Eliminated Drag Race UK star ‘shouted’ at crew before lip sync – and reveals unaired RuPaul moment
The latest queen to be eliminated from Drag Race UK season six has opened up about her experiences (BBC)
The latest queen to sashay away of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK has revealed why she was ‘shouting’ at the crew before her lip sync, her ‘villain label’ and which moment from the season she ‘hates became a joke’.
Warning: Sickening spoilers ahead for episode 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK.
Five queens have sashayed away from Drag Race UK‘s sixth season, with Saki Yew being taken out by a shower, Dita Garbo failing to impress judges in the season’s first acting challenge, Zahirah Zapanta sashaying away in the Hallowe’en Ghoul Group challenge and Kiki Snatch hitting the house after a Graham Norton Chat Show challenge.
In episode five, the remaining queens were challenged with the big one; the Snatch Game.
While La Voix snatched her second win of the season for her Liza Minelli impersonation – and Kyran Thrax made her badge count a hat trick, it was Chanel O’Conor who landed in the bottom against Rileasa Slaves, and eventually sashayed away after a lip sync to “Something Kinda Ooh” by Girls Aloud (and a lengthy exit speech)
Speaking to PinkNews following her elimination, Chanel reveals RuPaul’s unaired Werk Room moment with the Scottish queen, what she really thinks of her villain edit, and why she was “shouting” before her lipsync against Rileasa.
The episode’s runway theme was ‘Dr. Who is she?’ based off the iconic, long-running, BBC show now starring Ncuti Gatwa as the titular Time Lord – for which the queens had to invent their own Dr. Who villains.
Chanel’s look, as ever, was fabulous – it involved a lot of bulky armour and some giant finger nails. The issue, Chanel reveals, was lip syncing in it, and the costume’s bulky nature was why she ending up “shouting” at the crew to try and let her change pre-performance.
“One thing you need to know about Chanel, I am a verbal c**t. I will just say how I feel,” she admits via Zoom. And how she felt, it turns out, was that she really, really wanted to change before lip syncing, but wasn’t allowed to.
“I was shouting at people. You do not see it [in the episode], but I am like, ‘I can’t breathe in this, please can I change into something else? Can I just have a black cat suit? Can I not just wear that? Please, let me wear a ginger wig.’
“But we couldn’t, we didn’t have the time, we didn’t have the ability to do it. So the best thing I could do is put those little gloves on and just dance and jive.”
Chanel’s bottom two placement came after she failed to impress Ru with an impersonation of drag legend Coco Peru in the Snatch Game, something that she attributes to picking someone she “loved and adored too much.”
But when asked what actually doing the Snatch Game was like, it doesn’t seem like she was having that much fun off camera, either – and that’s an understatement, even though it’s been termed the franchises “best ever” by fans.
“I have been in plane crashes that have been more fun,” she deadpans. “I have survived plummeting nose dives from 40,000 feet, and had better chances and odds of survival than being on Snatch Game.
It is the most intense whirlwind of emotion. You’re there and you just have to do it. You can’t stop, and whatever comes out your mouth is the answer. You can’t have a second go. You can’t reset. It is one of the most difficult things you can do in any career, especially in drag.”
(NB: We did ask whether Chanel has actually been in a plane crash, to which she responded, “two-and-a-half times. I kept putting anvils in parachutes.”)
After Chanel’s lip sync, in which she more than held her own, we discuss her lengthy exit speech – “a captive audience”, she jokes – which in turn leads us to talk about the queen’s edit, which was undoubtedly as one of the “villain” of the season.
Happily, Chanel is more than at peace with that portrayal. “I believe that it is a rule that has to be fulfilled. And listen, I’m happy to fulfill it,” she says, before adding that it’s just who she is.
“I could have done some wild s**t, you know. I had rat poison in my bag!, I could have been wicked – but I just was an individual who sometimes said what I said in heated moments. That’s Scottish people for you, we are going to tell you what we think.”
And for any haters, according to the diva herself, hate just “makes [her] skinnier.”
There is one Drag Race UK moment that Chanel “hates got turned into a joke”, which is when she went to comfort Dita Garbo in episode three during Untucked.
“I felt like for a lot of the season, I was portrayed as this very stone, cold creature that was just there to like cause drama, shout and scream and eat all the biscuits,” she says, but that was”one of those moments where you saw me be like, real and genuine. I hate that that became a joke.”
Chanel also gives us one more nugget of RuPaul-ism that didnt make the final cut of the episode – and it’s a critique of her ‘How’s Your Head(piece)?’ runway during the pre-Snatch Game walkthough
“We were resetting, and Ru went, ‘Chanel, who made that dress last week?’ And I said that I did, and Ru said, ‘It was beautiful. It was so stunning on you, that shape. It was gorgeous.’
“And I said to Ru, ‘I thought you guys hated it, because all the judges were quiet,’ and Ru then went, ‘Well, honey, sometimes you don’t have to say anything at all.’
“I will remember and cherish that for the rest of my life.”
RuPaul’s Drag Race UK airs on BBC iPlayer from 8pm every Thursday.
