Mia Starr tells all about working with J.Lo during her 2020 Superbowl halftime show
Share
RuPaul's Drag Race season 18 queen Mia Starr spills all about working with Jennifer Lopez on her 2020 Super Bowl halftime performance while with Mistress Isabelle Brooks and clarified the story to Entertainment Weekly.
Before her appearance on season 18 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Starr had a successful career as a professional dancer and worked with A-listers like Britney Spears, Rihanna, and Camila Cabello.
According to Starr, she even got the chance to dance alongside Jennifer Lopez and Shakira during their 2020 Super Bowl halftime show, even revealing she had dropped that season of The Voice to take on the job. However, the queen says the experience was anything but a dream come true.
“I was doing the Super Bowl with J.Lo, the worst experience that I’ve ever had. It was like a hazing.”
Starr says on the second day of rehearsals, things turned sour when Lopez showed up and seemed unhappy with Mia’s physical body.
"She looks at me, comes up next to me, and is like, 'Hey, can you take off your shirt?'" Starr told EW. "I did it, and the look of disgust she gave me... now, people are looking."
After looking at Starr's body, the drag queen said Lopez gave a "huge speech" where she told the dancers, "Guys, I need you to elevate yourself. You're dancing for me!"
"I get it, but I was like, bitch, this is literally day two, and we have three months, and I know my body. I'm going to snatch it back if we're going to be dancing 60 hours a week," Mia said. "We have three more months, give me a break!"
She claims that Lopez asked "all the boys" to take off their shirts for the next few hours of rehearsals, which Mia said was "so uncomfortable.”
"It just felt like an icky feeling. But, as a dancer, obviously, you are getting paid to look good," she said. “But I was coming straight from office casting work. This job came out of left field, and I was grateful for it."
Starr got into shape, but said that Lopez "made it very clear that she was not pleased with my image, the way she gave that look of disgust. I was like, oh, this is embarrassing."
She went on to share that the next day of rehearsals, JLo rented an elephant ear and ice cream truck offered to everyone.
Mia, being petty, said she was the first person in that line to get her treat, and she was pretty sure that Jennifer “hated [her]” for it. “I was the first person in line. I was being petty. I was like, ‘Thank you.’ And then she looked at me and gave, ‘Guys, I need you to elevate yourself,'” she said.
In an interview with EW, Mia explains that the dancers featured in the halftime show were not aware they were being filmed for Jennifer’s Netflix documentary about the preparation and behind-the-scenes leading up to the performance.
Allegedly, they were asked to sign releases to appear in the film without receiving pay. “I was like, no, you didn’t put me through all of that to not pay me. I didn’t sign the paper. There were a few of us that didn’t sign. They somehow found a loophole to still put me in it,” Mia told EW.
Mia claims she later received an “insulting” $20 check as payment, to which she promptly told her agent to send back: “they clearly need it more than I do.”
She tells Mistress Isabelle Brooks that she was called back to work on another gig with Lopez, but turned it down.
Drag up your life with a beautifully curated box made by your favorite drag queens! Subscribe to Drag Society today.