Bianca Del Rio Dishes On The Weird World Of Fame, Her Drag Inspiration And An Upcoming Show With A Bunch Of “Old Whores”

Roy Haylock, better known to drag fans the world over as Bianca Del Rio, knew early on that Bianca wasn’t like most of those other girls. She could lip sync if she had do (though she skated by in RuPaul‘s Drag Race season six without ever having to do so for her life), but her game was comedy, and the ability to get in a well-timed jab, not to mention an unbreakable zeal, earned her the Drag Race crown.

Since her win, Bianca has been doing what any successful drag queen with her wig on straight would — traveling the world and building an even bigger name for herself.

We caught up with Bianca to talk about her roots, what it’s like to be thrust into the fame game (it ain’t all roses), and her upcoming appearance at the Castro Theater on May 23rd in The Drag Queens of Comedy alongside Drag Race alums Willam and Alaska, as well as Michelle Visage and a bevy of gut-splitting queens. Or as Bianca ever-so-lovingly refers to them, “old whores.”

Queerty: Where do you hail from?

Bianca Del Rio: New Orleans, Louisiana.

And where do you call home?

New York City. I’ve been here for ten years — I think that’s the rule, you’re officially a New Yorker after ten years.

Are you and New Orleans still on good terms?

New York is my home, New Orleans is my love. I had a good thirty years in New Orleans, and it’s great to go back.

New Orleans is such a great city for weirdos, in a good way. Did it have that effect on you?

Well I got my start in theater doing costumes and makeup, so it kind of evolved into becoming a drag queen. So with each step, it was kind of like “Oh, wow!”

Was there a specific moment it clicked for you?

Well I remember vividly a friend of mine — I was kind of already “being myself” backstage, making jokes and stuff and being a little oddball — and this older queen gave me a VHS copy of Charles Pierce, who is this genius drag queen from many, many years ago. He was best friends with Bea Arthur and he was a shit riot. And I remember watching this video and cackling and going “Oh my God, this is what I want to do.”

I still have the VHS tape, just in case it makes a comeback.

How old were you then?

At least 17 or 18, and I didn’t start actually doing drag until I was 20, but it’s when I realized “You can make a living doing this? And wear sequins? And be mean to people?!”

Fast forward. What have you been up to lately?

We were just in Paris and Denmark, London, Amsterdam. It’s insane.

Any favorites overseas?

My favorites so far have been Amsterdam, Paris and Australia. Of course the fancy gay ones. They were pretty amazing. The people and the culture — it’s nuts. It’s still pretty hard for me to wrap my head around. It’s the power of television.

So Drag Race is just as popular over there?

It’s insane, yes. And they download it all illegally, which is even crazier. They’re super diehard fans. It’s nuts.

Do you get recognized out of drag when you’re sightseeing?

It’s never happened until recently, thanks to Drag Race, of course. Eighty percent of the show you’re out of drag. So yeah, it does happen and they will stalk you and meet you outside your hotel and then will chase you down the street.

So you’re the fifth drag Beatle.

Well, let’s not go that far, but it is pretty crazy.

What’s the weirdest gift you’ve ever received from a fan?

I’ve received bologna a lot which is quite weird, because in my snatch game episode I said bologna as Judge Judy. And it’s kind of awkward because people will bring Courtney Act flowers and love notes and I get…bologna.

Do you eat it?

I don’t even eat meat, so it’s even weirder. There was also a woman who was a nurse who sent me a care package, which included a catheter. What am I going to do with that?

With no explanation why?

Well, everything had a little post-it note explaining why everything would help me maintain my health while I was traveling. There was a vaporizer for my voice, and some compression socks. But it was just an odd gift — I’m not into kinky shit like that.

What did you do with it?

Well, after I took photos of it because no one would believe me, I threw it in the trash.

What’s it like to do shows now where everyone knows who you are? 

Now it’s so much better to have a smart audience who’s sitting down and actually hear what you want to say as opposed to drunk queens in a bar, and I didn’t really expect it on this level. It’s been surreal.

Ketamine isn’t the best conduit for a captive audience.

Yeah, and it’s hard when you’re traveling sometimes I go “Are they laughing because I was on television or are they laughing because it was funny?” We live in this world now where thanks to instant fame everybody’s all in your face, but you have to question “Is the content really good?”

