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Kita Mean, winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under and Anita Wigli’t, Miss Congeniality for RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under. (Photos: Supplied, Image Design: Tina Tiller)
Kita Mean, winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under and Anita Wigli’t, Miss Congeniality for RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under. (Photos: Supplied, Image Design: Tina Tiller)

Pop CultureJuly 26, 2022

What are the NZ queens of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under season one doing now?

Kita Mean, winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under and Anita Wigli’t, Miss Congeniality for RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under. (Photos: Supplied, Image Design: Tina Tiller)
Kita Mean, winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under and Anita Wigli’t, Miss Congeniality for RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under. (Photos: Supplied, Image Design: Tina Tiller)

Appearing on RuPaul’s Drag Race can launch a queen into the stratosphere – so where have our New Zealand queens ended up? Sam Brooks finds out.

No reality show does more for its contestants than RuPaul’s Drag Race. When a drag performer is cast on the show, they immediately become part of a brand with millions of fans across the world. 

A queen can be out in the first few episodes and still become a superstar, with her Instagram count, her bookings, and her booking fees exploding as a result of her brief appearance. Winning might guarantee a cash prize and an official title, but being on the show at all means that a contestant is a “RuGirl” for life.

The three New Zealand queens on the mildly bumpy first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under (season two premieres on July 30) came out of the show looking pretty damn good, with Kita Mean snatching the win, Anita Wigl’it being crowned Miss Congeniality and Elektra Shock making it to a respectable fifth place.

In the year since we’ve seen Elektra on our screens as a judge on Dancing with the Stars NZ. But what have our reigning winner and Miss Congeniality been up to? Turns out, a lot!

 

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The first sign that life was different for Anita Wigl’it post-Drag Race was her Instagram follower count, which skyrocketed from around 3,000 to a an impressive 76.3K.

While her paycheques may have changed thanks to her newfound fame, Anita’s act has stayed true to the persona we saw on the show: campy, kooky and kind. “I haven’t changed what I do. I do the same shows, have the same fun, but the market is now much bigger,” she says. “Since Drag Race, I’ve had this amazing exposure to the world.”

“The only negative was, well, Covid.”

When Anita emerged as Miss Congeniality, New Zealand was less than two months away from its second level four lockdown. Not only did all her New Zealand gigs cancel for several months, but so did three international tours she was booked on – especially gutting, she says, because she had managed to negotiate business class flights.

As New Zealand emerged from lockdown, Anita returned to work. She’s the co-owner, with fellow queen and best friend Kita Mean, of  Caluzzi Cabaret and Phoenix Cabaret (both thriving) on Karangahape Rd, has an upcoming show as part of the Auckland Live Cabaret Season with Kita, and was the star of Drag Orchestrated at Auckland’s Town Hall in June this year, in which she lip-synched to songs accompanied by a full blown, honest-to-god, orchestra. Anita was even able to play an instrument in the show herself, having become proficient in the trumpet as part of the Royal New Zealand Navy Band.

Most daunting was singing live. “We wanted to do I Am What I Am, because it’s a classic, but when we lip-sync we have a click track in our ear,” she explains. “The audience hears the words and the music, but we hear this click, click, click.” With I Am What I Am, the tempo is so erratic that it was impossible to put a click track to it.

“So the only option was to sing live. It was bizarre because I haven’t sung for years, but it went surprisingly well, it was just like a variety concert really!”

Most recently, Anita has been touring her solo show, The Life of a Funny Girl across the country. The tour kicked off in Whangarei this week, and she has dates all the way down to Invercargill until August.

“Basically, after Drag Race, I knew I had a window of 12 months, and I needed a product to sell,” she says. The usual avenue for Drag Race contestants is to release a song, which they can their slot into their shows, promote through their channels, and generally fill up the playlists in gay clubs. Anita decided to instead create a solo show about her life, split into four parts – getting to know her as a little boy, her discovery of drag, her relationships, and then finishing off as a Drag Race contestant. 

