Michelle Visage has said that she sees herself as a mother to the queens on RuPaul's Drag Race. She has described her role as helping the queens step out of their comfort zones and achieve their full potential.
via: EW
Michelle Visage might be RuPaul's right-hand woman on RuPaul's Drag Race, but she's also the show's resident mother — and sees herself as such when it comes to her relationship with the hundreds of queens who've appeared on the show across the last 16 years.
In an exclusive interview with Entertainment Weekly filmed on the Drag Race Main Stage (above), the multi-Emmy winner reflects on her love for each Drag Race queen she's judged across her tenure that began back in 2011 on season 3.
"My job as a judge is to help these kids, and I treat them like they're all my children," she says. "It's my job as a judge to push them out of the comfort zone and show them — not me — that they can do more than they ever thought they could."
Her style of judging is deliciously sharp. This season alone, she admits that she's over queens wearing corsets, chaps, and Marie-Antoinette looks (the cast needs to step it up if they're bringing the core building blocks of drag to the Main Stage, she says), but she still loves "every one of them" in the end. "There could be some that might dispute that and think that's not true, but there's not one that I don't love," Visage says. "I just have different relationships with them. But I love and support them all!"
That's why Visage refuses to single out her favorite runway package in the show's history. "That's literally the gay Sophie's Choice," Visage jokes. She will name-drop some of the famous guest judges she's gotten close with across 14 regular seasons and other All Stars editions — including Cameron Diaz, who guest-judged the All Stars 7 premiere and Visage says the "became friends" with in the process, enough so that they've "gone out to dinner multiple times" since the 2022 season.
And yet, there's one guest judge who lives in infamy in Visage's memory: Joel McHale, who playfully goaded Visage by shouting at the season 11 queens from his chair behind the judging table.
"I had no idea what got him. I was like, what are you doing? This is not a sports bar, Joel!" Visage says, smiling. "He saw that it was irking me, and he has been a husband for a long time, and my husband would've done the same thing. Because it was irking me, he kept on and hammered it 10 times worse."
Visage also tells EW that, after finding success with the girl group Seduction with their 1989 smash hit "Two to Make It Right" (and partnering with British group Steps for a one-off single in 2021) she plans to once again return to music.
This time, Visage wants to do a "one-woman show" musical — but, there's a catch: It has to be one that'll win a Tony. "I don't want to do it small potatoes," she teases.
In the meantime, Visage appears Fridays on RuPaul's Drag Race season 17 on MTV. Watch EW's exclusive preview above, and check out our full interview with Visage in the video at the top of this post.
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