Drag Race UK season 5 spoilers follow – including who won.
Rainbow Crew is an ongoing interview series that celebrates the best LGBTQ+ representation on screen. Each instalment showcases talent working on both sides of the camera, including queer creatives and allies to the community.
Next up, we're speaking to Drag Race UK season five winner Ginger Johnson.
Five seasons in, Drag Race UK continues to be one of the most likeable spinoffs across the whole franchise, and this year, RuPaul might have just crowned the show's most likeable queen yet.
Yes, we mat-adore Ginger Johnson and everything she stands for, so it was a joy to catch up with everyone's favourite "Silly sausage person" to celebrate her season five victory. During our chat, the Northern Angel discussed her relationship with Ru and what scared her most going into the competition.
Congratulations! Watching the season back, we saw your confidence grow week by week. At what point did you think you had a definite shot at snatching the crown?
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It's funny that you say that because I thought the same thing. I could see myself relaxing, especially in the confessionals. I think it was more apparent in the confessionals than in the challenges really.
It's so nerve-wracking being there and I'm a very anxious person anyway. The level of talent in that cast is insanely high. Everybody is so experienced. Even DeDe, who is 20 years old, she's been doing drag since she was about six. So it was tough. It was really tough.
I had a high expectation of myself. I knew that there were people out there supporting me. I've been working a long time, you know, so I knew that people would want me to do well and I felt that really heavy on me.
But by the time you win three challenges in a row [Laughs], you gotta hand it to yourself a little bit and be like, "Okay, we're in this. We're absolutely in this."
But every week, even the weeks that I won, I was in the mirror practicing the lip-sync in Untucked just to be absolutely certain. Because also, in this season, we had two lip-syncs for the win. So even if you've done really well, you can still end up there doing it.
I don't think there's any time you can really rest when you're on Drag Race because you can win one week and you can be sent home the next week, packing your bags. That's just how it goes.
You can't embarrass yourself in front of RuPaul, can you? Imagine not knowing the words or not knowing the song.
Speaking of lyrics, tell us more about your verse in the "Spotlight" video.
First of all, it was a banger. I was so excited when we heard the track for the first time.
'Spotlight' is one of my favourite RuPaul songs and then this remix is really industrial and exciting. I did think listening to it, "Oh God, what's this choreography going to be like?"
With the verse, I wanted it to be a bit silly, obviously, because that's who I am. And I think you have to try and represent yourself in the verse. But in the first half of it, I did also want to tell the story a little bit of how I'd felt going through the show.
"Flicking the switch and the spotlight's mine." For me, that was about me trusting myself and coming around to the idea of being like, "Right. Get in the mindset that this is something you can do and this is something that you deserve, that you can be proud of." I was kind of talking myself into it with the lyrics a little bit.
How did you feel approaching the choreography and what's it been like watching that back now?
I was proud of myself once again. I know I'm still not the best dancer in the world, but I gave it everything I had! Absolutely everything.
I was really lucky that the amazing choreographer we were working with really let me take it in my own direction. He let me be silly and pull funny faces and take the mickey slightly out of the whole situation, because that's what my drag is about. It's about always bursting the bubble and going, "Oh, no, don't take yourself too seriously."
What's wonderful about Michael and Tamara and I as a trio is we are three entirely different drag queens. We all have the same heart, but our art is different, you know?
Fans can sometimes have a narrow view of what Drag Race is and what drag should be. You bring something quite unique to the show that we haven't seen much before – can you talk us through that and how you put your own spin on challenges we've seen so many times before?
I've just always been someone who does whatever they like [Laughs].
I've got a twisted little brain and it's not that I purposely try to go out of my way to be different. That's just how it happens up there.
Drag should be a true expression of you and your ideas and your emotions and how you feel about the world. When you take that filter out and you just really let yourself go into your creativity, I think that's when people really start to shine.
That's what all three of us managed to do across the series and across our careers. All three of us have been working a while.
Why do you think RuPaul chose you out of the final three to win?
I think it's gonna take me a long time to unpack that and work that out. I'm not sure that I ever will. It might take the joy out of it for me if I dig too deep into it.
But Ru and I really connected. Ru really loves to laugh. She loves to be silly. And that's also the thing that I love the most, so we connected that way. But also in the workroom, in those little couple of minutes of chat that you get with Ru each day, I just tried to talk to her like she was one of my friends. I feel like we became really friendly across the series and she really got a window into who I am through those other parts of the experience as well.
If you could speak to the judges right now, what would you say to them?
Oh, that's a tough one. I mean, I find it hard to say anything to Michelle [Visage] because she is so unbelievably gorgeous. It's like the campest thing in the world. There's something about being in her presence.
