Page 7 - Pop History: RuPaul Pt. I

Episode Date: June 22, 2021

Get ready to work, covergirl! This week in continuation of our celebration of Pride Month, we’re kicking off our series on the magnificent RuPaul.Want even more Page 7? Support us on Patreon! Patreon.com/Page7PodcastKevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0 Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ to listen to new episodes of Page 7 ad-free.Start a free trial now on Apple Podcasts or by visiting siriusxm.com/podcastsplus. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You better way on the run. Sache shante. Work. I've been listening to song over and over and over. Shonke. Over and over and over. I love it. And his music is absolutely amazing.

I've never really gotten lost into it before. Welcome to Rupal. There's so much. I totally also picked up Jackie today with work cover girl blasting. Blasting. We were ready. And I was like, hey, I'm here. which is a lot of fun.

Yeah, it is. Except we're all wearing Athleisure wear right now. We're not prepared. No one is working the runway right now. No one is vogging right now. No one is working the runway. But we know that Rupall sure fucking did

in his life up till now. Of course, he's still alive and kicking. He's still crushing. Oh my God, he's got so much more to do. He looks great. I never realized how similar Rup Paul's career was to an LVi. I was just about to bring up Alvirus.

I'm so excited because I never really got into the past, which is why, as you will notice, this episode is going to be just up to Rupal's Drag Race, and then we're going to get its own full episode on Drew Rupal's Drag Race next time. I'm scared. His career is so prolific, and he's tried so many different things,

and I love that one of his biggest self-advice quotes is, you have to customize the life you were meant to have. Yeah, yeah. Because he was just like, all right, well, I'm going to try this. And then, all right, well, I'm going to try this. And then I'm going to go here and I'm going to try this. And I didn't even know that he didn't get his first big break until his 32nd birthday. And you look at how insanely prolific his career has been.

And that's nuts. It all really started when he was 32. He's another one that should go up on the Mimi's when they talk about like, oh, where were you at 30? When everyone gets so sad about turning 30. And it's like, well, Rupall was sleeping on a couch and had nothing. My friends, anyone listening, 38, shit. And shit. And he's done so much more since then.

And I'm so excited to get into the meat of this because I'd never really looked into his career before. Yeah, let's get into the meme. Ultimately, of course, culminating in the peak of his career, the Brady Bunch movie. Yes, absolutely. Which is where I first met Rupal. I probably first saw Rupal and Love Shack, the Love Shack music video. And that is why I was about to bring up Elvira, too, because RuPaul just has been that, especially for my generation, a little bit younger, and you guys, too, where he was already like this cultural touchstone that we didn't even know where he came from.

Yes. We didn't know, you know, that I didn't know there was necessarily even a drag scene. And that's probably the first drag queen I ever saw on the television, right? I mean, that was probably it. And it was definitely the first famous drag queen. That's for damn sure. And yeah, so it was... Also definitely the first drag queen TV show hosts.

Like, he's broken so many boundaries. And also I want to say up top, which we are going to get into the controversial things that he said in the next episode. But I do want to make it clear that Rupal has a lot of ideas on what the idea of gender means to him, which is why his quote says, you can call me he, you can call me she, you can call me Regis and Catholic. I don't care, just as long as you call me, which makes a lot of sense for who he is. Especially when you learn more about his religious leanings and his understanding of the world

through the lens of Buddhism and Zen and the idea that everything is a construct and nothing is real and this is all an illusion and if life is an illusion, then we just need to make the best that we can make out of this time that we have and break it all down and break down everyone's expectations of how life should be lived,

how a person should look, how a person should act. I mean, that's all connected to this understanding of life as like real and unreal at the same time. For sure. And living, yeah, exactly, living outside of constructs, which is why I think very symbolically, when we first all saw him, we saw this glamazon version of him. And shamefully, well, I guess as a kid it wouldn't make sense. But you don't realize that that comes from this very grungy punk rock place. We saw this glamour side of it, but it's also this other side that's gritty that I absolutely love.

And I've heard, yeah, I've heard about the club kid culture before, which was a little bit before my time. And I've definitely looked longingly at pictures and clips of what club culture was, especially in New York and Atlanta and L.A. in the 80s, which seemed like a lot of fucking fucky. Oh, my God. I was watching the wig documentary, and I felt a nostalgia for the New York time that I wasn't there for where I was just. lamenting that I wanted to be in that version of New York pre-9-11. Totally, yeah, yeah. In the 80s, 70s and 80s especially for sure. And then the other thing I'll say is that I just have so many quotes.

You're going to hear me really reading a lot of quotes from RuPaul because RuPaul's an incredibly eloquently spoken and incredibly well. They have such a great understanding. He has such a great understanding of himself. He's so self-actualized through years and years of therapy as we'll come to find out in this episode. where he spent, for most of an entire, of an entire decade, the post-9-11 decade, really just working on himself in therapy and finding, you know, and enjoying his family and kind of becoming that,

like doing, essentially being what he says in every, uh, uh, RuPaul's drag race, you know, if you can't love yourself, how the hell are you going to love somebody else? I love that he ends every episode with it. It really is, like, it is, like, it is, drag to him is so much about finding yourself. and also, like you said, breaking down the constructs. But for him, going through the motions of figuring out who he was and what he wanted,

which you're right, he really got down to the brass tax post 9-11, but all of it really was leading up to it where it's like being in a punk band trying to do, like he did, like it wasn't all glamazon right up top as well. He had lots of different characters like Star Booty that we'll get into. So they were all different factions of who he was, and he was trying to figure out how is he a star? Because if there's the one thing

that Rupal has known from the beginning and so did his mother, is that he's a fucking star and he was always going to. I mean, those legs are a star. My God, his body. Yeah. But also his outfits and how he carries himself.

I'll get into this later with a Vogue interviewer was talking about him outside of Rupal, the persona, is such a beautiful person. And like you were saying, Holden, just so well read and knows himself so well that even talking to him and being in his presence makes you feel like you're close to a queen. And that's fucking amazing. Yeah, for sure. So let's get into it.

