Drag Race UK’s Michelle Visage says open relationship makes her marriage ‘stronger’
Michelle Visage has opened up about her open marriage to husband David Case (Getty)
RuPaul’s Drag Race judge Michelle Visage has spilled the tea on her open marriage with husband David Case.
Visage, who is best known for appearing as a judge on the many iterations of the RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise – including the currently airing sixth season of Drag Race UK– has revealed the machinations of an open marriage.
Speaking to Cush Jumbo on the Origins With Cush Jumbo podcast, Visage shared that having an open relationship with her husband David Case, whom she married in 1997, makes their marriage “stronger”.
“He works Drag Cons with me, and he comes to all these things with me, and listen, my husband’s quite good looking, so the gay men have let it be known that he’s quite good looking,” Visage said, before explaining Case’s knack for ‘compersion’ – receiving pleasure due to someone else receiving pleasure.
“So he beams with pride. He’s got that thing down. I think you call it compersion,” she said.
“We live openly, so he would get off knowing that I was so happy and no matter what it is that I do, and I’m not just talking sexually, whatever it is, I don’t know if I have compersion in me to be really excited if he’s doing something with another woman but I know that it exists and he is 100% that.”
In response, Cush said, “It’s like giving you the opportunity to have the space to feel like you never have to hide any piece of yourself.”
“And I don’t and neither does he,” Visage answered of Case, with whom she has two children.
“Sometimes that hurts, but that’s what makes us stronger,” Michelle Visage continued. “The full transparency of the way we live our lives. Completely and, by the way, sometimes it’s not even necessary. It’s just, meaning, we don’t do anything. It’s just the ability to be able to. […] And that’s what works for us.”
Though she has been a permanent judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race – as well as the show’s UK version and All Stars spinoff – since season three in 2011, Visage is set to host Drag Race Down Under without RuPaul for the first time ever.
Speaking about the season – which has just revealed its cast – co-host Rhys Nicholson exclusively told PinkNews: “There is a difference, and I struggled to put my finger on what it is. Even the process of filming it was a little bit different.
“Michelle’s in the middle, I stay the same – though I think I now have a little bit more power, but I am the levity. And we now have a rotation of winning queens on the panel, that fill the previous ‘Michelle’ spot.”
Origins With Cush Jumbo is available wherever you get your podcasts.
