We’re TWO weeks away from RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 9’s big premiere on VH1 at 8/7C and RuPaul has been making the rounds. From Late Night with Seth Meyers, to GMC, to the Real, we can’t wait. He sat down with Vanity Fair to discuss Lady Gaga, Judge Judy, and Trump’s election.
Check it out:
On Lady Gaga:
I want to jump back to the show, because Twitter exploded when everyone found out Lady Gaga was on the first episode.
She’s gonna be there the whole episode. I can’t tell much more than that. I can just say that she’s there the whole episode. You’re getting a lot of Lady Gaga.Did she reach out to you guys?
Initially, several years ago, she said, ‘Why haven’t you asked me to be on this show?’ And I said ‘We’ve asked every single year.’ But that was several years ago, and the truth is that with our show, everybody wants to do it. The problem is scheduling. She’s either on tour, she’s out of the country. This time we finally got her and couldn’t be happier.
On Judge Judy:
I know that you are a huge fan of Judge Judy for many, many reasons. Can you distill the greatest thing you’ve learned from Judge Judy?
Trust your instinct. You have to listen to what the person is saying to be able to understand who they are and what their intention is. And I think that’s something for everyone. When you think about this past election and you see the people who were involved, you can see right through them. You can see, especially him. You can see. I think I bought a car from that guy, a used car, and it was a lemon!One of the things [I see] on Judge Judy every single week: A woman comes on and is suing her ex-boyfriend for the $2,000 that she loaned to him after he got out of prison so that he could pay his child support. Now, all of the clues are there . . . Judge Judy says this, she says, ‘You, lady, had a postcard picture in your head of what a nesting situation would be like, what a home life would be like, and you were so desperate to get that Polaroid picture that you chose this guy who’s got all of this shit, all of this baggage. But you’re so married to this picture.’ And I think that’s what America did with this election. We were able to overlook all this other stuff so that we could have this fairy tale of factory jobs coming back. Well, bitch, you know what? We don’t do factories anymore. We got machines for that. And I think you’ll see America in Judge Judy’s court probably sooner rather than later, trying to sue, trying to get that money back. And it’s like uh uh, honey, you ain’t gettin’ nothin’ back, because how could you loan somebody money when they don’t even have a job? So I’ve learned from Judge Judy to get real. Get real with what your intention is. Figure out what the other person’s real intention is and then—you can proceed.
On Trump’s Election:
You mentioned politics . . . we saw the other day that the government is threatening to strip rights from trans kids. What would you say to those kids who feel as if the government is against them, and what would you want to say to the administration regarding this particular issue?
I believe that what you defend against actually becomes stronger. This movement of people who want it to go back to the way it was before . . . time does not go back. Time goes forward. Time is actually right now. So those people, they’ve all been hoodwinked, and we all knew it. We know this trick. That’s why education is so important in our culture, because you don’t have to look far back in history to know who’s used these same tactics before. That’s why it’s so dangerous. And the fact that people would fall for them again? You think, ‘Wait a minute, you don’t remember the last time this happened?’ [laughs] My thing is, I think that this whole administration will actually accelerate what they’re trying to defend against. What you defend against persists, and I think it’s a call to action for all of the like-minded people like ourselves to get involved.
Ultimately—and I’ve gotta think this way—it’s probably the best thing that could have happened, because it shapes us up. Now, I’ve always been on the front lines of this stuff. I never drank the Kool-Aid. Never drank the Kool-Aid ever. But a lot of people had become complacent. A lot of the kids grew up in an age of Obama: they didn’t know any better. So I guess this is what had to happen. There will be a lot of blood before we turn this around, unfortunately.
Read the full interview here.