Let's get ready to RuPaul. Rupertel. Did you say Ruple? Rupil. Yes, we're talking about the currency in the Legend of Zelda series. No, that's actually rubies even. Rupes even. Okay, Rupal is an American drag queen, actor, model, singer, songwriter, author, and host of the reality competition series, RuPaul's drag race.

He is considered the most commercially successful drag queen in the U.S. And I'm going to preface this next little diatribe with. We'll probably cover Paris is burning at some point. I think we'll probably be the title of the episode where we will get way more in depth in the history. of drag and ball culture. This is like the most brief overview of it just so that as we talk through Rupal's life, we can kind of have a basis of understanding

of what the ball scene is and what that is in New York when he gets to New York, when he returns to New York, really almost more so than when he first gets there. But either way, here we go. The origin of the term is not completely known, the term drag, that is. The first recorded use of the word

in reference to actors dressed in women's clothing was in 1870, and so this just really blew my mind how far back all of this goes. It is possible that it is based on the term Grand Rag, which was a term for a masquerade ball. The first person, and this is the other mind-blower for me, the first person described himself as the queen of drag was William Dorsey Swan, who began hosting drag balls in Washington, D.C. in the 1880s, and was actually born into slavery, but after the Civil War, he began running these events, and of course was regularly rated by the police in doing so and eventually served a 10-month sentence in prison for it. And it was mostly ex-slaves going to these events and interacting in this, in these like

18, late 1800s drag shows. Like I could only imagine, I like try to picture that in my head what that was, but just incredible to read that. I mean, I always assumed the earliest incarnation was the 1920s. It really came into form in the 1920s. But yeah, it was, it was, it was, it was the early 1900s in general. There was a nightclub drag scene. But that makes, but makes perfect sense, though, because it is a rebellion against these horrible constructs that have been put into place where they are. It makes sense. And I'm sure that that was already happening for the last thousands of years in different forms. And of course there were queer slaves. Of course. You know, and there was, you know, and they probably were a lot more

fuck you about, you know, at post-Civil War, about, you know, the culture and getting, in doing what they want to do with their lives. What's there to be respectful about, like, fuck that. Right. It's also really crazy that the fact that a hundred years later, when RuPaul really started doing drag, that not a whole hell of a lot had changed because that it was still like something that had to be done in secret. And so obviously, you know, the club culture was big, but it was still like an underground

Late 1970s, early 1980s, yeah, I was pretty underground. It took a hundred years. It was like not a whole hell of a lot change. Yeah, they were still having to do it at, you know, two in the morning. Yes, ridiculous. Then there's ball culture, which I mentioned before. It started in Harlem and New York City in the 1920s with the Hamilton Club Lodge Ball at Rockland Palace Casino.

And there were actually early issues with racism in that. There was like no black people on the, like, judges panel in the first incarnations. Things like that, they actually caused black and Latino groups to form their own balls. That's so crazy. Yeah, so there was like splinters there. There's also the concept at balls. I like love this whole thing, that there are houses. And I want to bring houses back, damn it.

All right. There are different houses. So it's just different collections of people. You know, obviously these people are finding themselves in these tight-knit communities in order to just like survive. And so they form these houses. Like Game of Thrones style? Like Game of Thrones style. Nice.

Or I would love an LPN house to start, like, walking and reading each other. I think that would be a lot of fun. And I was just about just talking about walking. They walk essentially, you know, that's like that runway walk essentially. But it would take on different forms depending on what they were doing. And again, just watch Paris is burning to really see what I'm talking about. But judges would give out scores based on the costume appearance, attitude, and Vogue skills. Of course, Vogue dancing was created around this time as well with the like,

how do you describe Vogue? I don't want to sound like just the most cisgendered straight guy describing what Vogue do a very probably queer audience, yeah. Vogue was attributed to Madonna from her song, but she had kind of taken it from this culture. She did. In fact, Michelle Vesage, who we will learn about later,

possibly is who Madonna actually took her specific idea of Vogueing from. Yeah, well, vogueing in the dance form of Vogueing is sort of way of framing. yourself in different positions and like fluidly moving through your body. It's a really unique amazing form of dance that I do very, you know, I would consider myself to poorly, but I did a lot in New York. I'm sure you did a great job. It's fun to do, but it's very like, it's very like almost like your face doesn't do as much as your body is moving around. Your face kind of almost

remains like very stoic all you do and it's cool. So Natalie, you mentioned early on like how when you first met RuPaul, it was like all about that kind of glam drag look. But I think one of the most interesting things about Paris is burning to me was that there were all these different categories. And it wasn't just like the glamorous kind of the drag that we sort of have come to know as standard. There was, there's runway, which is the basic supermodel walk, as well as Butch Queen Realness, which is coming off as a male heterosexual. So literally like one of the categories in, in the early ball, was like, be a businessman and walk and talk like a normal, hey, everybody, I'm a normal business guy or like, be like a, like a military man and walk in and you'd have, like, you know,

walk that walk and take on that form. So it was a lot more general in terms of like the forms you were taking. It was more about just taking on different forms. But we kind of know drag now is specifically this kind of over-the-top big hair, glittery dresses, that kind of thing. Or the very grotesque side, which I also love. Sure, yeah. Because again, it is making a commentary on gender constructs.

