Putting on a costume and wig while standing under blinding stage lights with a crowd staring at you can be a nightmare scenario for some. But for DD Fuego, a Tisch alum and competitor on season 18 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” it feels more like coming home.
“It allows you to connect with a deeper part of yourself,” Fuego told WSN. “I’m not playing a character, I’m playing the most ‘me’ version [of myself].”
Fuego trained at NYU’s Playwrights Horizons Theater School and the Production and Design Studio. After graduating in 2011, she worked as a production designer for off-Broadway and television. But after years of teaching others how to do hair and makeup, she wanted to start doing it for herself. At first, she was too shy to perform in drag outside of her apartment, but her friends encouraged her to start doing gigs at bars. Now she is proudly shining on the current season of “Drag Race.”
As she continues to navigate her new reality-TV stardom, Fuego sat down with WSN to talk about the artistry behind drag performance.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
WSN: You auditioned for ‘Drag Race’ 11 times — how did you feel when you got cast on season 18?
Fuego: It was a very emotional moment. The show owns what being a drag queen is at a certain level, and if you don’t get an opportunity to be on the show, it’s very difficult to transcend the local scene. Making it in New York is a big deal, and a lot of New York girls don’t need the show to become the superstars internationally that we can be, but there still is that ceiling. Getting on the show validated that the hard work that I had put in was going to have a larger impact than if I hadn’t gotten on the show. And because I think what I do can have a positive impact on Earth, that opportunity coming to me was very important.
WSN: How do you view the artistic aspect of drag performance?
Fuego: I’ve always felt like my job on Earth is through artistry and art making — helping audiences connect to themselves through me. I am the vessel through which people connect to their emotions, their excitement, their sadness, and doing drag is a way for me to do that. Directing a play helped me understand the importance of being the engine behind an experience, but doing drag makes me the engine and also the vessel. On the outside, I’m putting on heels and telling jokes on a microphone — very well, I might add — but the engine that drives it is more cosmic than that.
WSN: How has the current political conversation surrounding drag influenced your artistry?
Fuego: I’m a Latin person living in the United States, which I think about a lot. Being on the show and having people react to me and respond to me, I also understand the value of representation as a political statement. The fact that I am out, loud, public and on TV as a very proud Mexican and Middle Eastern person who does drag — that is a political statement. The fact that I am bright, colorful and joyful and spread that message around the world is a political act. I don’t think people realize the value of existing out and having a message of love.
WSN: ‘Drag Race’ is a reality show, but it doesn’t always paint a full picture — have you struggled with fans’ assumptions of who you are due to the show’s format?
Fuego: I’ve struggled with the expectation people in this country have of a Latin person, and of a Latin entertainer. I grew up in Mexico, so I never knew I wasn’t going to be Mexican enough for America. When I walked into the Werk Room on ‘Drag Race,’ one of the first things that I said that made it onto the edit was that I was not a cha-cha-chá Latina. What I mean by that is not that I don’t like that part of myself or that I’m not proud of the cha-cha-chá experience that Mexican culture does provide, but that people’s expectation of that version of us is not helpful. I wish it were easy enough to just live in a world where people understood that we could be anything and we can look like anything, but that is not the world that we live in.
WSN: What is something that you wish fans of ‘Drag Race’ understood about the show?
Fuego: For the most part, what you are seeing is not the best thing we could do on a regular day — it is the best that we could do on that day with really crazy things happening around us and the show’s limitations. What you do on the show is not representative of who you are in general, it’s just what happened that day. And those days are crazy. Just like you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, don’t judge a drag queen by what they did on ‘Drag Race.’
Contact Chantal Mann at [email protected].