The star of the 75th Emmy Awards red carpet was a green goblin in a mossy evening gown. They skulked in the background of red-carpet livestreams, giving viewers a reason to pay closer attention. Who was she? Our first hint was that she was photographed keeping company with several drag queens, including Jax, Luxx Noir London, Aura Mayari, and Salina EsTitties — all of whom competed on the Emmy-nominated 15th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Irene “the Alien†Dubois is known to turn out a sci-fi look, but it wasn’t her beneath the prosthetics, paint, and pearls. No, upon closer examination (and confirmation via Instagram Story), the goblin of the evening was none other than Princess Poppy, who previously announced at DragCon that she would be stepping away from drag. Stay mad, hobbits.
Princess Poppy later told EW that her look was inspired by Jabba the Hutt, Roz from Monsters, Inc., and a witch from 1985’s Legend. “Mainly I wanted to be a troll-slash-hag,†she summarized. But she didn’t spend six hours on this transformation just for fun. On top of wanting to “go big or go home†at her first and potentially last Emmys, Poppy explained to Byrdie that she also wanted to make a point about beauty standards. “The concept of being a public figure is absurd, but more absurd than that is the immense amounts of pressure on people, mostly women, to retain an unrealistic level of ‘youth and physical attractiveness,’†she said. “I know many people that go to great lengths to rid themselves of their wrinkles or their self-perceived flaws — myself included — but I thought f–k that. I want to accentuate my wrinkles and flaws so much that the people in the parking lot can see them.â€
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly included a drag queen who was not present.
This post has been updated.