Last week, Chicago queen Denali lip-synced against Ginger Minj to “See you again” by Miley Cyrus. Ultimately, Ginger took home the win for the battle, and not everyone agrees with the final verdict.
At Roscoe’s Tavern, a bar in Chicago, infamous for its Drag Race viewing parties with the queens themselves, Denali is addressing rumors of storming off the set after Ginger was called the winner.
The freshly chopped All-Star’s 10 queen was asked: “How obvious was it on set that this was Ginger’s bracket?”
Denali responded: “I will repeat what I have been saying to myself and what I have experienced. This is RuPaul’s Drag Race; it is a formatted, biased competition show with a lot of subjective judging.”
“At the end of the day, it is literally woven into the fabric of Drag Race for it to favour certain individuals. Certain people who are really good at the show, certain people that RuPaul really likes, that her humour vibes with, that everything is a match with, or people that are very experienced in it as well.”
Denali went on to allude that she felt most of the challenges this season were geared more towards her competitors' skillset.
“You guys are not unintelligent, you guys have been a part of this show for a long time, you understand it”, the All Stars 10 queen said. However, she did not completely discount Ginger’s chops as a legendary queen.
“However, with saying that, Ginger Minj is extremely good at Drag Race,” Denali continued. “I would not want to take away, at all, her ability to do really well in this show, and we saw it.”
“We were like, ‘Wow, you were really good at the show.’ Let me say this, so hard, because this fandom definitely thinks sometimes that things are just black and white.
“Two things can exist at once. This show is built to favour people; those people can also be really good at this show. That’s all I will say on that.”
Denali admits that she was “extremely upset” and “really mad and really disappointed” when the judges revealed the outcome of the lip sync.
She then confirmed she “walked off” stage at the end of the episode, rather than staying to dance on stage with the rest of the bracket. While the moment is cut out of the edit, viewers do not see the queen exit with the rest of the contestants.
“Immediately, in my mind, I needed a little bit of space, so I walked off stage. I did my processing in about five seconds….
“You’ll see that I’ve done my processing almost immediately, and I go, ‘Ginger, congratulations. You did amazing, that’s awesome,’ because you have to manage your emotions on TV. And I didn’t want to come off as ungrateful.”
Chicago’s ice queen swiftly concluded: “And I know I ate that lip sync.”
Do you think the judges made the right call in this lip sync battle? Sound off in the comments below!
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