Despite being one of the franchise’s most iconic queens, Latrice Royale says she never formally auditioned for Season 4 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Rather, it was a piece of hate mail she sent that got the producers’ attention.
On a recent episode of The Comment Section with Drew Afualo, Latrice told the podcast host about watching Season 3 of Drag Race, and feeling inspired to give the showrunners a piece of her mind.
Specifically, Latrice recalled watching other plus-size queens on television and being unhappy with the representation. For Delta Work, she had nothing but praise: “Delta was showing me what big girls were supposed to look like. She put her stuff where it’s supposed to go,” Latrice said.
Stacy Layne Matthews, on the other hand, had Latrice seeing red. “Girl. Stacy over there crying ‘cause she fat. Nobody told her that she was fat before she got there,” she said. “You just found out? You didn’t know? What is you crying for? Own this sh*t. Don’t let that be a hindrance.”
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“She was just very down,” Latrice went on. “And that drove me nuts. So I went to my room, and I’m like, ‘I’m gonna find these people.’”
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Beware the self-reference trap
From there, Latrice found a contact email for World of Wonder, the production company behind Drag Race, and drafted a strongly worded message: “‘To who it may concern, I am tired of these fat girls getting on your show crying about being fat,’” she said. “‘I’m large and in charge, chunky yet funky, but I can show you better than I can tell you. Here’s my pictures, my phone number, give a b*tch a call.’”
While Latrice’s email could be seen as a creative way to get a casting director’s attention, according to her, she didn’t even know being cast was on the table. “I didn’t know they were casting, girl. I just wrote hate mail ‘cause I was mad,” Latrice recalled. “And they called me two days later talking about, ‘We loved your email.’”
And thank god they did. One regular season, two seasons of All Stars, and a star turn in the show’s Las Vegas residency later, Latrice is among the series’ most memorable queens. Apparently, a little hate can go a long way.
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