I mean, the same with RuPaul. But with Michelle, it's this unbelievable beauty and she's such a generous, warm person as well. So although Michelle does make it easy to talk to her, I just sit there with a crush on her. She's so stunning.
I would just thank them. They all embraced me in the best way that I could have possibly hoped for. I think they got my number quite early [Laughs]. And they were like, "Okay, here's what we're getting," and they sort of let themselves go into it.
That's all you can ask for in any kind of audience because the judges are basically your audience. There's nobody else watching, so I just tried to treat them like I would my audiences when they come to my show, to try to bring them into the madness a little bit.
What took you by surprise about the madness of Drag Race?
Watching it, the thing that took me by surprise is that until now, I thought of myself as somebody that stays out of the drama. A peacemaker even. That kind of thing. And yet there I was every week on TV. Getting stuck in [Laughs]. Maybe I'm a little bit feistier than I give myself credit for.
The other thing that was surprising was just how amazing everybody else was. I don't mean to bang on about it, but it's a phenomenal cast and so broad ranging across all different disciplines within drag. We all got on so well. We were having such a laugh behind the scenes. We just had the best time. It was like RuPaul's summer camp for silly little girls. That's exactly what it was.
I was really worried actually, before I went there. I was talking to my friend the night before and I said to her, "The thing I'm really nervous about is I haven't really like gone out and made lots of new friends in quite a while."
I'm 35. Over the years, when I was working in nightclubs, I had thousands of friends. And then over the years, that's slowly come down to my key best buddies who are my people. I wondered if I still had that muscle, that friendship-making muscle, and I just didn't want to feel like an outsider while I was there.
I couldn't have been more wrong. I've made friends on the show that I know I'm gonna have for life. We're totally bonded by this experience. I didn't know a single one of them before I went in though. I didn't know one of them.
I met Banksie once at a gig and I knew of Cara Melle and Tomara because we work in a similar scene. You know, we're in the same city. But yeah, that was a big surprise that I've still got it. I can still make friends.
What did it mean to you personally to explore gender and drag on such a huge platform, and most importantly of all, to win?
I don't know how long it's gonna take me to work out what it means to be honest. What does it mean to me? It means that I'm in the right place. I'm doing the right thing.
I've been lucky enough that my stars have lined up, and it was right to keep hammering away and keep on it, keep at it, keep trying to be better, keep trying to meet more people and spread whatever my message is at the time. It means that I'm onto the right thing, which is great.
What would you like fans to take away from your time on Drag Race and your victory in particular?
Don't underestimate anyone. That's a big one. Partly because my Meet The Queens outfit was not my finest moment [Laughs]. Not my favourite thing I've ever worn.
I put it on for the day when we filmed Meet The Queens, I looked at the mirror and I thought, "Urgh, what have you done?" [Laughs] And I think some people wrote me off because of that. And maybe because I'm slightly older and a bit weird and that kind of thing.
So don't underestimate anyone. You never know what someone's got in their drag bag.
Aside from winning, what's your best memory from your time on the show?
There was one day in Untucked, I think it was after the sewing challenge, where we'd all been there a few days, and we'd gotten used to each other enough. We all got the giggles, and when I say we got the giggles, we could not stop laughing.
We were doing these Cilla Black impressions, these terrible Cilla Black impressions, to each other. Me, Michael, Kate, DeDe, Banksie, we were all there in Untucked having such a laugh, the kind of laugh that sounds like a crow is dying.
In that moment, I just thought, "We're gonna have some fun." Yes, we've got this serious job of making a fab TV show and the serious job of beating the competition. But seeing everybody just relax a little bit and everybody's shoulders drop as we all started to bond with each other, I just thought, "Wow, this is it. This is the experience."
RuPaul's Drag Race UK airs on BBC Three in the UK and streams on WOW Presents Plus in the US.
Interested in talking about all things Drag Race? Visit our dedicated sub-forum.
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After teaching in England and South Korea, David turned to writing in Germany, where he covered everything from superhero movies to the Berlin Film Festival.
In 2019, David moved to London to join Digital Spy, where he could indulge his love of comics, horror and LGBTQ+ storytelling as Deputy TV Editor, and later, as Acting TV Editor.
David has spoken on numerous LGBTQ+ panels to discuss queer representation and in 2020, he created the Rainbow Crew interview series, which celebrates LGBTQ+ talent on both sides of the camera via video content and longform reads.
Beyond that, David has interviewed all your faves, including Henry Cavill, Pedro Pascal, Olivia Colman, Patrick Stewart, Ncuti Gatwa, Jamie Dornan, Regina King, and more — not to mention countless Drag Race legends.
As a freelance entertainment journalist, David has bylines across a range of publications including Empire Online, Radio Times, INTO, Highsnobiety, Den of Geek, The Digital Fix and Sight & Sound.
