RuPaul's Drag Race season 9 winner Bob The Drag Queen recently gave fans an inside look at what it's like working with pop icon Madonna.
via: Page Six
When he first met the Queen of Pop — while hosting her New York Pride show at Terminal 5 in June 2022 — she was hardly a royal diva.
“I mean, I wish I could have a story like, ‘She spat in my face and called me a bitch,’ but she didn’t,” Bob, 37, told The Post with a laugh. “She was a really cool lady. She’s pretty normal.”
Of course, what Madonna Louise Ciccone has done over the last four decades — since releasing her self-titled debut album on July 27, 1983 — has been anything but normal.
Bitch, she’s Madonna.
And Bob — who identifies as nonbinary and goes by Caldwell Tidicue out of drag — has been hyping up the crowd for the 65-year-old icon to take the stage since the “Celebration Tour” launched in London in October.
“Just the fact that Madonna is able to touch so many people 40 years into her career . . . is amazing,” he said. “We did six shows at the O2 arena [in London], sold out every single time, and that says something.”
(And Wednesday’s concert is just the first of six NYC shows: Madonna will be back at Barclays Center on Thursday and Saturday, and she’ll play Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden Jan. 22, 23 and 29.)
But while charged with getting the Madonna masses into the groove for a night of hit after hit, Bob isn’t worried that he’ll F it up.
“I feel like I should feel nervous, but I’m just not,” he said. “If I’m in a room that’s packed with 100 people because that’s all it can fit, it’s interesting to me how similar it feels to being in a room packed with 20,000 people . . . The excitement for me isn’t really about how many people are there — it’s about the energy of the people in the room.”
Still, it takes Bob a good two hours to get into hair, makeup and corset to make his grand entrance in a Marie Antoinette costume that replicates the one Madonna famously wore to perform “Vogue” at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards.
“Getting in the garment itself is maybe, like 10 minutes,” said Bob. “Putting on the makeup is a longer process, for sure.”
But Bob isn’t done once Madonna hits the stage. He returns in a “sad clown outfit” when the singer performs her 1986 hit “Live To Tell” in a moving remembrance of those lost to AIDS.
“We actually did it on World AIDS Day, which was really kind of wild,” he said of the Dec. 1 concert in Amsterdam. “It means a lot every single time we do it, but to do it on World AIDS Day was really like a make-the-hairs-on-your-arm-stand-up experience.”
Bob also hits the runway as the ballroom emcee during “Vogue” — the 1990 smash that has been a staple of any Madonna tour — in a glittering black tuxedo.
“This is a real tribute to the ballroom scene and to the riotous nature of New York City nightlife and the Stonewall riots and just . . . all of it,” he said. “And I just love that we get to have a ball and that we have the iconic voice of [ballroom legend] Kevin Jz Prodigy on the track. What an honor to have Kevin’s voice there.”
Bob also gives Madonna’s 11-year-old daughter Estere 10’s across the board for the way she works the runway during “Vogue” for her mother — and surprise-guest judges that have included everyone from her siblings Lourdes Leon and Rocco Ritchie to designers Donatella Versace and Jean Paul Gaultier to other “RuPaul’s Drag Race” alums Aquaria and Miss Fame.
“She’s amazing,” he said. “Estere is truly a phenomenal performer — and at such a young age. And what a sweet, sweet, sweet kid.”
Three of Madonna’s other children — David Banda, 18, on guitar; Mercy James, 17, on piano; and Stella, Estere’s twin, hoofing it up on “Don’t Tell Me” — also make the “Celebration Tour” a family affair. “They’re real stars,” said Bob.
And his stage banter with Madonna reveals a more personal side of the superstar.
“It’s fun to have a little back and forth with Madonna,” he said. “She likes to have fun and improv, and she gets really silly onstage.”
But things turned somber for all of the “Celebration Tour” team when a serious bacterial infection sent Madonna to the ICU in June and forced a postponement of the trek that was originally supposed to begin in July.
“It was very scary actually, quite terrifying,” said Bob. “But obviously she’s, like, the definition of a survivor.
“I’m glad that she’s [still] here,” he added.
And now — after his first concert experience with Madonna eight years ago — Bob gets to have the fiercest of full-circle moments on Wednesday night.
“I went to go see ‘Rebel Heart’ at Barclays,” he said of the tour for Madge’s 2015 album. “So I’m going to be performing with her where I first saw her.”
Comments