Willam explains where relationship with RuPaul ‘all went wrong’
RuPaul’s Drag Race firebrand Willam has explained the exact moment that her relationship with RuPaul soured forever.
Drag Race season four star and all around icon Willam remains the only queen to be disqualified from a season of the show while filming.
Speaking to All Stars 2 Alaska Thunderf**k 5000 on the Drag Race recap podcast Race Chaser and discussing the season four episode ‘Float Your Boat’, in which the cast of were each given the task of decorating a pride float, Willam arrived at the moment when Ru conducted her Werk Room walkthroughs.
After Willam said she felt she was “scoring points” after quoting Ru’s book directly back to her (always a good move), her season five alumni co-host Alaska asked: “So where did it all go wrong?”
Alaska continued: “I was watching and [thought]… you two have such a rapport, you get along, you have things in common, and she really sees you, and you have respect for each other.”
Willam, who has never been one to shy away from an honest answer, replied: “I think it permanently soured probably, because, I know she liked my antics sometimes and thought I was amusing and other times she didn’t.
“I knew that she lived for me [then]… [because of past experiences], but I was just happy to get those good critiques from her.”
Willam was originally believed to have been disqualified for “receiving conjugal visits”, but in a later interview, the queen shared that she had been booted after committing a series of rule violations, including smoking weed, entering restricted areas of the film lot and stealing props.
She has given a full account of her on-set shenanigans on X/Twitter.
Willam has spoken further about her personal relationship (or lack thereof) with RuPaul, claiming that the pair had a shouting match on an LA street in 2018 over the health of a mutual friend.
Speaking on the David’s Out For a Good Time podcast at the time, Willam said: “She lives her life, I live mine. We don’t interact much, although I did yell at her in the street last week.
“We have a mutual friend. Well, he’s my friend. I don’t know that he’s her friend any more. He is not well right now. He’s been asking to see her and she hasn’t gone to see him. She took care of him for years.
“He’s one of those people that, um, has flown very high and he’s had his problems. He hasn’t been a saint. They had a bad experience on set together and he was removed from the show.
“I was deeply offended by that because in the 90s gay men were pretty much erased from the arts because Aids wiped us out. It’s tragic. I saw this as another erasure of a gay man’s contribution to the arts, who’s my friend.
“I think I took a shine to him because he liked me and he saw creativity in me. He knew working with me pissed off ‘Ru-Co’ and World of Wonder.
“I said: ‘I know he wasn’t an angel, and I know that you’re paying for him now’, because she’s paying for the care, World of Wonder’s taking care of him. ‘But he’d actually like see you, show some face’.”
“[RuPaul] said ‘F**k you’. I said ‘F**k you too b*tch’.”
RuPaul’s Drag Race is available to stream on WOW Presents Plus and Drag Race UK is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
How did this story make you feel?