Think the Drag Race Down Under finalist was impressive? Just meet the man behind the kween.

When Thomas Fonua was 16, he got two offers. One was to join the New Zealand Men’s under-19 rugby team as a loose forward, the first step on the road towards a spot in the All Blacks squad. The other was to join Black Grace, New Zealand’s premier contemporary dance company. At the time, Fonua says, he was the youngest person ever to be offered either opportunity, and certainly the only person to be offered both.

Thomas Fonua did not become a professional rugby player. But he did end up starring on RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under, the first Pasifika (and South Auckland!) queen to do so.

Life as a drag queen has taken the Sāmoan-Tongan Fonua a long way from the rugby field. Still, he carries a memento of his sporting career with him in the form of his stage name, Kween Kong. “The boys called me that because I was such a bulldozer,” he says. “I used to plough through all the boys.”

Nothing’s changed, he adds. “I’m still ploughing through the boys… in different ways.”

But back to Fonua, aged 16. He accepted that two-year Black Grace apprenticeship, plucking him from  his Māngere home and into a life tour the world as a dancer.

At 22, by then a teacher at an indigenous dance programme in Canada, Fonua won the prime minister’s Pacific Youth Award for arts and creativity. He was later headhunted by Australian Dance Theatre, that country’s oldest and most established contemporary dance company. He has completed a master’s thesis in indigenous leadership, and is currently studying for his doctorate in the same topic.

Fonua has been performing as Kween Kong since 2016, and is founder of the Haus of Kong, a collective in the style of the Harlem drag houses that supports at-risk youth. When we talk, he’s just a few weeks out from performing with Briefs Factory, a circus and cabaret company, at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, a run that will involve multiple shows a day for a full month, in full drag.

Why, after accomplishing all that, would Fonua take a stab at the Down Under crown?

“I think all of these things that I do, the choreography, the studying, it’s me wanting to use my short lifespan on this planet to affect as much change as possible,” he says, over a Zoom call from his Adelaide home the day before the finale is screened. Despite, or maybe because of, all of Fonua’s accomplishments, he views Kween Kong as his purest form of artistic expression. He comes from a line of storytellers, and every work he makes, every word he says, has a purpose. Drag is no exception.

“If anything, it’s like therapy! Everything I do, the way I speak about my drag, it’s to try to find greater understanding. If I’m going to go do something, then I’m gonna go through it,” he says.

Drag Race is the ultimate version of “going through it”. It takes all the hardest parts of reality TV and smashes them together. In one week, you can be expected to design your own outfit, learn choreography, talk about your childhood trauma and – if you don’t do well enough at all of those – lip-sync to do it all again the following week.

The moment Kween Kong first walked into the Down Under workroom, it was clear there was something special about her beyond the charisma and talent that is famously required of every Drag Race contestant. Never before has there been a Drag Race contestant who looks like her (Pasifika), talks like her (baritone voice, soprano laugh), and engages with fellow competitors quite like her (maturely, with appropriate conflict resolution skills).

There’s also never been a queen who has leapt into a barrel roll across the stage like her. It’s difficult to tell if you can attribute that particular acrobatic skill to rugby or dance. Probably both.

“I said yes to coming onto Drag Race because I wanted to see myself on that stage,” Fonua says. “I wanted to see a brown face up there, see a big Sāmoan-Tongan nose on that screen.”

Fonua arrived on the show with some goals in mind beyond simply getting through each round. He could see that it would be an opportunity to showcase Pasifika excellence on a global stage, and knew that he wanted to carve out some space to have conversations about race, specifically in a drag context. The Down Under franchise doesn’t exactly have a stellar history on race so far. In its first season, the few queens of colour were eliminated first, and several other contestants became mired in controversy over race.

The issues with season one made Fonua hesitant about doing the show at all, he says. “I’m really conscious of what I represent, and the damage being on the show could cause, not only to my brand, but to the work I’ve been doing since day dot.

“This activism, this movement, this protest hasn’t been something that I only picked up yesterday,” he says of his work on behalf of the queer Pasifika community. “I am competitive, I’m wanting to win that crown, but my main focus wasn’t me.”

As much as it can be a silly show, Drag Race is also a way for the wider community to better understand the queer experience. It has the potential to be an educational tool as much as a piece of entertainment, and Fonua felt a responsibility to help shine a light on the issues faced by queens of colour, on both sides of the Tasman. “I know that many queens of colour in Australia have shared the same struggles and faced the same hurdles of trying to exist in a mainstream space, that is inherently non-POC – and then the value system on top of that is not really made for us

On Drag Race, the presence of fellow New Zealanders Spankie Jackzon (Palmerston North) and Yuri Guaii (Auckland) helped Kween realise they all shared something special. “We were raised by Māori and Pacific Island drag mummas and aunties, who would love you unconditionally but also give you tough love. There’s such an understanding that we have about respect and sharing space, that we don’t necessarily understand as much in Australia.”

Sisterhood is an aspect of Kween Kong’s persona that didn’t get that a lot of airtime on the show, which is angled more towards conflict and perfectly tossed-off insults. The Haus of Kong is the complete opposite. Originally a physical house for queer kids who needed support, the Haus of Kong has since become a non-for-profit organisation that “creates pathways and windows of opportunity” for queer youth in Adelaide. Fonua is clearly full of pride when talking about helping many of his “babies” into employment or further schooling. “I’m a Pacific mama. That ideology of family, where you go above and beyond, all or nothing. If someone needs something, I would do everything within my capacity to ensure that happens.

“It’s ultimately making it so that by the time they get to my age, they can be the leaders of communities and continue that work.”

Kween Kong didn’t emerge victorious in Drag Race Down Under, but she would have been a worthy winner. But a win would have been yet another in a long list of achievements, both under the Kong name and as Thomas Fonua. You don’t need to wear a crown to pioneer indigenous leadership, create a safe space for your community, or to even build a legacy as a sickening queen. 

She might not come out of this season with the coveted crown and sceptre, but she comes out of it with something just as crucial: a platform for whatever the next stage of Kween Kong happens to be. Thomas Fonua could’ve been an All Black. Thank Ru we’ve got Kween Kong instead.