street and larger sound stages that they already took complete advantage of for the now infamous “All Stars 3” season (where former contestants compete for a shot in the Drag Race Hall of Fame) that shot before season 10. Basically, without Netflix’s moves this wonder might never have graced our screens.
Looking through the one-way mirror a lot of the changes to the set that are now already known to the public were surprising. The walls are a brighter pink (although not as intense in person as on screen) and there are new images of the show’s inspiration, RuPaul, everywhere. Oh, and it took a moment to find, but the marquee of RuPaul that each losing contestant takes home with them has been updated. Instead of looking like a “lifelike” version of the Drag Race logo its completely silver and expresses more of an award-winning feel. This specific viewpoint is often used by the show’s producers and camera people (especially when the queens are doing their makeup) and was highlighted for dramatic effect during one of the show’s best seasons, “All Stars 2.” There’s something of a Peeping Tom feel to it, but if there were chairs you could sit there for hours and be completely transfixed.
(O.K., maybe hours is an exaggeration, but it was absolutely surreal.)
“RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 10” returns Thursday after seguing from Logo to VH1 as part of an overall Viacom strategy shift at the beginning of 2017. That provided the show record ratings and likely contributed to its first Emmy nomination for Best Reality Competition Series. In fact, the “Drag Race” franchise earned nine Emmy nominations and won three including RuPaul’s second in a row as Outstanding Host for a Reality-Competition program, Outstanding Costumes and, against some incredible competition, Outstanding Editing. Somewhat surprisingly, the show lost the top prize to NBC’s “The Voice” after many thought it would win. This set visit was less than a month after the Emmy telecast and it was clear from those on hand that loss still stung a bit.
The new cast includes 14 contestants with no clear initial frontrunner for the crown even if five, yes, five queens are from New York City (to say the impressive Los Angeles scene is annoyed is an understatement). There’s Asia O’Hara (a Dallas, TX pageant legend), Aquaria (a New York nightlife mainstay at the age of 21), Blair St. Clair (the first Indiana queen who apparently returned home to a major DUI issue), Dusty Ray Bottoms (a punk meets Broadway New Yorker), Kalorie Karbdashian-Williams (proving they have drag even in New Mexico), Kameron Michaels (aka as Nashville’s “Bodybuilder Barbie”), Mayhem Miller (a West Hollywood mainstay), Miz Cracker (the drag daughter of Season 8 winner Bob the Drag Queen), Monét X Change (another New York contemporary of Bob’s), Monique Heart (a rare queen from this part of the Midwest), The Vixen (a political Chicago queen who arguably delivers the best death drop since Laganja Estranja), Vanessa Vanjie Mateo (the Tampa based drag daughter of former contestant Alexis Mateo), Yuhua Hamasaki (the final New Yorker and first Chinese born contestant) and Eureka O’Hara (the first queen to return from a previous season due to injury).
These just aren’t longtime drag performers. Like recent contestants on shows such as “The Amazing Race” and “Survivor” these are queens that have watched enough seasons to know what you should and shouldn’t do to win the game. Or that’s what they thought before they were dropped off at a soundstage far from RuPaul’s new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
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Tom Campbell admits he might be on fumes. The Executive Producer of “Drag Race” has helped shepherd filming of both “All Stars 3” and season 10 back-to-back as well as his other duties at World of Wonder. His enthusiasm is genuine though as we sit down to chat on the break tables that fill a corner of the massive soundstage that holds the show’s work room and mainstage sets.
“We always have dreams. Every year we try to improve the show, make it bigger and better,” Campbell says. “Like season 10, this is a chance to do something with the set. And then we made up elaborate drawings and part of it was cost and part of it was like we don’t want people to tune in to a different show. There’s something that works about this. So, with the workroom, which you’ve seen, it just felt pinker, and shinier. I felt like it still delivers the same thing and some lights, but it’s just a little bit nicer. And then with the main stage, we kept the main stage, because it’s kind of iconic. And [we] redid the back of the judges’ tables with sort of different colors.”
They also smartly dropped the purple lights from the main stage, but as Campbell frames it he notes, “People should say, ‘Did you get a haircut?’ But not say, ‘Did you get your face lift?’ So we’ve just had a really good haircut here at ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race.’”
Fans were concerned when the show jumped from its former home on the gay-themed Logo to a relatively broader channel such as VH1. According Campbell, the production has pretty much been allowed to make whatever changes they wanted.