They are characters. Yes. That's the point of a lot of drag culture is donning the different characters to show, I'm not just one thing. Isn't every human being a thousand things they should be? Right. And there was also so much, you know, I mean, this still happens, but even more so back in the day of kind of being a chameleon,

that can be with your queer community, but then go to be Mr. I'm a regular, I'm a normal straight guy in your job, you know what I mean? And like, pull and like pass that off. There was a lot more like hiding in society in these like different forms. Well, that's also part of the reason why RuPaul has said multiple times. I sometimes wish I had a different name for my persona

so that I could distinguish between myself and RuPaul the character. Yeah. Well, I, I, until we actually, actually did this research. I thought that was a person in the character. Me too. That's actually RuPaul's name. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And I love to you that RuPaul like, crazy about suits. Love suits. Yeah. And also how amazing is suits. I mean, he looks amazing in drag or just in traditional male clothes. Like, he always looks really good. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, there's some more terms just to throw out there. You mentioned reading. I feel like today we kind of

call it, it's also could be almost called roasting in other cultures. It's a way to highlight and exaggerate all the flaws of a person from their ridiculous clothes, their flawed makeup, and anything else the reader can come up with, just kind of throw in someone under the bus in front of everybody in that way. Shade is a spinoff from reading. It incorporates backhanded compliments. In straight culture, we call it nagging. Isn't that fun? Work, WERK, is a phrase used to show admiration for someone while they walk and fierce, the symbol. to work with like a little bit more about like wow to see that walk so that that's like my very that is yep there it is history of ball culture from a cisgendered straight white guy but what are you going to do

it was fun to hear you say it yes I mean Paris is burning is legit one of my favorite documentaries I believe it's still on Netflix throw it on I like I've seen it several times I love it so much I'm looking forward to doing a full episode yeah it really is something else like and also mind blowing yeah and also wig, which I think is, I don't know what it's available on, but it's a 2019 drag documentary, and it's really great also. Totally, totally, totally great. All right, let's get into RuPaul, though. RuPaul, born in, ooh, San Diego, California, very nice. It stands for a Wales vagina. Remember? I did. Remembering it? Honestly, I just rewatched on an airplane not too long ago. Still makes me smile.

It's still fun. And that was back in 1960. His parents both were from Louisiana, and that's the RU came from R-O-U-X, the term is for a base of gumbo and other creole Stools and soup. But it's RU for R-Pol. Yes, and I like that. His mother said, he's going to be a star because ain't another motherfucker alive with a name like that. Rupal Andre Charles.

I love it. But also his mother was told before Rupal was born that it's a boy and he's going to be famous. So even from before the time he was born, his mother was being told that Rupal was going to be famous. That's amazing. And RuPaul describes his parents as, quote, crazy hillbilly people. And he described his home life as, quote, a war zone. His dad apparently cheated on his mom a lot and she would respond by doing things like, you know, the standard, dows in his car and gasoline, taunting him with a book of matches. Don't piss off. Domestic stuff.

Rupal said, so us kids, me being the middle child, had to be a diplomat and had to read the situation to figure out what was needed at that time. It's a survival technique. I've used that throughout my life. I also think it makes a lot of sense that his older sisters, he has twin older sisters and he has a younger sister. And the older sisters are who raised him, essentially. So when you're surrounded by that kind of a force of a mother, as well as three strong

sisters, like, he definitely grew up in a way of like, he started wearing women's clothing from a very young age. And two moms who look exactly the same. Right? It's kind of scary. RuPaul said, so it was a very punk rock approach to life, and I got that from her.

She famously says, if they ain't paying your bills, pay them no mind, and I lived my life that way. I do love, he said, she smoked Terrytons every day, and her favorite phrase was, you pussy mouth motherfucker?

I was like, I'm terrified of this woman. I'm truly terrified of her. She sounds frightening. His parents divorced when he was seven, and he and his three sisters lived with his mother who raised him in the Roman Catholic faith. His father up and vanishes after that. RuPaul said he wouldn't show up and through the years of therapy, all roads led to that one moment. And I created an identity around that hurt. Looking back, it actually is something that I had to work through.

And that has made me stronger. And I have a lot of my personality packed into that one event in my life. And it's a constant source of hurt, but also of renewal and of really having the perspective now to see that it was. Yes, it was his loss more than anything. because he could not see the beauty that was there and the love that was there. I also feel sorry for my father, who was no longer with us, but that he couldn't afford to experience that

because of his own hurt and his own pain. That is a person that has gone through a lot of therapy. To be able to say that that is different. Like, I feel like even just listening to it's like, oh yeah, good for him. It's like, no, someone that has been working for many, many years in therapy. It takes a lot.

Also, this quote, the first half of my career was really about getting my father's attention. I mean, that is so healthy. Sure. Of course. Acknowledging it. It's how sometimes a star is made.

Yes. Basically, his dad left, but he did have interactions with him off and on is what he was Rupal's saying, right? I don't know. I mean, I think interactions that were dissatisfying. Interactions that were like, like, hey, like, let's do this together. Like, look where I've elevated to. I want to take you with.

me and always kind of getting hit with that sort of being disinterested is running away or yeah it doesn't seem like they ever personally resolved but yeah I do think they kept in contact for sure but like disappointingly yeah like it makes sense because RuPaul then going towards leaning into like becoming visually louder yeah doing more loud and give me attention to things and the dad's just not caring and also from a from the time he was born being told that he was destined to be different and on top of that that like he really felt like he said, I was always looking at things as an observer, as an outsider, like an alien.

Even from the time he said he was five years old, he didn't feel like he fit in, he didn't feel like he wanted to fit in. So I think that that's also the difference of not only feeling like an outsider, but then taking that idea and being like, I am a fucking outsider. I'm better than everybody else.

And I'm going to show them that they need to love themselves for who they really are. and I love, I just, I like that he had to, I don't like that he had to struggle to figure that out. I like that it was art. I like that it was bad for him. Good, good, good. Yeah, I smile when I read about his mother.

When I see people suffering on the street, I jump for joy. I say, yay! We're having a terrible time. You're going to be a star. You're going to be a star, Mr. Homeless Man. That's a nice screaming on Hollywood Boulevard. That he went through all of this, but even at the age of 50, and realizing that like, no, I'm better than all of this,

that he decided to move out of his house at the age of 15, move in with the sisters in Atlanta, and he was selling used cars and, like, smoking a bunch of weed and kind of just wasting his life, even though he, quote, says, I knew I had a personality, had something that I thought had value. I just didn't know specifically what language or what venue it would be. And I think that that struggle, which again, I'd not have. happy that he struggled.

