
I consider myself a very passionate performer.

I think I would consider myself a glamour girl, but I think it depends on my look and my level of performance. It’s hard to say because I’m quite new to all this.

How would you categorize yourself as a queen? To top it off, she'd only been doing drag professionally for 10 months, a fact that is ripe with potential for drama and contention among veteran queens. Drag Race legend Alaska Thunderf-k (winner of Drag Race: All Stars 2) famously auditioned four times before being chosen for Season 5, but Valentina’s course has taken a different trajectory she snatched a space after her first audition. Queens often toil away for years before snagging a coveted space, knowing that in the world of drag, RuPaul’s approval is the gold standard. Landing a spot on Drag Race is definitive proof that a queen has what it takes to make it.
#Valentina drag queen free#
“My education experience was very creative, we were free to do whatever, as long as we covered what was assigned to us and being on the show it felt so much like that.” “There were so many moments in which I felt, ‘Oh my god, this show is just like being in school’,” she tells me excitedly over the phone. As a child, Valentina-born James Andrew Leyva-immersed himself in the arts, bussing out daily to Hollywood for performing arts school since age eleven.
#Valentina drag queen series#
Lady Gaga finally claims her throne as the highly-anticipated guest judge in the series premiere, while Lisa Kudrow enters in full-blown Valerie Cherish, complete with her signature “Hello, hello, hello!” phrase from HBO’s vicious series The Comeback, a longtime favorite of RuPaul himself.Ī native of the Los Angeles community of Bell, Valentina’s ascent into drag is purely organic. The snippets from season nine are harbingers of bigger -and considerably gayer- surprises.
#Valentina drag queen tv#
The series won its first Emmy Award in 2016, and considering its jump from Logo TV to VH1, it's likely that the best is yet to come. Each year, RuPaul’s Drag Race pushes the limits of television, serving up more innovation and searing humor (along with that standard Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent) than previously believed possible. At the time of our conversation, Valentina is getting ready for a music video with a “bunch of Ru girls,” the queens of seasons past and the group of elites that Valentina will forevermore be associated with. We know this is just the beginning for Valentina.When I speak to Valentina, one of the 13 new drag queen hopefuls on the ninth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, she says she’s doing fabulous-and she has every right to. Everybody’s had that moment in their life when they’ve had everything they ever wanted in front of them, and all they have to do is go get it, but they just fucked up, and I fucked it up. No, I’m living this experience now, and I can learn so much from that. It’s almost as if I’m going to self-sabotage myself to take myself back to a moment that happened many months ago and to doubt myself and say I should have done this and should have done that. I can only move forward learning from this experience. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Valentina said: It was a reminder why RuPaul’s Drag Race makes such great TV.īut like a true star, Valentina is not blaming anyone but herself. While she’d been fearless all season long, in this instance she let her fear overtake her at the most important moment. Valentina very clearly shut down, and a very calculated contestant lost all her strategy. Even if you don’t know the words, move, dance, strip - do something! This was one step up from Charlie Hides’s clapping choreo, which isn’t saying much. Lets face it: Valentina’s lip sync sucked. The judges began to confusingly kibitz, and the audience at my viewing party screamed, “Take if off!”Īs if Ru heard the drunk gays of Hell’s Kitchen, she stopped the music and asked Valentina to remove the mask. Serving you glamorous killer matador ? #DragRace /ocdbEvnYRXĪfter the lip sync between Valentina and Nina began, Tina started sidestepping with her mask still on, with no intention of taking it off. When we saw Valentina take the runway in a club kid look with a mask, we saw the writing on the wall. Rumors had been circulating all week that a queen with a mask was going to lip sync, causing some extra drama on Ru’s stage. We knew she was doomed when she was paired with Nina Bonina Brown, whose piss poor attitude has long overshadowed her accomplishments in the workroom. Week after week, Valentina turned out stunning looks on the runway and some stand-out performances in the maxi challenges.īut during last night’s episode, the clout she achieved quickly fell apart. All season long, we were rooting for the young, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Latina sensation.
