THR – The massive success of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ has launched dozens of stars and ignited red-carpet appearance deals for films like ‘Frozen 2.’ Still, for a queen, “your money is on the road.”
As Angelina Jolie made the usual red carpet rounds at the L.A. premiere of Disney’s Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, she stopped for a picture with stars who didn’t appear in the film, even if they looked like they had: drag queens Nina West, Shangela and Ginger Minj, decked out in horns, black dresses and, in Minj’s case, an ensemble dedicated to the film’s fairies. In recent months, queens were invited to the Frozen 2 premiere and the Charlie’s Angels debut, posing with Kristen Stewart, Idina Menzel and Josh Gad. (Reps declined to say how much the queens were paid to appear.)
Studios like Disney are the latest entrant to the new drag queen economy, wooing the robust fan base that queens have carved out since RuPaul’s Drag Race broke out on Viacom’s Logo channel in 2009 (the 13-time Emmy winner moved to VH1 in 2017). While the show deserves much of the credit for the boom, its success dovetails with a wider cultural shift in depiction and exploration of gender identity. Top drag queens have ascended from working primarily nightclub gigs to selling out arenas, appearing in major scripted projects (including A Star Is Born and RuPaul’s upcoming Netflix series AJ and the Queen), making Billboard charts for music releases, socializing with over 100,000 fans at DragCon, and booking fashion collaborations with legacy brands like Prada and Moschino. READ MORE
