Willam shares the real reason Drag Race episodes are so short, and now everything make sense
Willam. (Getty)
Following a move to MTV, episodes of the fifteenth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race are now only an hour long – and one of Drag Race‘s most infamous alum, Willam, has revealed why.
Speaking on the Drag Race recap podcast Race Chaser alongside her co-host Alaska Thunderf**k 5000, Willam, who appeared on season four of the series before becoming the first queen to ever be disqualified for breaking the rules, opened up about why the new episodes have been shortened.
Season fifteen, which has earned the title of RuPaul’s “biggest season yet,”, has attracted its fair share of controversy recently after episodes were unceremoniously chopped to 40-minutes (60 mins, including commercials), a drastic departure from the traditional 90-minute episodes fans used to enjoy.
According to Willam, the reason for the cut-down runtime is not specifically to make room for Todrick Hall’s new reality TV programme, The Real Friends of WeHo, but rather to make it easier for MTV to re-run Drag Race programming at other points in the day.
During their discussion of season fifteen’s supersized Snatch Game, in which Connecticut queen Loosey LaDuca snatched the win for her impersonation of late comedian Joan Rivers, Willam explained her theory to Alaska.
“MTV plans to … somebody wrote online that [MTV] are planning on repeating Drag Race, and showing it repeatedly in an hour format, so that’s one of the reasons it’s a shorter episode.”
Willam went on to defend the The Real Friends Of WeHo alongside its star, Todrick Hall, who recently took to Twitter to blame the show’s poor reception on queer “hate”.
“It’s not like The Real Friends of WeHo took their time away, it’s that MTV wants to repeat the episodes, and they need to be in an hour format for that to work,” they continued.
Willam then rightly pointed out that Drag Race could have been a two-hour block of programming, including a half an hour Untucked episode.
“But also, for me, why can’t they just do a two hour format, and have Untucked be a half hour and then have the other thing (Real Friends of WeHo) be 90 minutes? But I don’t know, I’m not the head of marketing.”
Currently, Untucked airs after The Real Friends of WeHo.
According to TV Ratings aggregate ‘SpoilerTV‘, the series debuted at #69 among original cable programming with 186,000 viewers. The preceding episode of Drag Race ranked at #6 on the same chart, with 578,000.
This means that The Real Friends of WeHo lost a 392,000 lead in. Untucked then debuted at nine positions higher (#60) on the charts, garnering 214,000 viewers – 28,000 up on Real Friends.
Cast members Joey Zauzig, Brad Goreski, Curtis Hamilton and Jaymes Vaughan have already spoken out concerning the outrage from Drag Race fans who are upset at their favourite show being cut short.
Willam is no stranger to calling out RuPaul and weighing in on Drag Race drama. Most recently, she told Digital Spy why Drag Race UK should be offering a cash incentive to compete.
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