‘Drag Race All Stars’ Premiere Reads RuPaul for Filth
There were exactly four weeks between when the newbie Ru Girls of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16 sashayed away and the seasoned Drag Race All Stars Season 9 queens stomped their stilettos back into the show’s workroom. (To the average civilian, that’s 28 days, but to a gay man—who must subtract his hangovers, k-holes, and/or blackouts caused by the severe emotional distress of shorts weather returning—it’s about six days.) Drag Race moves fast so its producers can maintain its status as a cornerstone of reality television. But all of that rushing and scheduling can become tiresome. Even the strongest of us viewers can get fatigued by the onslaught of new seasons, which is why Drag Race All Stars 9, which premieres May 17 on Paramount+, is switching things up in a major way.
This season, all of the returning queens are competing for charity. And no, they’re not trying to raise money for the Alexis Michelle Colored Contacts Foundation, or donating to the Daya Betty Insulin Institute. They’re playing for actual charities, ones that don’t have a wire straight to a Florida surgeon who performs Brazilian butt lifts on the cheap. All the contestants are here to knock out the competition for a chance to donate to causes near and dear to their hearts. But there’s another twist: No one’s going home this season. Most All Stars installments see the girls eliminating each other, but that wouldn’t be very charitable, would it? Instead, each cast member will compete in challenges to win Beautiful Benefactress Badges, scoring them $10,000 for their charity. The BBBs (that’s one more “B” than I’m sure these girls are used to seeing, if you catch my drift…*cough* bareback *cough*) will be tallied at the end of the season, and whoever has the most badges will take home $200,000 for their charity of choice.
Maybe it’s the fact that the money is going someplace other than these queens’ own bank accounts that makes All Stars 9 so lighthearted. This really is RuPaul’s Best Friend Race, fulfilling a prophecy that Lashauwn Beyond spoke into fruition back in Drag Race Season 4. The queens are not afraid to be more raucous and messy than they usually are, and watching them have fun together without so much pressure is downright infectious. That cheerful atmosphere might even be the reason that one queen could walk away from the premiere unscathed and alive, after delivering a read so vile, so rotted, and so absolutely hysterical that even the notoriously unpredictable RuPaul couldn’t help but laugh at his own expense.