Raja’s spoken about how RuPaul personally invited her on Drag Race and the story is wild

Raja has spoken in depth on a podcast about how RuPaul personally rang her up for Drag Race season three to invite her to compete and how unlike every other queen in franchise history she never even had to audition. She of course went on to win her season, and become one of the most legendary queens of all time. And my personal fave ever. Raja appeared on Joseph Shepherd Exposed podcast this week and explained how she got on Drag Race personally invited from RuPaul.

“I received a phone call from Mathu [Anderson, Ru’s former makeup artist and friend]. And Mathu says to me somebody wants to talk. The next person who gets on the phone is RuPaul. And RuPaul says ‘Hi honey, how you doing. I have a question for you. Are you interested in doing the show?’ and I was like, what show?

“She said ‘Drag Race’. And I said what do you want me to do for it, do you want me to do makeup? And she said ‘do you wanna compete in it’? It was 8 o’clock in the morning and I’d had half hours sleep. I just said ‘well gosh, I don’t know’. All these things were racing through my mind because at the time being on reality TV was not the tea. It was a little bit on the garbage side. I was really focussed on my makeup career. I didn’t know.

“And she was like ‘listen, the answer is either yes or no and you have to tell me right now.’ And I said yes to it. And that’s how it happened. I am the only person on RuPaul’s Drag Race who never auditioned. Some people who’ve heard this story will think I was immediately chosen to be the winner, but I don’t think so. I think what was needed at the time was they needed other voices of drag, other opinions, other points of view – I was immediately invited because I was local, I was familiar, I’d already worked with Ru and Mathu but I don’t think I was immediately imagined as the winner. I think I was thrown in there just to change the game a little bit.”

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