There are few things in this life that are more disquieting than an abnormally tall, completely bald man in a Thom Browne suit, unexpectedly bursting through the door to scold you for your sins. I’m not exactly familiar with the Bible, but I’d bet there’s some sort of scriptural tale just like that. That’s because, when RuPaul walked back into the Drag Race All Stars 8 workroom to corral his collection of little dollies—sorry, I mean, “beloved contestants”—it felt like a necessary divine intervention.
Season 8 of Drag Race’s already-cutthroat spinoff has been quickly devolving into sheer madness over the last few weeks. First, there was the unanticipated self-elimination of contestant Heidi N Closet, after some alleged maneuvering of in-game allegiances backfired, causing her friends to briefly turn on her, and the pressure to become too much to handle. Last week, Jaymes Mansfield was eliminated by a unanimous vote, despite Kahannah Montrese—also on the chopping block—already being up for elimination for several weeks in a row without going home. And how could we forget our dear Alexis Michelle, crying through it all with the performance pedigree of Stella Adler herself?
All of this drama came to a head this week, when Kahanna was faced with yet another improv challenge, which she’s failed to excel at so far, tempting her to pack her bags as well. While the tension was mounting for Kahanna, Alexis Michelle and competition frontrunner Kandy Muse got into another heated exchange, arguing over who would score the more coveted role in the challenge, which resulted in Alexis, once again, breaking down in tears. Then came RuPaul, who watched this pocket of chaos grow larger by the second, like a very wheezy Big Brother, and stepped in to put the fear of God back into his cast.
“All right, ladies!” was not what any of the queens expected to hear emerging from the sheetrock walls of the workroom. It’s rare that RuPaul will ever break character and deviate from the show’s established formula, but in this case, the only other option was likely to lose a day of shooting to rewrite the challenge script if the show lost another contestant. “We gon’ gather round, we are gathering around!” Ru continued. Anyone who might doubt the candidness of the moment can see that it’s real by the way Ru frantically pointed around the workroom, looking for the right blocking pattern to line the queens up. “Mama is here to straighten shit out!”
“We’re gonna have to talk ladies,” Ru said, moving his eyes one by one down the line of queens. “I just want to set you straight before you make any mistakes that you can’t undo. You’re having all these feelings—of course you’re going to have these feelings, you’re under a lot of pressure—but feelings are not facts. You’re having emotions? Go, ‘Oh yeah, I’m feeling some kind of way, but I’m gonna do this thing, because I’m a professional, I’m a professional!’”
Naturally, Ru couldn’t get through a little sermon without referring to one of his favorite phenomenons: the inner saboteur. “Don’t let your feelings sabotage your experience in this life, do not. This is the greatest stage in the world for you to present your act on, do not allow the little things to derail your bigger picture—ooh she’s going to preach this evening!”
Even Kandy, normally a very stone-faced queen, couldn’t hold it together with Ru dangling the fragility of this opportunity before them. “It’s sometimes hard to look at the bigger picture when you’re in the situation, because there’s so many emotions happening,” Kandy said. “But just because you have one emotional day doesn’t mean you have to throw this opportunity away.”
Then, Ru—the taped dailies fresh in his mind—addressed Kahanna specifically: “You feel like you’re ready to pack your shit and go?” Kahanna held her head high, and told Ru that she was staying, both for Ru and for herself.
With another self-elimination successfully avoided, RuPaul nodded and slowly started to fade, becoming entirely translucent, until he could no longer be seen at all. Just kidding! He walked out of the workroom laughing, likely wiping the sweat from his brow and reassuring the crew that their number of shoot days would not have to change.
But Ru’s interruption did successfully shake the cast. The main challenge—a Dateline-esque crime magazine show called Forensic Queens (not the strongest name)—was a raging success, the funniest and most involved challenge of the season so far. Dare I say, it was the hardest I’ve laughed at a Drag Race main challenge since the epic echo of RuPaul’s “Whatever happened to Merle Ginsberg?!” first rattled through my ears in Season 7. Each of the queens did great, leaning into the improvisational absurdity of the challenge. It was so wild, dragged-up, and delightfully wacky, that I can only liken it to RuPaul’s 2007 magnum opus film, Starrbooty, perhaps the highest compliment I could give any piece of media.
All Stars 8 has been getting slightly stale among franchise fans online, and an off-script, fourth-wall-breaking RuPaul was exactly what this season needed to climb back onto the rails. Like LaLa Ri said immediately before RuPaul burst through the door: “I just want to be a drag queen that has fun, honey, and just lives my best life, lord.” Now, LaLa, I think we all can.
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