Drag Race casting director reveals she actually uses Reddit dream cast lists to make decisions

What queens get cast on RuPaul’s Drag Race for each season is honestly one of the most fascinating parts of the show – and a good cast makes or breaks a season. Not that the queens are any less or more talented from season to season, but that it’s the casting department’s job to make sure that the queens they cast are diverse, represent various different types of drag and also have a chemistry together that makes the season as engaging as it needs to be. Goloka Bolte, an extremely successful Drag Race casting director, just sat down on a podcast to reveal how she goes into making the decisions into who gets cast on the show – and she admits the team actually use Reddit to help inform their choices. Honestly, iconic.

This is a gag, to be honest

Goloka Bolte is officially the most Emmy award nominated casting director in history when it comes to reality TV – and has been nominated every single year since the category was created in 2017. She’s worked on all different kinds of shows, including the Real Housewives – but she says she’s most proud of her work casting RuPaul’s Drag Race. She just sat down with LAist on a podcast and revealed how the team go about picking what queens to audition for Drag Race from a casting director end.

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Bolte says “Drag Race, I’m based in LA. I do try to take in drag shows as much as I can when I travel. But a lot of it is online. We look at all the different drag bars and places where they’re performing. We look at YouTube, you know the OG queens still got a lot of those great Facebook accounts going. We look at TikTok, we look at Instagram. Anywhere online.

“We look at Reddit, we see you guys. The Reddit threads for Drag Race are something else. Everyone is always sleuthing and everyone is figuring out who we’re going to cast. Everyone’s always putting out their dream list – I love those. Redditors, please keep sending those. We’re always looking through them. We’re basically just like stalking drag queens in whatever way we can and we’re getting recommendations. We’re going down the rabbit hole, looking at different drag families and who’s performing at different drag bars, who’s got a regular show.

“It’s a lot of searching because we want to make sure we get a lot of diversity. We have drag queens from around the country and we’re looking at all different types of drag, so we can’t just cast from one city.”

This is of course very validating for Reddit, who has such a dedicated community of Drag Race fans. Although most of them are now wondering why the hell Dida Ritz hasn’t been cast when she’s been on every single fan dream cast list since… the dawn of time.

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