The Drag Race Queens Weren’t Being Shady (This Time)

Was it something she said? Photo: Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty

Recommendation: Don’t say anything shady about drag queens unless you are willing to fight tooth and nail. They will descend en masse with more corrections than a New Yorker copy editor reading “teenager” instead of “teen-ager.” After RuPaul’s Drag Race season 16 lost the Emmy for Outstanding Reality Competition Program to The Traitors, Hollywood Reporter journalist Chris Gardner tweeted “the team from Drag Race (including all the queens) cleared out and headed to the lobby.” Well, check the footage: This is an objectively correct statement. But it is also a subjectively shady one, and the queens let him know. One by one, seven different queens from the most recent season of Drag Race replied, and nobody should be surprised that they were all the messiest (complimentary) girls in the cast: Morphine Love Dion, Amanda Tori Meating, Xunami Muse, Plane Jane, Dawn, Megami, and Mhi’ya Iman Le’Paige.

Fresh off an Emmy loss, they complained Gardner made it seem like they were leaving the Emmys altogether, rather than just getting a drink during a commercial break after losing an award. “all we did was go get a cocktail during a commercial break like a lot of others do,” Xunami wrote. “Mind you all of production and the cast stayed till the end, to support the academy.” Dawn was a bit more concise, simply writing: “Girl it’s not that serious I had to piss.”

There was even a community note added to Gardner’s tweet that didn’t necessarily run contrary to his report but did add the context, “It was a commercial break.” Perhaps the more damning tweet came from Mhi’ya, who gave the only true fact check of the night, noting that not “all the queens” left: She and Geneva stayed! Now there’s a difference. Gardner later tweeted twice that the queens had returned. What, can’t a queen just get a drink around here after her season (not her, Robin) loses an Emmy?