For four seasons, Rhys Nicholson has watched queens sashay, lip-sync and occasionally self-destruct from the Drag Race Down Under judging panel. But with Drag Race Down Under vs The World, the competition gets even fiercer, bringing together eleven queens from across the global Drag Race franchise for the first international showdown filmed on Australasian soil. With Michelle Visage returning as host and reigning champion Lazy Susan joining the panel, the stakes – and the personalities – have never been bigger. Ahead of the Stan Original’s July 24th premiere, our Peter Gray spoke with Nicholson about the fine line between confidence and delusion, why there’s no such thing as a “mean judge”, what audiences still misunderstand about reality television, and why a little bit of chaos might just be essential to great drag.
First off, I wanted to ask, with judging Drag Race, has it made you better at spotting confidence or better at spotting delusion at this point?
Oh, that’s a great question. I reckon both are really important to being a successful drag queen. But I think it actually started in season four, when we had former queens on the judging panel. That gave me an insight into how a queen judges another queen.
I’ve always said I’m kind of the Marcia Hines of the group. I’m never going to tell a drag queen, ‘You should’ve finished your makeup more,’ because who am I? I’m there as a performer, as a fan, and as the conduit for the audience.
Seeing queens clock other queens in ways I never could is fascinating. Having Lazy Susan on the panel this season has been incredible because, obviously, the queens are the stars of Drag Race, and she’s able to cut through in a way that’s similar to Ru and Michelle. I’m just so happy to be there that I don’t think I’d ever judge quite like that.
That said, a little delusion is important. In comedy, television, really any part of the entertainment industry, you’ve got to have that slightly unhinged level of confidence to make it work – especially in Australia.
Going off that, you’re saying you’re not necessarily going to be passing a lot of judgement, but drag is obviously subjective. Is there one thing that’s universally unforgivable for you?
Cruelty is really the only hard line, and I know that sounds vague, but it’s the same in comedy. There are rules, but there are also no rules. It’s all about intent.
I think drag in Australia and New Zealand is such a particular thing. Even internationally, from season one through to seasons three and four, it took viewers a little while to understand what we do here. This is just my opinion, but I think Oceania drag is much more character-based. We have fewer queens who are purely “look queens.” Everyone still looks incredible, but it’s less about female impersonation and more about creating a fully realised character.
Because of that, it can be hard to critique sometimes. It’s hard to have absolute ‘no’s’ because you can walk into some dive drag bar and see the greatest thing you’ve ever seen in your life. You might think, ‘Well, that wouldn’t necessarily work week after week on Drag Race, but it’s brilliant here.’ You know what I mean?
And particularly this season, with the international queens – without giving anything away – that’s always the best part of a Vs The World season. You get to see all these different styles of drag collide. In the workroom, it was fascinating watching people react to each other’s approaches, asking, ‘Well, that worked for you, so why didn’t it work for me?’ A lot of the time, it just comes down to intent.
Going behind the scenes, is there something that viewers don’t appreciate about how much discussion actually happens between the judges?
Yeah, I can answer this. Vs The World is a little different because there’s less discussion among the judges. We’re there to give critiques, but there are fewer deliberations than on a regular season.
Honestly, every time I do Drag Race – and The Traitors, but that’s another network, so let’s not talk about that – it’s the one job where I know things I’m terrified I’m not meant to know.
On a regular season, though, we really do deliberate. We can talk for 15 or 20 minutes after the queens leave, and I’m always wondering what’s actually going to make it into the episode. Every now and then I think, ‘Oh, thank God they didn’t include me saying that,’ because then I can still see that queen at a bar and not worry they know exactly what I said.
But to your original question about what happens behind the scenes, honestly, not much in the way people think. Everyone is convinced there’s some grand conspiracy – that it’s rigged or someone’s pulling the strings. In my experience, it really isn’t like that. The moments people point to and say, ‘That was rigged,’ are usually exactly what happened in the room, and at the time they made complete sense.
I’ve now been on the other side of a reality show as well, so I understand how maddening it can feel inside that bubble when you don’t know everything that’s happening. Of course people leave with theories about why things unfolded the way they did. But most of the time, it’s just… not that.
Reality TV is produced – of course it is. There are producers, it’s a television show. But from my perspective, there isn’t some hidden puppet master making everything happen. That’s probably the biggest misconception about Drag Race. There’s no God in the machine.
As you said, you don’t want to be the “mean judge,” and you’re glad that certain comments weren’t kept in. As one of Australia’s sharpest comedians, do you ever have to stop yourself from saying the joke that’s a little too devastating?
Well, that was the thing this time around – having to critique the queens to their faces a bit more. There were definitely moments where I was grateful to have Lazy Susan, my friend, sitting there with me.
Everything I say on the show starts with what I genuinely think, and then I try to make it as funny as possible to make Michelle laugh. That’s basically my job. Which, by the way, is sometimes the easiest job in the world and sometimes the fucking hardest, because she’s seen every franchise, she’s heard every joke.