And you’ll be performing some new material soon at the Castro Theater in San Francisco?

Yes I am! Sasha Soprano is producing a comedy special and it’s a bunch of us which is really a fun night — I did it last year and it was great. Me, Willam, Jackie Beat, it’s great. If you hate one of us, you’ll like the other ones. It’ll be new material, cause when you have a lineup with all those old whores, that’s the easiest material to do. The geriatric cocoon tour.

What else are you working on? Any updated on your film project, Hurricane Bianca?

Yes! At the end of July we finally get to film, and that’ll be in New York and New Orleans.

OK, now for some important stuff. Gold or silver?

I would go gold.

Good choice, classic. Amy or Adele?

Ooh, I like them both, but I’m excited to hear what Adele is coming out with. I mean Amy’s dead now. That’s the nice thing about Adele.

Very true. Spandex or leather?

Oh, neither one look good on a drag queen. Spandex hugs all the wrong areas, but leather might resembles our faces, so I guess would have to say spandex.

Drink during a show or after?

During, of course! If I’m doing a solo show I’ll have wine, because when you have to do an hour and a half, you’ve got to keep your wits about you. A chardonnay — something fancy and housewife-y. And then if I’m doing a bar gig, I definitely go for a vodka and grapefruit juice, which is my fat girl drink.

Perfect score, four out of four. Thanks for chatting!

Thank you!

Dan Tracer

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Dan Savage Makes A Compelling Argument Against Sexual Monogamy on StarTalk: WATCH

Charles Pulliam-Moore

www.towleroad.com/2015/05/dan-savage-makes-a-compelling-argument-against-sexual-monogamy-watch.html

Happy birthday David Beckham: 14 reasons we love goldenballs on his 40th

Iconic sportsman, committed family man, original Spice Boy and clothes-allergic friend of the gays – Becks, we salute you

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jamiet

www.gaystarnews.com/article/happy-birthday-david-beckham-14-reasons-we-love-goldenballs-his-40th010515

PHOTOS: Men Over 50, 3rd Edition

Let’s join the gentlemen for the third edition of Tommy+Alan’s incredibly popular series: Men Over 50

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Christopher Harrity

www.advocate.com/arts-entertainment/art/photography/2015/05/02/photos-men-over-50-3rd-edition

Taryn Manning Says Laverne Cox Taught The 'OITNB' Cast A Lot About Trans Issues
Actress and LGBT advocate Laverne Cox has made quite an impression on her “Orange Is The New Black” co-stars.

Taryn Manning, aka Pennsatucky, stopped by “The HuffPost Show” on Friday and said that Cox’s wise words about gay and trans issues have helped many of show’s actors and actresses understand the nuances of the LGBT community.

“I’ve never had a big angle on [LGBT issues] until actually I met Laverne, really, because she’s a public speaker and she’s amazing. You can really learn a lot from her,” told co-hosts Roy Sekoff and Marc Lamont Hill.

As Manning explained, the cast would often sit with Cox to listen to her thoughts on various LGBTQ issues.

“Our minds would be blown, just to know how complicated it all is,” Manning said.

Watch more from “The HuffPost Show” here.

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Why You Should Always Say 'Hi' to That Cute Person on the Subway (VIDEO)

I’m From Driftwood is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit archive for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer stories. New stories are posted on the site every Wednesday.

We’ve all been there: You see someone cute on the subway but don’t know what to do or if you should chat them up. Simone Davis recalls finding herself in that exact scenario one morning on the way to work:

The train comes, and we get on the same train together. I keep looking up at her, and I keep looking back down at my poetry book and writing, and then I keep looking up at her. … I don’t say anything, because I’m too shy. And I’m thinking, “This girl will think I’m crazy for just walking across the train and talking to her out of nowhere.”

Fortunately, the object of Simone’s affection wasn’t quite as shy:

[J]ust before she gets off the train, she hands me a note. The train doors close, and I look down at this note, and the note says, “I’d like to read it/hear it when it’s finished.” And it has her email address after it. And I’m like, “Yes! I won!”