Anita believes it’s the largest tour of a show of this style – one drag queen and their suitcase performing a play rather than gig – since the days of legendary Wellington queen Pollyfilla. It’s a full-on theatrical show, the kind that an audience has come to expect from a Drag Race queen more than a decade into the franchise.

“We go through our lives as a drag performer, looking to be acknowledged for what we do by being on the show,” she says. “It’s an acknowledgement that you’ve been working really hard as a drag performer and now you get to be part of this. You’ve reached this level.”

“And it’s just so good for the soul!”

 

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Not only was Kita Mean the first Drag Race winner in the southern hemisphere, she was the first to accept the famous crown and sceptre in her backyard, thanks to the franchise’s practice of filming several crownings and only airing the canonical one.

When we speak, Kita (118K Instagram followers) is on the road in Maine as part of War of the Catwalk, a 37-stop, two month long tour hosted by Drag Race alums Miz Cracker and Brook Lynn Hytes, featuring the likes of fellow winners The Vivienne, Kylie Sonique Love and Krystal Versace. “I’m living my wildest dreams,” Kita says. “I feel so lucky grateful, humbled and over the motherfucking moon!”

She joins the ranks of not just drag race winners, but those who competed during Covid-19 era. They’re called pandemic queens, and they had it a lot harder than most contestants who are usually inundated with bookings and gigs right thanks to their Drag Race fame. Those bookings multiply exponentially for the winner. 

The pandemic queens have had to be more creative. In the early days of Covid-19, queens went from collecting tips in clubs to streaming from their living rooms. Even as the world opens up and queens can tour again, there’s still every risk those shows will be postponed or even cancelled at any moment. That’s what happened to Kita.

“However, I’m a firm believer that life is what you make of it with the tools you have,” she says. “I don’t look at any missed opportunity as a loss, I look at it as a catalyst for whatever is the next fabulous adventure on the horizon.”

For Kita, that’s a book. Her memoir, Life in Lashes: The Story of a Drag Superstar comes out later this year through Harper Collins and promises to cover the wild nights of her youth partying to oblivion, through to owning Caluzzi, and her journey to being the first Drag Race Down Under winner.

Kita found the experience of writing the memoir therapeutic. “I’m in a moment in my life where things are moving very quickly,” she says. “It was very healthy for me to take a bit of time to stop and reflect back on the crazy ride that has been my life up until this point.”

“It encouraged me to remind myself where I’ve come from and just as importantly, where I want to end up. Life is a constant journey and I am still trekking through it trying to make myself a slightly better person tomorrow than I was yesterday.”

Despite being a pandemic queen, Kita thinks she’s had a dream experience since winning the show. “The best thing about the experience for me is hearing from so many fabulous people who just shine light and love into my life,” she says. “I’ve really only had extremely lovely and kind interactions with people, which makes me feel pretty confident that I’m putting some goodness into the world myself!”


Follow our reality TV recap podcast The Real Pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.

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Photo: Supplied/Three
Photo: Supplied/Three

Pop CultureJuly 25, 2022

Welcome back, Masked Singer NZ, you glorious fever dream

Photo: Supplied/Three
Photo: Supplied/Three

Who is it, who is it, who is it underneath the mask? Tara Ward has a lovely time watching the return of The Masked Singer NZ. 

You don’t have to be a celebrity wearing a giant ice cream cone to know that embracing The Masked Singer NZ is the best – nay, the only – way to get through this shitstorm of a winter. Wild costumes! Silly song choices! A gyrating alligator! Who says TV is dead? Certainly not me and certainly not Sharyn Casey, and we’ll tell you this for free: whoever the celebrity hiding inside that giant steak and cheese pie costume is, they are living their very best life and I will hear no further arguments about it.

