I Read The New Yorker's Profile of RuPaul So You Don't Have To
RuPaul Charles, the Supermodel of the World at the center of the RuPaul's Drag Race empire, has released his memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings, today (Tuesday, March 5). He sat down with The New Yorker's Ronan Farrow-in the midst of filming the UK edition of Drag Race-earlier this year to promote the book, and I read and summarized the resulting profile so you don't have to.
• On an impending civil war: "I'm fearing the absolute worst... All the signs are there. Humans on this planet are in the cycle of destruction. I am plotting a safety net [on the sixty-thousand-acre ranch of my husband, Georges LeBar, in Wyoming]. I wouldn't call it a bunker. It's a lot of concrete and a lot of things."
• On the Drag Race "edit": "We've had kids come on the show, and we put a camera on them, which can be like a mirror, and they see the reflection of themselves and go, 'Oh, no, that is not who I am. They must have done something to make me look like that.' Like Blanche DuBois, they will not see it, then they will fight to the end to say, 'I was tampered with.' No, we don't do that."
• On the centering of feelings: "Feelings are indicators, they're not facts. Parents teaching their kids about safe spaces, and 'I feel uncomfortable'... It's, like, You know what? The world is not a safe space. You have to find the comfort. It's mostly uncomfortable."
• On gender identity: "Gender is a concept that we come up with, in our minds and our egos. My genitals are male. But I can be whatever I can. I feel I'm everything. You are everything. You are male, female. Sometimes I feel more male than others."
• On the fracking: "Do you buy gas? Before you point the finger, smell it first, bitch. There's no combination of words I can put together that would soothe the mob."
• On Madonna, who allegedly "snarled" at him in the '80s: "In aging, there is a natural flow. And, when you're against the flow, it doesn't look right, it doesn't feel right. The energy around the Madonna thing-it feels weird, right? I'm not interested in appealing to eleven-to-twenty-five-year-olds, I'm just not. I can, on a bigger level, as a mother. As Mama Ru. It's a different relationship-I'm not trying to be them."
• On feeling outside the Black community: "I come from a Black family, but I always felt different. Not better or anything. I just felt like Ru. In the Black church, 'gay' represents something against the family, and the family is an extension of how Black people survived from slavery. So my existence becomes a threat to the family, because I'm other than.
"I've won fourteen Emmys. And you would think I'd have been on the cover of Ebony, if that still exists. I don't represent what the Black community wants to lift up. I never have."
• On telling Farrow that he disliked children earlier in the interview: "I would be a great parent. I would love that kid so much. The bell just rang [at the school near the cottage I'm renting in Windsor]. You know, last year, when I took this place, I thought, Oh, God, the kids, they're gonna drive me crazy. [Now] I fucking love hearing their voices out there. It's kind of this white noise of joy."
RuPaul brought drag mainstream and made an empire out of queer expression. Now he fears “the absolute worst.” “We are moments away from fucking civil war. All the signs are there,” he told @ronanfarrow. https://t.co/YSMHbCLixn
- The New Yorker (@NewYorker) March 5, 2024
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