Skip to main content

Home Culture Culture Film & TV

Bianca Del Rio on her relationship with ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ and her refusal to be a victim

The razor-tongued drag superstar doles out the lashes in our new February issue.

By Will Stroude

Words: Will Stroude

She might be one of the show’s biggest and enduringly popular success stories, but former RuPaul’s Drag Race champion Bianca Del Rio says she’s put the hit drag competition firmly behind her.

The Hurricane Bianca star, who is set to play London’s Wembley Arena this autumn as part of her mammoth ‘It’s Jester Joke World Tour’, might be preparing for another career landmark, but admits she no longer has a “relationship” with the show she romped to victory on back in 2014.

“Aside from it being an amazing opportunity, I really don’t have a relationship with [the show],” Bianca reveals in the new February issue of Attitude – available to download and to order globally now.

“I don’t watch the show regularly because of schedules and also, y’know, it’s kind of like you experience it, it’s fun, then you have to move on.

Bianca Del Rio, shot by Conor Clinch exclusively for the February issue of Attitude, out now

 “I don’t mean that in a negative way I don’t have any animosity toward it but all that has kind of been documented. But without that experience, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.

Bianca has made a career out of her brutally honest – and hilariously funny – barbs, but the notoriously outspoken star denies that her comedic persona stems from masking any form of gay trauma.

“It’s fine for you to think that way but that’s not who I am,” she says. “There’s a lot that’s happened in my life but that doesn’t mean it has to be told.

“How many sad gay stories do we need in the world? Why can’t someone just be a clown?”

The former Drag Race fave adds: “I’m not going to sit back and go: ‘When I was a child this is what made me [this]’ .I don’t know what made me this, you just roll with the punches.

“The world doesn’t cater to me and hasn’t fully catered to me, and I think you just have to keep going and if I become a victim that’s dreadful.

“There are enough victims. Watch Drag Race if you want a victim, they cry every episode!”

You can read our exclusive interview with Bianca in the February issue of Attitude, which is out now and comes with our FREE 68-page travel guide 101 Things We Love About New York City, supported by nycgo.com (available with both print and digital editions). 

Buy the February issue of Attitude now and take advantage of our best-ever subscription offers: 3 issues for £3 in print, 13 issues for £19.99 to download to any device.