“I like to say I am a little bit of old Hollywood glamour meets today’s party girl,” said Myki Meeks, the winner of the recent season 18 of RuPaul’s Drag Race. “I’m a dynamic theatrical powerhouse, gorgeously stupid, stupidly gorgeous.”
Since being crowned America’s Next Drag Superstar in that show’s finale, she’s appeared at international events including World Pride in Amsterdam and Market Days in Chicago as well as in France, Canada and South America.
”Drag, to me, is the realization of the unachievable,” she explained. “A lot of these people who participate in the art form come from nothing and they have made everything for themselves to feel like how they want to be seen in society. Everyone has a special something and drag really does bring it out of you. It’s every art form in one. You are your own director, producer, choreographer, hair stylist, and makeup artist in live performance art. I just love that I am my own creation.”
Meeks is getting ready to tour in A Drag Queen Christmas presented by Murray and Peter. She will be joined by host Nina West with Nini Coco, Darlene Mitchell, Juicy Love Dion, Discord Addams, Crystal Methyd and Silky Ganache. At the four stops in Florida this December, including at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts, ticketholders must be 18 or older to attend.
“I’m going to be doing a number I’ve done for a while,” she previewed. “Jessica Simpson’s cover of ‘Mary Did You Know?’ Imagine a pop star Mary Magdalene. Knowing this cast, I think it’s going to be a very, very special year of A Drag Queen Christmas. I’ve actually worked with all of them so I’m excited to be stuck in a bus with them for the next six weeks. Or maybe I’m not excited, I don’t know. Most of the cast comes from my season of RuPaul’s Drag Race so it’s going to be really nice to spend more time with them.”
The Florida leg of the tour is a holiday homecoming for Meeks who earned a bachelor’s degree in musical theater from the University of Central Florida and has performed in numerous venues at her home base in Orlando. Recognizing that there was a lack of competitions in the Orlando drag scene to nurture new talents, Meeks produced and hosted The Gig, a competition series on YouTube.
“The crazy part was as soon as we started filming for that, I found out I was cast on Drag Race,” Meeks recalled. “I had to prep my entire RuPaul’s Drag Race package at the same time as producing a full YouTube series. I will say that being in front of cameras, although there were much less cameras than Drag Race, and being on the judges side, I was able to understand more of the filming process than just going in raw.”
That extra knowledge may have been the key. After persevering through four auditions and then, once on the show, not winning any of the first five episodes, she became the first contestant to win the final three episodes before the finale in a row. One of her most memorable moments was her Drew Barrymore in the Snatch Game challenge that went viral and ended up getting Meeks a guest spot on Barrymore’s talk show.
“I picked Drew because, one, she’s one of those people who is pretty loved by everybody and she’s easy to love,” Meeks explained. “Two, she has a specific way she talks out of the side of her mouth and has just a hint of a lisp. You mix the physicality with the personality that she has and I think that’s a pretty easy and recognizable impersonation. I knew I did a good job and I knew I did it well, but the feedback I got from the judges wasn’t as passionate as the fans were.”
While winning RuPaul’s Drag Race may have put Meeks on the map, she is determined to chart her own course.
“I think my biggest plan is my individual projects because I’ve always believed if you want something, it’s not coming to you and you just have to make it yourself,” she said. “The Drag Race being on television has opened the doors for so many entertainers. People can make a career off of this instead of just a few. It’s up to the queen to decide how they use the notoriety because it doesn’t make the career. It’s a steppingstone to launch yourself into more things.”