Every now and then I’ll say something, and halfway through it coming out of my mouth I realise, “Oh… I’m saying this to the face of someone who’s just had one of the hardest few days of their life.” Then part of my brain is thinking, “We’ll all be downstairs having dinner in a couple of hours.”
It’s a strange balance. I want to do my job well – that’s why I’m there – but at the same time you can accidentally devastate someone. I’ve definitely said things to queens’ faces and immediately thought, “I really hope they put a funny sound effect under that.”
Is there a little graveyard of jokes that will never see daylight for you?
Hopefully they’re dead and buried. Definitely. And it’s not even always the jokes – sometimes it’s just saying something. This happened more in the first couple of seasons, where I’d be really confident about loving or hating something, and then we’d go down the panel and it’d become very clear that I was completely wrong. I’d be thinking, “I’ve never seen it that way before.”
But again, I think that’s my job. It’s to remind people there aren’t really hard and fast rules. This isn’t a critique of the show at all, but I think as viewers we can sometimes get locked into these categories: that’s the comedy queen, that’s the look queen, and so on. Then if the look queen suddenly turns out to be hilarious, we make this huge thing of it – as if we all assumed they couldn’t possibly be funny.
I almost see it as my job to push back against that a little bit. I think we can all get a bit boxed in as fans about what a drag queen is supposed to be. My role is just to say, “I loved it this week.” That’s really where I’m coming from.
As you said, you have Lazy Susan with you. With that move from contestant to judge, did they slip into the role immediately, or was there an adjustment period?
It’s fascinating to watch, actually. Before we started filming, Lazy and I were texting, and I was trying to do for her what Michelle did for me on the first season.
Back then, because we had to quarantine for two weeks, Michelle and I were texting every day and having phone calls. She talked me through the process, explained how everything worked, and just helped me settle in. So I was trying to give Lazy the same kind of heads-up – “This happens, this might feel a bit strange,” all of that.
Then we got to the first day and I was like, “Oh… never mind. You know exactly what you’re doing.”
I know for a fact she was nervous, as anyone would be. I work with queens all the time on tours, but she’s really in the trenches with them. They’re genuinely her sisters, and Australia’s drag scene isn’t tiny, but it’s definitely compact. You don’t want to burn bridges. In America, you can be mean to a queen from Texas and probably never see her again.
But here, those relationships matter. I think she took the job incredibly seriously, and it was genuinely impressive to watch.
Looking at drag overall, from your perspective as a judge and then just having watched a lot of Drag Race, do you feel drag has changed more in the last five years, or have the judges changed the most?
Ooh, I think drag has definitely changed in some ways, but there are also deep roots that never will.
One thing I’ve been trying to do more recently is go back to seeing live drag regularly, because there was a couple of years where I didn’t go as much. It wasn’t intentional, but when I first got the job – and probably for the first two or three seasons – going to a gay bar became a different experience. Suddenly I was quite well known within that community, and not everybody necessarily liked me, so it changed what had always just been a fun night out.
Now I’m making a point of going again because it reminds me why I love live drag so much. I actually think it helps me as a judge, too.
Has drag changed? Undeniably. But I also think those changes are cyclical. People will say, “Everyone has the same face now,” and then you’ll walk into a venue and see someone doing something you’ve never seen before.
Like I was saying earlier, we do such a particular kind of drag here, and I’m really glad that hasn’t changed. The most consistent thing about Australasian drag is that it’s inconsistent – not in terms of quality, but because everyone’s doing something completely different. I think that’s the really impressive part.
And just before letting you go, hopefully this won’t be any type of spoiler, and perhaps best suited as a question for previous seasons, but has there ever been a runway where your face became the spoiler?
Oh yeah. I mean, the one that’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to becoming a meme is Mini Cooper’s lip sync. I know it wasn’t technically a runway, but she was dressed as a clown, and I love her dearly. She kept doing these wild-eyed expressions during the performance, and they just kept cutting to my face.
I think they cut to me a lot because I have absolutely no poker face. Even after however many seasons I’ve done now, I’m still sitting there thinking, “I can’t believe I’m on the judging panel of Drag Race.” So I don’t think there’s been a single runway where they didn’t know exactly how I felt just by looking at my face.
The queens can probably see it too. They’re probably standing there thinking, “Okay… I know what’s coming.”
But honestly, there’s never been a runway where I’ve thought, “Jesus Christ, this is complete bullshit.” That’s just not how I approach it. You’re judging within the context of a competition.
I’m not a seamstress, and I’m not a drag queen. I’m a fan. It’s like the fact that I can’t drive – I don’t really know what bad driving looks like. I’m just sitting there thinking, “This is magic.”
Drag Race Down Under vs The World premieres July 24th on Stan Australia.
