The ‘House of Villains’ Cast Is Iconic, But There’s One Glaring Omission…

Superfans of reality TV rejoice: 10 of the genre’s most notorious villains are coming together to compete on E!’s House of Villains.

The show’s premise is simple. The villains will live in a house together completing weekly challenges that test them physically, mentally, and emotionally. Each week, one contestant will be safe from elimination, and one contestant will be voted out of the house by the other villains. In the end, one will be crowned “America’s Ultimate Supervillain” and walk away with $200,000.

So, which villains will be going head to head? Tiffany “New York” Pollard is the most eye-catching name on the cast list, having been a reality TV legend since her first appearance on Flavor of Love back in 2006. The cast also features Omarosa, who’s competed on The Apprentice and Celebrity Big Brother, but is best known for her stint as a political aide to real-world villain Donald Trump.

Joining those two are Anfisa Arkhipchenko of 90 Day Fiancé; Shake Chatterjee of Love Is Blind; Johnny “Bananas” Devenanzio of The Challenge; Jonny Fairplay of Survivor; Bobby Lytes of Love & Hip Hop: Miami; Corinne Olympios of The Bachelor; Jax Taylor of Vanderpump Rules; and Tanisha Thomas of Bad Girls Club.

Looks like a show that would premiere on the Sims 😭

— steven ❀ (@arianaunext) August 15, 2023

These live action remakes are getting out of hand. 🤦‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/EOpJuHFfCW

— Gratuitous Theme Parks (@GratThemeParks) August 16, 2023

The cast is doubtlessly iconic — any cast including New York automatically is — but one reality TV franchise is conspicuously missing from the roster: RuPaul’s Drag Race.

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‘Drag Race’ Queens Are Ranking Each Other On TikTok, And It’s As Shady As You’d Expect

A new TikTok filter lets users do a blind ranking of contestants from ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’. Naturally, the queens got in on the action.

Fans of Drag Race know it has no shortage of iconic villains to choose from. Roxxxy Andrews, Daya Betty, or even Jaremi Carey (once known as Phi Phi O’Hara) would have been welcome additions to this cast. But one titan of Drag Race villainy stands head and ponytail above the rest: Gia Gunn.

Gunn first competed on Season 6 of Drag Race, then returned for All Stars 4. Both times, she was nothing short of a quote machine. Without phrases like, “I don’t jump guns, I am the boom boom gun,” “My God, there’s room for everybody, let’s just say that!”, and of course, “What you wanna do isn’t necessarily what you’re gonna do,” where would the queer community be today?

Then there are her off-the-show antics. Recently, a clip of Gunn “meeting” Jennifer Lopez went viral. J-Lo looks totally annoyed with Gunn’s presence — as Gunn so eloquently puts it, “She could not take the doll.” In reality, it looks like Gunn is crashing a photoshoot for the cast of Hustlers. It’s that level of oblivious delusion that makes Gunn so perfect for reality TV.

Meanwhile, over on TikTok, her rankings of her fellow Drag Race queens have racked up tens of thousands of likes for all the wrong reasons. She ranked queens by their level of glamor, used them as fodder for a word association game, and, most problematically, sorted them by how likely they’d be to get clocked if they were trans, like Gunn is herself.

Basically, Gunn is synonymous with mess, and she’d fit right into this cast of characters. Fingers crossed that she’ll appear on Season 2 and sweep the competition — but until then, Season 1 still looks like it has plenty of entertaining villainy to offer.

House of Villains premieres October 12 at 10pm ET on E!.