Blair St. Clair Talks Musical Theater, Her Friendship With The Vixen and Closure

When Indiana queen Blair St. Clair walked into the Season 10 workroom, her sweet persona and Broadway bravado automatically made her stand out. The judges agreedshe was among the top queens for the first three challenges.

Unfortunately, Blair St.Clair’s Season 10 tenure ended on Thursday’s episode, after Team Wig landed in the bottom three for a lackluster presentation on how to turn your “wig woes into wig wows!”

After Blair’s emotional disclosure on the runwaythat she was a survivor of sexual assault, she lip synced against her best friend The Vixen and sashayed away.INTO caught up with Blair to discuss her Broadway queen status, her friendship with TheVixen, and her plans for the Snatch Game.

You’re a very young queen and I’m wondering how many times you tried out for RuPaul’s Drag Race? What made you feel like now was the time?

I auditioned for Drag Race twicethis is my second time around. The first time was when I was 21, and I think you take every opportunity you can possibly take around you. Once I could, I didn’t anticipate getting it on my first try, because I wanted to see what I had to do go to get strong enough to be on the show. The first audition was good experience to get myself on Season 10. Being on the show at any age is about taking any chance you can get, and I’m really glad I did.

You walked into the workroom announcing your Broadway Queen status. Can you talk a little bit about how musical theatre influenced your style of drag?

Yeah, I first turned to theatre at the end of middle school, beginning of high school and it was a really great activity for me to feel accepted and have something I belonged in and now drag is something that stems from theatre. What I do is my own mini-musical. I’m a control freak by nature and I get to be my own director, producer, star and I do my own little show where I get an emotional connection with my audience.

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I want to talk specifically about this week’s challenge. The judges spoke about The Vixen and Miz Crackertwo huge personalities!kind of dominating you. Was that a concern for you going into this week’s challenge?

I don’t think that was necessarily a concern for me because we have such a tight friendship and relations with the three of us. But under the pressure of filming the challenge itself, you can forget your friendship. The best groups are the ones that help each other to have the whole group stand out. It’s easy to forget that and get into the “I need me to work so I can be safe” mode. We kind of lost contact in that moment of supporting each other and worrying about ourselves. That was my downfall, not my personality. I’m quieter in the grand scheme of the girls of Season 10, but I’m not quiet all the time. I think we lost a little bit of the balance.

What did you think about the judges saying The Vixen and Miz Cracker were too mean to you? Did you feel like that fed into this perception of you being young and needing to be “protected”?

I actually was a little shocked when they said that because the three of us were really good friends and they’re my two best friends, if you asked me who I was closest with. So we had scripted out those digs to me, and those digs at them as witty or cute and comical. So the judges don’t know if we’re friends or not so it came across to the judges I’m sure that they were picking on me or picking on each other. So we were like “Oh, yeah, the judges don’t know we’re friends,” so it makes sense that they might not have thought we were joking.

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Which of the challenges did you find most difficult during your time on the show?

The most difficult challenge was episode 2 with the PharmaRusical challenge and that’s just because we had, there were so many moving parts like in a musical production. And I felt added pressure as a theatre queen and it got to me a little bit and it shouldn’t have. I wish that it hadn’t. I’m glad that our whole team came together and were able to rise aboveand we won the challengeI

The show explored, at the end, the friendship between you and The Vixen. I think that surprised a lot of people. Was The Vixen your closest friend in the cast? What about you and her grooved?

Well, as you may know from seeing the show, The Vixen has a very strong personality and I think day one she came off as strong to a lot of people and I think i’m a very approachable person so a lot of people I don’t think necessarily accepted her strong presence and she looked at me as someone who was more receptive to that. When she popped off or had a heated moment, I was someone who was there to her aid, and was like “Let’s get back in check.” We had a nice balance of relationship and I was happy to see that come full circle in this week’s episode.

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What was going through your head as you heard Ross’s critiques about being too sweet and pleasant?

All I can remember is thinking of the many times of being misjudged or misinterpreted and I felt like that was not true of me, being “too sweet,” and it kind of upset me because I realized that maybe that’s a front I was putting up of being too sweet. And I was thinking maybe that’s not factual, but if that’s what I’m portraying, then that’s something that I’ve done and I was questioning and wondering why that was the case and I explained it was having to recreate my innocence, but I never realized that I had done it to the extent of someone thinking I was too sweet and it put my thought process into a moving motion.

Did you think before you came to the show that you might have to unearth and share your trauma on national television?

Oh, of course not. I never anticipated ever sharing that. I had never opened up and talked about that in my life, honestly. And I had mentioned earlier that I think sometimes what I’ve come to think now is that your heart is ready to talk before you mind knows it and i think my heart was telling me I was ready to open up and I had never anticipated that that would happen.

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What has it felt like to watch the footage back and see yourself have that moment months later?

First and foremost, the things i described and talked about happened to Drew, my boy self, and it was reallyI’ve taken a lot of time to digest and process those things that have happened and looked for healing in in my drag persona and it’s taken the last months from filming to go through the motions and experience those feelings. Last night was a little bit of closure, watching the piece I knew would be on national television. I’ve felt like I can finally close that chapter and live my life today. It was a nice bit of closure that I was happy to have.

And finally, who would you have done for Snatch Game?

I would have done, if I had been able to, Lea Michele as Rachel Berry on Glee.