Unfortunately, it just wasn’t meant to be — yet. After some email mishaps, there was no communication between the two for a full year and a half. Fate wasn’t quite finished with these two, though. Simone’s friends insisted that she go out with them one night, and after some resistance she agreed:

I’m sitting there, having a good time with my friends, and in this girl walks, the girl from the train a year and a half ago. I start telling my bros this story, and they’re like, “What? What? What are you doing still sitting here?! Go in there and talk to her! Go in there and get her!”

After some dancing and reintroductions, Simone and Katrina hit it off once again. This time, though, they immediately set up a first date, which ended up involving a ferry ride and a first kiss. Simone’s advice? If you ever have a chance, take it and go all in:

Take that chance. Take that risk on speaking up, because unlike my story, we often don’t get second chances. Sometimes we only get one shot. It took one person to step up and to make that introduction to make this story happen.

WATCH:

For more stories, visit I’m From Driftwood, the LGBTQ Story Archive.

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In Four Supreme Court Clashes Over 15 Years, a Consensus for Equality Emerges

Photo by Joshua Glick

The giddy atmosphere outside the Supreme Court Tuesday afternoon was only slightly more festive than the mood in the courtroom itself. As expected, civil rights legend Mary Bonauto knocked it out of the park for marriage equality. But something bigger was in the air — a sense that history wasn’t just turning but had, in some basic sense, turned.

It wasn’t only that the other side’s arguments have imploded, though there was that.

John Bursch, the Michigan lawyer charged with defending discrimination, spent most of his time arguing that gay people marrying will somehow convey that marriage is now about couples rather than children (despite the hundreds of thousands of gay families raising kids), which in turn will cause straight people to have more children out of wedlock.

Also, if a woman weighs the same as a duck, she is made of wood and is therefore a witch.

Bursch did, however, avoid the ever less plausible argument that the freedom to marry is somehow anti-religion — no doubt aware of the quickening embrace of equality by mainstream denominations and millions of religious Americans. That didn’t stop Justice Scalia from repeatedly insisting that ministers could be forced to perform same-sex wedding services as a condition of exercising civil marriage authority. You know, like rabbis are now forced to marry interfaith couples.

That, and a few lingering questions on polygamy, is really about all they have left.

Beyond the lopsided merits, there was a powerful sense in the courtroom that our community has broken through. Even the conservative justices engaged seriously and respectfully (well, Scalia will be Scalia). And a majority of justices bluntly stated their impatience with arguments that fail to recognize the dignity and equality of gay families. It felt like a cultural moment had arrived — confirmation of acceptance and respect that would have been unthinkable a generation ago.

Photo by Joshua Glick

Contrast the 1986 oral argument in Bowers v. Hardwick, in which a constitutional challenge to criminalization of private intimate conduct was mischaracterized as being about a “right to commit sodomy” and constitutional scholar Larry Tribe was peppered with hypotheticals about sex in public toilets. I wasn’t there for Bowers, thank goodness, but at three other oral arguments over the last fifteen years (all in cases where my firm submitted briefs), I was privileged to witness progress unfold towards Tuesday’s culmination.

First came Dale v. Boy Scouts, in 2000, in which Evan Wolfson (also basking this week in well-earned marriage glory) faced down a skeptical Supreme Court on behalf of James Dale, an Eagle Scout and junior scoutmaster tossed from Scouting when he came out in college. In those days, the Scouts still argued that only heterosexual boys could be “clean” and “morally straight,” and LGBT advocates felt compelled to submit social science briefs explaining that gay people were not mentally ill pederasts — what we used to call the “Homo 101” brief.

On the ground, Dale was a game changer, jump-starting awareness of the irrationality of antigay discrimination. But sitting in court, there was a sense of uphill effort as the justices seemed more concerned with protecting Scouting’s right to enforce its own moral code than with preventing discrimination — previewing the Court’s ruling that the Scouts were a private association immune from civil rights regulation.

Just three years later, when Lawrence v. Texas came before the Court, much had changed. Seventeen years after Bowers, sodomy laws appeared even more obviously archaic, and the issue presented no First Amendment complications. The cause was now represented by Paul Smith — an openly gay law firm partner well known to the justices as a former law clerk and SCOTUS regular.