I rejoice at the pain in his life. I just feel like if you have that, if you were raised in an opposite way and the whole time your parent is selling you, you're going to be a star, you're going to be a star, but the struggle isn't there. I love how you did your mother's accent. Oh my God!

I have problems with my mother. All my life had trying to not get my mother's attention. I put the opposite the RuPaul wanted from his father. Please stop looking at me. Yes, please stop. psychology did I live? But in Atlanta, he does enroll in the Northside School of Performing Arts, and he says, it changed everything for me.

I really did find my tribe. I wasn't weighed down by what I was supposed to be in San Diego, by all the people who knew me there. I was free to create a new life for myself. And this was at the age of 15, and he moves with his sister and his sister's husband, who help him kind of get on his feet. He is doing all sorts of gigs. apparently a used car salesman

was one of his early gigs out there and this is that time that I remember in my own life of just throwing everything against the wall to see what sticks in 1982 he ends up debuting on an Atlantic Public Access Variety show called the American Music Show

and was also involved in the indie film community in this area and that and in the area and that is how we get to the film trilogy RuPaul is Star Booty and he actually creates the idea So Star Booty is one of his characters. And Star Booty is created along with his collaborators, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbado, who we are going to talk about way more in the next episode,

because they create a production company called World of Wonder Productions, which created everything that Rupal has made essentially since then because they met through the American music show. And so they became his quote-unquote managers for this time period, even though they didn't know anybody, and they were kind of just like figuring shit out together. Sure. But they met through the American music show.

And he said, the first time I became aware of them was through director Dick Richards. He ran the American music show, and he was my mentor in Atlanta. He told me about Fenton and Randy's group, The Fabulous Pop Tarts. So at this time period, Fent and Randy were in a punk group

called The Fabulous Pop Tarts. And that's when Rue Paul, he first started off in the New Wave slash Pop-Tarts. punk band RuPaul and the U-Hauls, and then it later became Wee Wee-Wee-Pole. Yes, man, I found performances of Wee-Wee-Pol on YouTube, and it is, it's great, first off, but it also just, man, it's like every, our entire 20s was just these, like, you know, dirty bars, and you're going to see the band player. Murder Fis is on a stage, and it's just, like, really low-fi, and it's great to watch.

All of it reminds me, because at Star Booty, they started. creating these little shorts in the 80s. But that was when they had no money. And then you'll see in 2007 when they have more money and they create Star Booty, the movie that you can see on YouTube. My God. That was when I think that Star Booty in this whole character of like a detective that fights everybody that's going to come in,

but then there's just like tits and dicks everywhere. It's very John Waters. We'll get to that later. I just, I finally saw RuPaul. And I was like, oh, okay. Because even like down to, like you said before, I knew him from the Brady Bunch movie. Yeah.

And when asked about that, he's like, it was a paycheck. Yeah. I don't give a shit. I don't give a shit about any of that stuff. Any movie you see me and I don't care about. Right, right. It was star booty that he wanted to make. Except for, I'm sure we'll talk about it,

but he really cared about the red ribbon blues movie, right? Yes. Yeah, well, yeah, I meant more of like the big movies that you would see him in. Yeah, well, that was the, yeah, that was why he has that Elvira effect. I feel like for someone like me where, because the heyday of, yeah, work at girl and all that kind of stuff was a little, like I was still such a young child. So by the time I was old enough to be like watching a lot of television and watching Brady Bunch movie and stuff like that. And, yeah, I was just one of those figures that just sort of always existed. Like Elvira.

Which is so important for. the queer community, right? Like in the sense of, like, RuPaul was always just in my reality. So it wasn't this like jarring concepts that someone would dress up like that and perform like that. I don't even know if I knew RuPaul was not a woman for a long time. Yeah, no idea. You know? I think I knew, but it didn't like, it wasn't something that was told to me that was evil and shameful or bad.

Yeah, I guess, but just the way it's being unpacked for you because it's like in this cute. movie in this super fun music video Love Shack. You're just kind of like, you don't even have any concept of it being like a forbidden, you know, to put on a dress. And we, uh, none of us like grew up in like a, you know, conservative household really. So, yeah. Not in that sense at all. Oh, I had other households to let me know that, uh,

that it wasn't right. Horrified of the homosexuals. Honestly, I, for me, it was part of the reason. I remember going to Florida State and in college. and going to see my first drag show because they did drag shows late at night at club down under on the campus. And it would be great because they would have

late night drag shows. And then when we started, when I started doing murder fist with you guys and also doing these late night counterculture shows, I was like, oh, this is why? Because I remember being like, why don't they do any like at this time?

Normal, like, why aren't their shows at six? Why don't they have like, because now, you know, there's more like brunches and stuff. but even 10, 15 years ago, it was still an underground kept away, like the idea of RuPaul being a very famous drag queen, and yet still, RuPaul was separate

from just being a drag queen. RuPaul is RuPaul. And I like the distinction of the two, but still, I think that I was raised in thinking that, like, that's not counterculture, that's just culture. Right. Yeah. So, yeah, we're still in Atlanta.

The drag performance is really, get underway performing at the Celebrity Club, Rupal said, I'm an opportunist and a show-up. So I knew show business would be my path. I didn't know how it would work, but I kept an open mind. Then I was in bands in Atlanta, and drag sort of happened to us. It was very different from

the kind I do now. It was punk rock with combat boots and smeared lipstick, but I knew I had power in drag because of the reaction I got from people. So with some success there, he eventually ends up in New York City, struggling to break into the industry for years, performing at nightclubs, particularly

the pyramid club in the East Village. And this was still, I mean, this was a mainstay when we were in New York. I think it actually unfortunately closed because of the pandemic. But it was a club in the East Village which helped define East Village, drag, gay, punk, and art scenes in the 80s

because at one point, it was all just a mishmash together and it was so fucking fun that way. Rupal said, I moved to New York in 1984, sleeping on couches or on the piers. I was working coat check at a party at the Hotel Amazon down at Rivington. And I thought, here I am, superstar Rupal, working in coat check.

