“You know, it’s a weird thing because every season is different,” Visage says. “Every season’s different because the girls are different. There’s nothing different other than that, because that in and of itself is a huge difference.”
Visage can’t speak to how the season 10 cast got along because as hard as it may be to believe, she actually isn’t shown the footage of the cast when they are in the work room. She judges selected challenges, the performances and the runway and that’s it. So when asked if this crop of contestants are trying to stay friendly or playing sociological mind games with each other she honestly won’t know until the audience does.
“I think everybody always tries to be RuPaul’s Best Friend Race, but that’s never a good strategy because it never works,” Visage says. “Again, it’s hard to discuss a cast as a whole because I don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. All I know is what’s on the main stage. What I can tell you about season 10 is that these girls, because the show’s been on for 10 years, they know what they’re doing. They do fall and make innocent mistakes that they should know better by now, but they know what they’re doing. They definitely came to play.”
What she has seen for season 10 does seems compelling though.
“There’s some really fun challenges, there’s some really good lip syncs. There’s some really great moments on the main stage,” Visage says. “I don’t know what happened backstage in ‘Untucked’ so we’ll just have to watch and find out. I look forward to that as much as the viewers look forward to that because I’m a viewer. I don’t know. I’m not a producer on that show.”
“Untucked” is a continually evolving separate program that follows the contestants while RuPaul and the judges spend up to hours deliberating over who should be in the top or bottom of a challenge. It originally aired after the main show on Logo. After the network decided to drop it World of Wonder made it the centerpiece for their own YouTube channel. For three seasons the online version grew in popularity with many episodes earning over a million views. The last season even earned an Emmy nomination, but now VH1 has brought it back to broadcast where it will fill what will be a two-hour block of “Drag Race” every Thursday night (to the delight of gay bar and nightlife owners across the country).
The former member of the late 80’s pop girls group Seduction had other things to say about how certain contestants fared during the season, but that will have to wait for another time. In the meantime, we’ll leave you with her honest assessment of just how tough a judge she is.
“If you’re going to present yourself as a perfect package for few a weeks in a row or even the first week, then I’m going to raise my standard of judging,” Visage says. “I can tell by looking at somebody right away if they’re up to my snuff. If they’re not, that’s fine. I’m going to help them achieve the best drag that they could achieve. But if you’re up to my snuff out of the gate, I’m going to be way tougher on you, absolutely.”
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A visit to the set of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is like the best movie set visit. It leaves you hungry for more. There are other anecdotes and other participants that were spoken to that will be revealed further in the season, but we’ll leave you with this thought for now.
If you live in Los Angeles you often have multiple friends or acquaintances who have worked on one sort of reality TV series or competition series at one time or another. These shows often involve grueling hours and often turn into seven-day a week jobs for months on end. It can often be the not-so glamorous side of working in Hollywood. Speaking with the two production coordinators who guided me through the visit you would have thought they’d be excited that three months of filming back-to-back seasons was finally close to coming to an end. That was hardly the case. They were honestly sad because they love working on it so much. And, frankly, that’s something you rarely hear about anyone working on any long running TV series these days.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” returns for season 10 on Thursday at 8 PM on VH1.
