RuPaul's Drag Race winner Aquaria is the latest to hit out at a "racist" element within the show's fandom following a huge backlash to the show's season 11 casting special.
The season 10 winner had the unfortunate job of co-hosting a live stream, along with Olympian Adam Rippon, on Thursday (January 24) that painfully dragged out announcing the 15 new queens for more than two hours.
Someone at US channel VH1 thought it would be a brilliant idea to have Aquaria put the new queens through a variety of 'wacky' challenges ā like US history quizzes and disgusting taste tests.
In addition to the seemingly endless run time and cringe factor, the Ruveal was even more troubling because some fans were making racist jokes about contestants in the live chat throughout the stream.
Aquaria has been known to pop off in the past, and vented her frustration once again on Thursday at both the fans as well the VH1 team who work on RuPaul's Drag Race.
"That reveal was very telling," she tweeted. "One, that the *fans* of this show are extremely racist (among many other means of heinously judgmental) and also that someone at vh1 HATES my guts and wants me to show up to the s11 finale without an ounce of dignity left in my body."
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The season 10 winner then insisted: "Iām an incredible drag queen and model and artist and performer and creator and a star and I will always continue to share that with the world and get better and better for my fans and friends."
Digital Spy recently chatted with All Stars 2 favourite Tatianna about the racism debate within fandom, and she argued that it was a larger issue than just within the Drag Race community.
"I think the fans do have a racism issue, but it isn't specific to RuPaul's Drag Race fans, it's specific to people," she told us. "Any show that has a strong following, they get racist if something happens they don't like."
The good news is that Drag Race season 11 has one of its most diverse lineups ever, including Mercedes Iman Diamond as the show's first ever Muslim queen.
RuPaul's Drag Race season 11 is coming soon on VH1 in the US and Netflix UK.
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Justin is a freelance entertainment journalist and writer. He first joined Digital Spy as a freelance entertainment reporter in 2010 and also worked as a sub-editor for the brand, serving as Night News Editor from 2016 to 2024. Over more than a decade, Justin has covered numerous major entertainment events from the US and has interviewed a wide-ranging group of public figures, from comedian Steve Coogan to icons from the Star Trek universe, cast members from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and reality stars from numerous Real Housewives cities and the Below Deck franchise. Justin has also been on the ground to cover major pop culture events like the Star Wars Celebration and the D23 Expo. He's written for titles across the Hearst network, plus the likes of CBR and Us Weekly.