Which I think we've all had moments like this. I'm just like, oh, here I am. This is that part of the story where I've got like soot on my face and I'm like trying to break in, but that lasted for all of my 20s. And this is also the time period that the other of this, when he met his other production partner, Randy in the lobby of the Marriott Marquis in Times Square at the new music seminar.

He says, I was wearing the most outrageous outfit a mohawk with a loin cloth and football shoulder pads with thigh-high waiting boots and maybe a crop top. He said, I think Dick introduced us, and I'm going to say this without crying. Everything that I've done in my career, I could see reflected back in Randy's eyes. I could see that he could see my potential. I had never met anyone who could see that. I couldn't articulate it. I couldn't explain it.

But when I looked in his eyes, I could see it. I work with them to this day, and that was 1985. Wow. And what's also, it's another, like in Elvira, of meeting people, say when RuPaul meets Michelle Visage, of meeting people from when you guys don't have much and you're working together and you bring each other along for the ride. Or it's like, no, no, no, no, we're doing this together.

I'm not leaving you behind, which is why I have so much respect for RuPaul. Because it is easy. It is easy to leave people behind, I imagine. or people telling you like, no, don't do that. No, you can't include them. And he has been very strong this entire time of saying, no, we do all of it together. Or also the other side of it,

feeling like you're too big for your, you know, you're too big for your britches and you don't think you need those people and you push them away and then go, oh, I actually, they're very important to it. Totally. They keep me grounded. They keep me in reality. Yeah, absolutely.

He performed in a one-act sci-fi parody called My Pet Homo with drag performer Mona Foot around this time and regularly did the East Village's annual outdoor drag festival that started in 1984 for which there's a documentary called Whigstock and the documentary is called Wigstock the movie. Check that out. It's called Wig. It's called Wig? Yeah. Oh, okay. I thought it was okay. He ended up moving back to Los Angeles and hitting a real rock bottom there. And this is when he actually becomes suicidal, just getting ripped all the time and just contemplating suicide at one point. It was actually watching Oprah that helped him stay hanging on until he moved back to New York City, which is really sweet because he actually did a really nice interview with Oprah. And you could tell they have such a great rapport with each other. And there's such a warmth in that interview, which I really enjoyed. Apparently she really did get him through one of the hardest times his life. Because sometimes when you're just crashing on couches and like you've lost all your motivation and you're just like completely lost, you're probably going to end up watching a lot of really bad television. And hopefully

There's someone out there that, like, has something meaningful in terms of a message. Don't commit suicide. He was like, you've got a good point there, lady. Anyways, he decides then to move back to New York City. And I like that part of this story, too, as well, because sometimes you make a move and you think that's your new phase and you realize it's a huge mistake. And it's not a failure to move back. Absolutely not.

Moving back to New York City was the best thing RuPaul could have done at this point. It's 1989. Drag has really taken off at this point. And it's really taken off in a way that, quote, was a great social commentary. And people responded to me in drag like I never experienced before. I like that he started changing up what his drag characters were at this point. He said,

I decided to start doing drag more as a way to get a rise out of the existing drag community and the preppy Reagan 80s anti-disco storyline. It was a way to capture some of that Warhol fun and make a statement. Smeared lipstick and combat boots and ratty wigs. It was a great golden era of drag. There was a tradition and a language attached to it, but we busted in and broke all the rules.

And at this, so from back in Atlanta, he had kept in contact with the B-52s, which is when he becomes the queen of Manhattan around now, which was huge for him, especially in the existing drag community, but for Rupal, it just wasn't enough. I think that he recognized that he could have been taken away and like, okay, I've made what I wanted to make of myself and I'm done now. But fuck, no, that wasn't enough for him.

He's like, well, I'm the queen of Manhattan. I'm ready to be the queen of the world. And what's kind of shocking to me at this point and really awesome for RuPaul is it's actually around this time that he stops becoming a user and a loser. Yeah, he is fired from a Robert Palmer video shoot, and that is when he decides to clean up. Is that the guy with the women who all wear all black and dance in the background? Oh, is that Robert Palmer?

I'm just drawing a blank right now. But either way, yeah, because he decides to sober up around this time, normally people, I feel like, would go harder on that stuff when you're really taking off and things are happening so quickly. and you have money for once. You know, usually that inverse reaction is to just go get completely shitty, but actually huge turning point decides to get sober it pretty much, I think. No, because he doesn't have time for it.

Yeah, exactly. That's the guy that goes, simply resistable. And he's the one, I'm just saying he's the one who showed Rupal how to be sober. I want to see Robert Palmer. I want to see that guy telling Rupal that he's two fucked up. Good work. So this is where we get to Supermodel of the world.

Oh, wait. This is where we get to the Love Shack music. Oh, yeah, yeah, go on. Yeah, the B-52's Love Shack, because I just think that this is just such a funny factoid, because he was friends with Fred Schneider, who's a front person of the B-52s, and he said in an interview,

he was already really working on his look, his star look. He got the line dancing going, that's for sure. But what's very funny is that he's referring to the Soul Train line that they do in the Love Shack. music video because it really is the that really goes to show the B-52s couldn't be any wider. I'm referring

to it as the line dancing and Rupal said immediately back, it wasn't going right. So I had to step in and say, okay listen, this is how you do a sole train line. It's like two wheels that are sort of smashing pasta out. It's like a pasta machine. The two

wheels have to be rotating. So when the two people are going down the middle, the line is actually in rotation. So it replenishes the two new people that come down the middle. They were very impressed by the fact that I was able to do the soul train line. Line dance. Oh my God. Oh, no, it's a, that's a line dance. They're dancing in a line. That's, yeah, this is, it's country type of thing. It's just very, it is very funny. I love the B-52s very much, but that is very silly. That is funny. But then I do, what I like about supermodel of

the world is that it really did start what made him very upset and part of what helped him get sober as he said, I was horrified to see the New York Dance Act delight enjoy global fame with Grooves in the horror. Oh, yeah. These kids in the neighborhood were actually behind me in terms of succession and stardom. I was like, wait a minute, how'd they get up there? It's because, bitch, you were fucking asleep in the party world, being the queen of Manhattan. So I said, okay, no, I've got to fix that.