The argument this time felt more like a tutorial than a battle for respect. There were still some wince-worthy moments — as when Justice Scalia asked Smith whether states could bar gay kindergarten teachers to keep kids off “the path of homosexuality.” But Smith’s insider status made it easier for him to tell the Court how wrong they had gotten it in Bowers — reframing the issue in universal terms tied to fundamental American values of privacy and autonomy: “Most Americans would be shocked to find out that their decision to engage in sexual intimacy with another person in their own home might lead to a knock on the door” and a criminal prosecution.

The Court listened. Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion struck down the Texas law as a violation of personal liberty and expressly overturned Bowers. The Court confirmed that gay people, like any other group, are entitled to respect for their intimate, private choices and free to invoke Constitutional principles “in their own search for greater freedom.” Justice Scalia’s dissent lamented — presciently — that rejecting moral disapproval as a ground for sodomy laws also eliminated the main argument against recognizing the freedom to marry for same-sex couples.

How right he was. Of course, work on marriage equality (masterminded by trailblazers Bonauto and Wolfson) had already begun years earlier in Hawaii, Vermont, and of course Massachusetts, where same-sex couples began marrying in May 2004, less than a year after the Lawrence decision.

Photo by Joshua Glick

It took nearly a decade to get back before SCOTUS, as marriage equality advanced in fits and starts in courts, legislatures, and ballot referendums across the country. By the time United States v. Windsor hit the Court in 2013 — challenging DOMA’s federal recognition ban — the tide had shifted, with nine states allowing marriage and public support topping fifty percent.

That momentum was reflected at oral argument, where the pro-equality side for the first time seemed to have the upper hand right out of the box. Even before Robbie Kaplan rose to argue for Edie Windsor, Justice Ginsberg had set the tone with her “skim milk marriage” quip and Justice Kagan had stopped Paul Clement’s defense of DOMA in its tracks by showing that Congress had been motivated by the kind of moral disapproval rejected in Lawrence. This was followed by U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli arguing DOMA’s unconstitutionality on behalf of the Obama administration.

What a change from Evan Wolfson’s brave, solitary stand. When Kaplan took the podium, it was Chief Justice Roberts who seemed on the defensive — acknowledging what Kaplan described as a “sea change” in attitudes towards gay families and noting that politicians were “falling over themselves to endorse” marriage equality. When he tried to flip the issue and suggest that the gay community was now too powerful to require heightened constitutional protection, Kaplan recounted lost marriage battles and other recent discrimination — driving home that the “sea change” was a product of evolving moral understanding rather than political clout.

Windsor, of course, struck down the federal recognition portion of DOMA and sparked an astonishing two years of further litigation, legislation, and public education in which marriage has grown from nine to thirty-seven states and public support for the freedom to marry has hit sixty-three percent nationwide.

All of which brought us to Tuesday, where the argument felt even more one-sided than Windsor. Bonauto, with her trademark quiet intensity, eloquently set forth how exclusion from civil marriage needlessly demeans and harms gay people and their families. The conservative justices pushed back on the length of time marriage had been limited to different-sex couples, but Bonauto explained other ways that marriage has evolved over time and evoked Lawrence in arguing that “times can blind and it takes time to see stereotypes and to see the common humanity of people who had once been ignored or excluded.”

And as to the perennial question of “who” gets to decide marriage, Bonauto beautifully summed up that “it’s not about the Court versus the States. It’s about the individual making the choice to marry and with whom to marry, or the government.”

There was some anxiety when Justice Kennedy, too, questioned changing a definition of marriage that had been around for “millennia” (actually, not true) — but he later re-emphasized the concern he expressed in Windsor for the well-being of children of gay parents and his moral understanding that same-sex couples seek to share in the “nobility and sacredness of marriage.”

Mary Bonauto and co-counsel meet the press. Photo by Jeffrey S. Trachtman

No one wants to jinx it, but most observers expect another favorable 5-4 vote and have the champagne on ice for the kind of emotional celebration that marked Pride 2011 (when marriage was enacted in New York) and 2013 (following the Windsor decision).

Winning marriage is, of course, just a step along the road to justice. Marriage doesn’t serve everyone equally, and there is plenty left to do to protect LGBTQ youth and elders, achieve equality for our trans and genderqueer neighbors, and advance broader social justice. For many of us in D.C., the events in nearby Baltimore gave the day a bittersweet flavor. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t savor this moment of impending triumph, but let’s keep it in perspective: no rest until everyone is free, safe, and equal.

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