ON STAGE: Bianca Del Rio: Unsanitized
Where: Royal Theatre
When: Monday, March 7, 8 p.m.
Tickets: $59.50 from or 250-386-5211
It’s never ideal when a news bulletin gathers speed prior to your interview with the person responsible for the headline fodder. Not all press is good press, so without time to properly qualify the source, you run the risk of angering the interviewee if you ask about it.
Bianca Del Rio, who isn’t known for being easily offended, had no problem being asked about the article in Pink News, which quoted the RuPaul’s Drag Race winner as saying her fellow drag queens were “delusional” and lacked talent.
During our conversation, the New Orleans native (born: Roy Haylock) doubled-down on her previous assessment. “There’s too many damn drag queens,” she said from her home in California.
“Everywhere you go, they’re falling out of trees. But if drag makes you happy, who am I to say you can’t do it?”
Del Rio would expound on her comments in greater detail, and with more profanity, further into our conversation — which, as the world’s top drag queen, she is qualified to do. On Instagram, Del Rio currently has 2.5 million followers, reportedly the highest total of any drag queen.
In the years following her 2014 win in season six of the RuPaul reality TV franchise, Del Rio has reached lofty heights, including a headlining performance at London’s Wembley Stadium in 2019 (the first drag performer ever to do so, according to GQ.) In a power ranking of former contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race and its spin-offs, New York magazine put Del Rio in the top spot.
The secret to her success? Old-fashioned on-the-job experience, she said. “I come from a different time. I’ve done drag for 26 years, so I’ve seen every aspect of drag that exists.”
Hard work is sorely missing from today’s drag community, she added. Too many get by with a razzle-dazzle Instagram account, but offer little else. “What I’ve had to come to realize is most of them are not performers. I guess I should look at it a little more objectively. Some people are just contestants on a drag show and don’t have any talent. Maybe that’s just it. And that’s OK. We have a lot of politicians that are f—-ing useless, so what’s the difference? To me, it’s not groundbreaking. To me, it’s not exciting. To me, it’s just confusing, because I’m old.”
Del Rio isn’t exactly old; she’s only 46. But her comments speak to the shelf life of many of her peers. Del Rio has diversified interests, from comedy to writing, which has helped weather trends for close to three decades.
The drag world hasn’t completely lost the script, Del Rio said. She has appeared in several editions of the RuPaul TV franchise, up to and including RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 6 in 2021. Some former contestants are her friends; many are not.
“The crazy thing about the whole Drag Race scenario is that people assume we all know each other and have hung out with each other. There isn’t some international World’s Fair we meet up at and discuss serious issues. Outside of Instagram and Twitter, or seeing someone on television, I don’t know that many of them.”
She wouldn’t have the time to hang out, even if she was interested. Del Rio has been on the road in recent months, and on Monday begins the 91原创 leg of her Unsanitized tour at the Royal Theatre. She’s upbeat about her run through Canada, especially with capacity restrictions now lifted.
“Let’s be very real here, I would normally complain that I had to change this or re-route that. But honestly, after spending all that time at home, I’m just so f—-ing happy to be out and about. You’re not going to hear me complain. Whatever I’ve got to deal with, whether it’s snow, regulations, a colony of lepers, I’m going to make it happen.”
She is offering fans a chance to forget about COVID-19 and embrace BIANCA-22.
“Not to get too spiritual about things, but in the end, you have to find the humour in it. If anything, this pandemic has taught us that when some serious shit is going down in the world, you have to find the humour in it in order to survive and get through it. If you can’t laugh, it’s a really f—-ed up situation.”