I'm not having that. So he made a demo tape and got signed to a label. Yep, signed to Tommy Boy Records. puts out Supermodel, you better work, and this becomes a worldwide hit. In it, RuPaul repeats the phrase, sachet chante. When asked about the meaning of chante,

RuPaul replied the term means to, quote, weave a friend from the French, es chante, which means nice to meet you. Enchante. It's crazy that it went to number two on the Billboard dance song chart, and that immediately designers like Isaac Mizrahi and Todd Oldham featured the

song in their runway shows. Mizrahi says, how smart of him to take this word that has just been adopted into the dictionary and do this insane song about it and turn it on its ass and then turn it back on its head. And apparently, Kurt Cobain declared it as one of his favorite songs of the year. I mean, it was everywhere when we were kids. Yes. And that term was actually used, you can hear that used in Paris's burning as well, so clearly

from the ball culture. This hit leads to a radio morning talk show. touring around the country, a Mac cosmetics modeling contract, and more. Now it's not just queen of Manhattan. It's queen of the world. And at this point in time was when he started going on television shows

for the first time. And what he says was one of his biggest personal achievements was that when he was on Arsenio, his mother was actually able to see him before she died. Nice. He said, Arsenio was my breakthrough. That's when the whole world got to see me. The video for Supermodel ran on MTV.

It wasn't in heavy rotation, but people knew of it. My mother was on her deathbed, literally. When she got to see my interview on MTV with Kurt Loder, it was the first time she had evidence that her prophecy had come true. That was probably in February 93, and she passed away in April 93. That's amazing. And the interviewer said, what a time it must have been. And he says, it was pretty wild.

When I think back on that time, how beautiful this send-off was for my mother, and for me to enter into this next phase of my life, It was really quite lovely. Kind of reminds me at the time my mom watched me getting drunk on a Twitch stream. Did you watch them? And I said the word, come a lot. Oh, my God.

Was she so proud of me? Was she just so proud? I wish his mother had seen Star Booty. It was eight in the morning. It was a Macy's New Year's Day parade. Oh, my God, she did watch us. Didn't she drink whiskey at eight in the morning. We did.

Why did she watch that? I don't know. They're like, we're going to watch. I was like, don't. Please don't. And he was crazy. Because with the Mac cosmetic modeling, RuPaul became the first drag queen

to land a major makeup deal as the face of Mac cosmetics. And he says, I am the Mac girl. What better way to show the power of makeup than if a 6'4 black man can look like a supermodel. I mean, he does look like a supermodel. He was on billboards at that time. I mean, it was like a pretty big deal.

Definitely in the zeitgeist at this point. And at this point, too, he gets the RuPaul show on VH1. Oh, my God. we have to talk about the Rupal show. For sure. The clips I watch, I'm so upset that I wasn't, I think I was too young at the time, that I wasn't watching this.

Because the Rupal show was like, the older sister TV's channel. Like MTV was like our TV, our channel. Yes. I just love that he said about the Rupal show, which was, it was a variety show. It had comedies, skits on it, but also they wanted to discuss topics like Black Empowerment,

female empowerment, misogyny, and liberal politics that were otherwise unheard of in 1990s television at the time. He said that was the manifestation of the bohemian dream that we all had been promised through the Warhol experience, which was our creed, our mantra, our Bible. To have a show that was so eclectic that borrowed bits and pieces from everything we'd ever seen before was this postmodern idea of what a talk show could be. I walked out on a runway. We had lifted that from the share show, and we booked the show. based on who I was interested in talking to. B. Arthur, Esther Roll, Tammy Faye Baker. I was interested in people who exemplified that survivor instinct, that outside the box philosophy.

How do you take something like a Campbell's soup can that we see every day and turn it into art or something irreverent? How do you rebirth it into something even bigger and better than it is? That was the philosophy behind the VH1 talk show. That's, can you imagine being gifted that? And he's always had that. Not gifted, he worked very fucking hard. for him, you know what I mean. He's always had that philosophy, the audience was gifted with it.

Two of like not giving, not trying to like do the thing that he thinks people want to see. I like this quote a lot. What RuPaul said, what other people think of me is not my business. What I do is what I do. How people see me doesn't change what I decide to do. I don't choose projects. People don't see me as one thing or another. I choose projects that excite me. I think the problem is that people refuse to understand what drag is outside of their own belief system. And that's always been the approach. His obsession with Tammy, Faye does make sense because she does sort of look like a drag queen. And weirdly, whenever I was doing research, I got very confused because that new thing that's

coming out called The Eyes of Tammy Faye. Yes. There's a documentary with the same exact name that Rupal narrates. Yes. From like, I'm going to say like 2000 or something. So it's really good. It's very bizarre. But if you find that out right now, that's not the new one.

it's the old one. Although I will say Jessica Jastain looks amazing. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited for it. So then we start kind of a bit of a career decline around this time.

It's not that bad, but there are two albums that come out after that. Foxy Lady and Ho Ho Ho, which of course is a Christmas album. And RuPaul at this time is a presence on the New York Morning Radio show on WKTU. So that's a good thing.