The Masked Singer NZ returned to Three last night with 12 glorious costumes and two new judges. Sharyn “Aunty Shaz Dog” Casey and James “Detective Daddy” Roque returned to the judging panel for a second season and were joined by Anika Moa, while Jono Pryor was the first of a series of special-guest guessers. The mood was set, the game was on. All we needed was a sparkly unicorn to come on stage and rap the shit out of Scribe.

(Screengrab: Three)

How many unicorns you know roll like this? Not many, if any. Bedazzled Unicorn was a sparkly vision, her hooves made for dancing and her culottes born to be wild. None of the guessing panel knew who Unicorn was, mostly because that’s the point of the show, but also because unicorns are also tricky little fuckers. One clue mentioned breadcrumbs, which made Sharyn wonder if it was Nadia Lim. “I’ve seen Nadia Lim breadcrumb some stuff,” Aunty Shaz Dog said, and she wasn’t wrong. In this wicked game, Nadia Lim covered in breadcrumbs is as valid a guess as any other.

Nobody puts breadcrumbs in the corner, apart from The Masked NZ audience. They vote which singers go through to the next round, and they sent the one horned wonder straight into the bottom three. Unicorn’s rival, Retro Robot – could be Simon Bridges, could be the Waipū Terror Doll – sang ‘Cry Me a River’ and earned a standing ovation from three of the four judges. That’s like a Dancing With the Stars perfect score in week one. Where does Retro Robot go from here, other than the scrap metal yard? God speed, Retro Robot.

Retro Robot, Clint Randall and Bedazzled Unicorn walk into a bar (Screengrab: Three)

It may have been chaos on stage, but the judges were having the time of their lives. The banter flowed and the guesses spewed forth like a volcano spurting out New Zealand celebrities. Anika Moa wondered if Retro Robot was Brian Tamaki, but Jono Pryor pointed out Tamaki was anti-mandate and unlikely to go on a show about masks. Jono reckoned Robot was Rhys Darby, while in the next round, James Roque thought Gladiator Alligator might be Ben Lummis. The jewelled reptile had sauntered onto the stage to sing ‘Moondance’, swivelling his hips like no alligator should. Were we not entertained? The audience certainly were, sending Alligator’s leafy rival Pōhutukawa Tree straight to the bottom three.

The final round in this cheese dream talent show saw a giant ice cream cone duke it out with a baby bird, because that is the reality TV circle of life. Ruru Chick sang Robyn’s ‘Dancing on My Own’, her golden shell shimmering in time with the beat. James thought Ruru was Karen O’Leary, while Jono reckoned Rose Matafeo. Two Scoop Ice Cream sang ‘Cold Cold Heart’, maybe because it lives in the freezer, maybe because it knew the audience was going to send it to the bottom three. We’ll never know the truth.

Two Scoop Ice Cream was now up for elimination, and 90 minutes of spangly creatures singing cover songs was over too soon. The judges had to decide which of Bedazzled Unicorn, Pōhutukawa Tree and Two Scoop Ice Cream would be eliminated, and they struggled to choose. Forget Sophie’s Choice, this was Sharyn’s Choice. It was horn over heart and tongue over trees as the judges threw Pōhutukawa Tree into the Masked Singer mulcher of hopes and dreams.

Image: Three

The journey was over, the mighty had fallen. The judges had a final chance to guess Pōhutukawa Tree’s identity, and everyone but Detective Daddy chose Georgina Beyer, the world’s first openly transgender mayor and member of parliament. The crowd chanted “take it off!” at a dancing tree until the mask was lifted and Georgina Beyer’s face appeared. The clues were good, the judges were correct, and never before has a fabric tree trunk had such a nice time. Beyer sang ‘Fever’ again as the credits rolled, and her words echoed through my heart. Never knew how much I loved you, Masked Singer.


Follow our reality TV recap podcast The Real Pod on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.


The Masked Singer NZ is on Sundays at 7pm and on ThreeNow. 

 

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