Good morning, Kingdom!
That greeting should ring a bell for any terminally online gays these days. It’s a catchphrase of the one and only Kori King: When she walked into the werkroom on Season 17 of RuPaul’s Drag Race, it served as her entrance line, and now it’s a frequent post for the 25-year-old drag queen on social media — usually accompanied, of course, by a rotted picture of one of her Drag Race sisters.
Kori was born and raised in Boston, where she was first introduced to drag at just 9 years old.
“My sister got me into drag,” she explains. “I’ve been watching Drag Race since Season 1. She was a huge fan of Drag Race, and she sat down and made me watch it, and I was obsessed.” (Was she rooting for the ultimate winner of that season, BeBe Zahara Benet? “That was mother, yes,” she says.)
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Her near lifelong love for the art form led Kori to start drag as soon as she was old enough to get into nightclubs. “It was one of those things where it’s like, it’s just so captivating,” she says. “It drives you to it, you know what I mean? So just years of watching it, it just makes you want to do it so bad.”
Prior to starting drag, Kori had never experimented with makeup, but her background in animation (and her love for anime) contributed to her signature graphic style. “I think that influences my drag a lot, with the clean lines and everything like that,” she says. Her favorite anime, for the record, include Ouran High School Host Club and Nana.
This year, Kori’s Drag Race dreams came full circle when she was cast on Season 17. She may not have won any challenges, but Kori quickly became the narrator of the season. Before finishing her run on the show in eighth place, she delivered hilarious confessionals, werkroom antics, and three iconic lip syncs — and that’s even before she came back for the lip sync Lalaparuza and snatched second place.
Of course, Kori’s Drag Race journey was also remarkable for the relationship she started on the show with fellow castmate Lydia B. Kollins, who’s now competing (and slaying) on All Stars 10. Though she manifested finding love in her audition tape (and fans and fellow queens theorize that producers helped make a showmance as likely as possible), Kori still says that she never anticipated actually starting a romance on reality TV. “It kind of gagged me fierce,” she says.
Kori and Lydia’s relationship has ignited a fandom all its own (and is especially popular with the sapphic community, for obvious reasons). Maybe their relationship will open the door for future Drag Race showmances to flourish — or, as Kori would prefer, maybe not.
“I’m greedy. I like to hog everything to myself,” she explains. “So no, I hope I’m the only one. I hope I’m the first queen to fall in love on Drag Race and the last. I hope it never happens again. I hope all the girls are sad and lonely.”
“I hope I’m the first queen to fall in love on Drag Race and the last. I hope it never happens again. I hope all the girls are sad and lonely.”
– Kori King
Kori left Drag Race not only with a new girlfriend, but with a renewed perspective on her own drag. Plenty of queens shift their drag style after seeing themselves on television — and for Kori, that meant becoming even more chaotic.
“I’ve always been such a troll and I always f*ck around, but watching it on TV, I was like, ‘Wow, I could push the envelope even more at this point,’” she says. “I was like, ‘I could even do more than that. I could be more clownish.’”
That clownery has taken full form in Kori’s post-show social media presence, which is now infamous for its cast of twisted characters — aka the Koriverse — featuring legends like Kori Toot, Kori Jackson, Kori Siwa, and Kori Burner, to name just a few.
Kori’s initial inspiration for blending her own style with the looks of other queens and celebrities came from a critique she heard over and over again from viewers throughout Season 17: that her drag was too referential.
“During my season, I was getting so many comments of people acting like I didn’t have my own personality, or I was trying to be like other people. They thought I was trying to be RuPaul, or Monét [X Change], or Barbie,” she recalls. “And I was like, ‘You know what? That actually sounds like a really good idea. How about I monetize that?’ It was basically a way to take the sh*t out of the hate comments.”
Her off-the-wall videos quickly propelled her up the leaderboard on fan video platform Cameo, where she battled for the top spot throughout the airing of Season 17 — not against one of her Drag Race castmates, but with Hairspray actress Nikki Blonsky. Kori’s Cameo success (and her feud with Blonsky) went viral in its own right, with even Cameo itself giving Kori shoutout after shoutout.
When it comes to her popularity on Cameo, Kori says she’s “not gagged at all.”
“I’m surprised that Nikki Blonsky is still relevant, so that’s more of a gag to me, but for me? No no no,” she adds. “Her, I thought she was gonna fall off — you know, like her tooth.”
Since its inception, the Koriverse has spiraled out of control, complete with its own family trees and creepypasta-esque lore. Kori Toot, for example, beyond looking straight out of a nightmare, apparently has a younger sister named Kori McDonald that the former keeps locked in a basement. How does Kori keep all of it straight? It’s simple: she doesn’t. “I let the fans do that. The fans guide me through each character at this point,” Kori says.
Kori’s fans not only track her characters’ lore, but give her the ideas for each new entry to the universe. “If someone says that they have a good idea and a whole bunch of people agree, then I’m just going to do it,” she says. “I am a queen for the people. I will do what the people ask.”
“I am a queen for the people. I will do what the people ask.”
– Kori King
Some fans have called her a new-age Trixie Mattel: a queen who may not have performed the best on their first Drag Race outing, but who made the absolute most of the moment to become a social media phenomenon regardless. Kori, for her part, can see the resemblance.
“That’s the best comparison ever. I’ll gladly take it,” she says. “I mean, that is mother right there. Yeah, I really love the social media and the numbers game of drag, so it means a lot that people are comparing me to someone that’s so good at it.”
“I grew up in management, so I’m a big fan of, like, numbers don’t lie,” Kori adds. “The numbers keep me grounded, and I like that.”
Since Drag Race, Kori’s career has been thriving. The world is her oyster, so what’s next?
“Baby steps, you know?” she says. “I’m thinking about becoming an astronaut, maybe. Or a scientist. A brain surgeon. Something small.” ♦
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