But the album's don't do quite as well as the first one. RuPaul kind of feels the shift also happening in the late 90s and early 2000s. And this is kind of when there is a break from the spotlight a little bit. Well, I also like, too, that he's very open about the fact that not only in a post-9-11 world, things that like how he felt about our country was changing, but then also realizing that before, which I like that he brings into the RuPaul's drag race, and why it is such a big part of it is before you can get the world to love you, you got to love

yourself. And he wasn't quite there yet. I like this quote, I realized that by putting a cloud of smoke around myself, literally and figuratively, was a way to push down those feelings. So I got into therapy and recalibrated what my purpose was, you know? I'd gotten into show business as a kid to get validation from the world, get validation from my father. And I realized that would never satisfy.

It has to come from the inside. So I went away from show business, came back to show business, and I do what I do now with this newfound motivation. And there was also a, you know, kind of a worldly political reasoning as well for this being just a good time to go do that work on himself.

George W. Bush takes office. 9-11 happens, and Rupal notices that folks are getting all close-minded again about those that are different. RuPaul says post-9-11, there was a hostile fear that had taken over the country, When that happened, anything to do with gender or sexual exploration went way underground.

So I decided I would step away from the canvas, so to speak, in terms of show business. I mean, we're still feeling the effects of that now. Yes. The last few years of our government. Oh, yes. So, yeah, this is when he really, really starts to work through, especially after his mother dying suddenly of cancer, his situation with his father. I have a big, juicy quote, but I just think it's so fantastic in terms of his recognizing, realizing, realizing him, his, true self. I recreated it until I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I recreated the same

scene. It's like, okay, here it is again. What's my lesson? Here in this. And I created it in relationships and my relationships to society, being a black person in this country, we're always very sensitive about, oh my goodness, is this going to be another put-down situation? Am I going to be rejected in this situation? And I had to work through that and I couldn't carry that hurt with me anymore until I did the work. And the work involved taking two steps back, figuratively speaking, and looking at the whole scenario. In regard to my father, my father was a damaged person. He was damaged by society, black rage.

And so to key into my frequency of love and saying, I love you so much, would force him to get in touch with his own feelings, which he couldn't. It was too dangerous for him to do it. So I thought, it's my job to walk through that pain and see what's on the other side of that. That's what perspective allows you to do. Here I am on the other side of it.

And I can recognize when I'm walking myself back to that porch, so to speak, and saying, no, no, that hurt wasn't on you. and I'm sorry that that happened to you, but that wasn't on you, that was on him. It had nothing to do with you and do not let your ego co-opt the situation and put yourself down. In fact, when I think about these beautiful children on that porch, my sister, myself waiting, we'd say next car is going to be daddy. Next car is going to be daddy. We were on that porch all day long, and that happened many times.

It wasn't just one occurrence. When I look back on that with perspective, I see that it wasn't my fault. And it's important for me to push past that and create an identity that doesn't involve me being a victim. Yeah. Man, that's, that's brutal. Yeah, it's so tough. Rupal also said, I just kept recreating it

until I said, no, the problem isn't what the world is doing to me. The problem is that I am actually attracted to those situations. In fact, it sounds weird, and the ego is not going to like me saying this out loud, but I had fetishized the idea being left behind. In fact, I sought out situations that reconfirmed the identity I created. That is so self-actualized. Yes. That is so, so self-actualized.

He's just so inspirational in so many different ways. Yeah. And I had absolutely no idea. And also during these years, he's hosting cookouts at his West Hollywood home. He's getting to know his nieces and nephews. He's finding his family and like, and just enjoying life for about seven, eight years before drag race, essentially. And I will be, I mean, before please, Star Booty. Star Booty.

How dare I forget about a number? Another edition, 2007's Star Booty. I will say in 2004 also, RuPaul does release his fourth album, Red Hot, on his own label, Hugo. He's still like doing a bunch of shit. Just kind of at his leisure,

though, like not hitting it as hard. I feel like you have to go in like full go mode if you're like gonna do the the thing, like RuPaul's drag race. But just kind of putting stuff out as he wants to. It got very little press coverage, which actually really pissed him off,

felt like he wasn't. doing whatever people needed him to do as this drag icon, and it was like, blames that a lot for why he feels he got very little press on this album. Either way, in 2007, we are blessed with a fourth edition to the Star Booty for me. This was his way, he said, over the years, because I became a household name, I didn't have to do as much of that, and I could become riskier and true to my downtown roots because he was out of the spotlight, so he didn't have to be so much that anymore. He said, like in my movie, Star Booty,

which is completely X-rated and has a downtown sort of John Waters kind of craziness, and it's hilarious. It's the closest to my sense of humor that people have really ever experienced. I loved it. It is not for everybody. I mean, the beginning shot is her on the phone

with her niece who has been kidnapped, and the niece is, like, being held at gunboy, and she's like, what am I going to do? And then her shirt burst. soap and her breasts are just like, oh, Star Booty! And there is so much dick in this. There's a lot. But thank, I'm glad. I love it because also Star Booty was cast with a lot of actual porn stars in the roles. And when asked why, Rupal said, they're like heroes in this world we live, I think, because we're

such a sexually repressed culture that here are these people who are letting it all hang out and really pushing the envelope, and they should be put on a pedestal. And because it is, man, so many, I haven't seen so many dicks slapped into a face in a minute. And I loved it. And it sounds like you needed some of that. I definitely needed some of that.

And I also, I really like that whenever Rupal is talking about what makes up Rupal. He talks about how he believes he's two parts, Dolly Parton, a spoonful of Cher and Diana Ross, a smidge of David Bowie, and then talking about how it was really a struggle for him from the beginning times into becoming a household name, because he did then have to put on, like, I'm a Disney character, no, to take all of the sexuality out of the character of RuPaul that he gets to a point that I think after this break, he doesn't want that anymore. He's not a fucking Disney character.

Yeah, they really wanted to have like a safe drag person, one that made people not uncomfortable. He almost had, he almost did to like, not euthanize. What's it called? Nuter. He did like almost neuter himself. No. That is the Disney version. He did like, no, but they didn't, they, people were willing to accept him in that outfit if he also was not a sexual being anyway.

And he was allowed to do that by the American public. And now he feels his role as quote, shaman or the witch doctors and the court jester whose job it is to remind the culture this is all a facade don't take it too seriously ruPaul also said all things to do with drag are inherently therapeutic because the realization of your own insanity is the beginning of sanity you have to go into this complete artifice to figure out who you really are and another little follow-up to that is another quote from ruPaul saying my therapist said you know the power that you feel in drag or my Superman or Wonder Woman, you know, you can access that at any time. I tell you, it had never

occurred to me because you put the outfit on and immediately people see you differently. They treat you differently. But I have that same power out of drag, which is monumental. It's huge, that concept. And I think we really see that when RuPaul moves into his hosting role at RuPaul's drag race, like there is just such a power there that we didn't really, I think, know before this. We never really saw RuPaul out of drag that much anyways. It was actually also a really big thing to RuPaul. He was very adamant about the fact that no one could see the actual process until we see later on the show AJ and the Queen.

And that is the Netflix show that there's only one season of, that it's the first time that he shows on camera him changing from RuPaul himself into RuPaul the character. But even then, AJ and the Queen is not about RuPaul himself. it is about a character. But I think that shedding that in that line when he says, I told my therapist that I used to feel like Superman

and drag to my everyday Clark Kent. Now the only difference is I always have that power. And I think that for him, part of that therapy and part of learning himself is being able to show the metamorphosis between the two versions of himself, of him and the character. Because I imagine that block must have been huge.

I would want to wall up. Like, no, no, no, you don't get to see the actual me. And I love that on RuPaul's Drag Race, which I know that we'll get into next time, that it is half and half the show of him as himself, Rupal, and him as the queen of drag. Yes. And I like that both sides of him are included in the show.

Especially because he's got great suits. Yes. Those suits are amazing. Well, he even goes on to say, I don't have the exact quote, but I read one in which he was talking about, he was like, I don't really even care about the drag thing that much. That's, like, not this super important thing to me to, like, be getting into drag at this point.

Like, it's more about harvesting this, like, incredible community. It's about, you know, supporting all these other people who probably have their own version of that boy on the porch. You know what I mean? Yes, and I do like that, too, but he also, because of all the years of therapy, doesn't take it upon himself to get, like, he provides the platform, but you got to do the fucking. work yourself. Yeah. And they like that it's not like he's not, I like that he doesn't refer to him as the, like, the drag mother.

Yeah, yeah. Because he's like, I'm not. I'm not all of your mother. Right. And a lot of them, you know, call him like mother rue and that kind of stuff. And I think that he's fine with being temporarily in the place of it. But even next time when we talk about he and his husband and how he feels about kids and how he's like, I can't tell anyone how to live their life and what to be.

You got to find it for yourself. And I think that separating himself from putting that onto his shoulders because then how do you deal with that? How do you deal with people coming at you? And I think that is why, again, with the controversy that we'll talk about next time, I think that was part of it for himself,

is that that's not me, and I'm proud of who I am, and I think he does put him on the defensive sometimes. And we'll get into that next time. Rupal said, it's all a lie. The world is a lie. so don't base your value on the lie. I've always been attracted to things that were irreverent. Like Monty Python, I thought, oh, there's my tribe.

Because even as a kid, I knew that I had a sense that none of this was real, that it was all an illusion, and that it would be a mistake to base my value on the lie. Boys go here, girls go there, blacks over here, whites over here. All these superficial rules we come up with are just BS. Society is an illusion. Society is an illusion.

That's all I've got. Jackie, do you have anything else before we wrap this up? Natalie, do you have anything else before we wrap this puppy up? I'm very excited about getting into RuPaul's Drag Race because... It's going to be a lot. It is now... I'm intimidated by it. I'm just tell all of you right now.

Oh, jump in, baby. I am way steep in RuPaul's Drag Race right now. It's all I can think about. I understand the phenomenon. And we'll talk about it next time of like, I've been to multiple drag cons before. And I'm excited to talk about it. Sure. The only thing I would like to say is that I humbly request that Holden dress and drag for this episode, for us only because nobody else can see.

For next? Yeah, and I'll do the whole thing. I'll do it. And I'll have to. Wax. Oh, me. You gotta do. I want to see all of it.

What's the final round call where they have to try to survive? A lip sync for your life. Yeah, I'm going to lip sync for my life at the very end. It'll be perfect. Great. Done. All right. That's our episode on Rupal.

Thank you so much, everybody, for joining us. We, of course, again, don't worry. We will be back next week with an actual full-on episode on RuPaul's Drag Race. I'm excited. We're not giving you the whole story here, just leading all the way up to that point. So please join us next time for that. And then we can talk about how hot his husband is next time. Yeah.

Good point. They live on 60,000 acres in Wyoming. Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Until we get to that, though, I just want to say, thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to support us further, patreon. Patreon.com forward slash page seven podcast. Check us out on that. We do all this extra content for just five dollars a month. Check me out. Twitch.tv.4. slash hold Nader's ho every Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, especially Fridays, y'all, because I stream with Jackie. So check us out.

It's always a blast. And I think that's about it from me. You know, I'm a singer-songwriter, but we'll hear about that in the future, I guess. As I continue to write my songs that I might play for you someday. Natalie Hey Whoa Don't write a song about me That's amazing

She's a song I like it It's like a party song It's literally just She's Natalie That's all I've written so far But it's really good I'm working on it

Yeah She's tall Oh yeah you got it You gotta talk about how tall she is She's tall All right that's nice I'll take it I also I think

Rupolpaw should have The Colt in Wyoming instead of Kanye. That's all I'm going to do. Yeah. Sure. You can follow me at the United Jean, and I do a show called Some Please Center in LPN, and it's about missing women. Yay! My name is Jackie Sprouse. You follow me on Instagram with Jack That Worm. I love you guys. Thank you, and I'm very excited about next time. Hell yeah, dude. Bye, everybody. I'm scared. This show is made possible by listeners like you. Thanks to our ad sponsors. You can support our shows by supporting them.

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