Bianca Del Rio rose to fame winning RuPaul's Drag Race - but has no plans to return to the show.
Bianca Del Rio rose to fame winning RuPaul's Drag Race - but has no plans to return to the show.
They are one of the world's most popular drag queens, with more than 2.5 million Instagram followers and a comedy career that many mainstream comics could only dream of having.
Yet if you are expecting Bianca Del Rio to show up on RuPaul's Drag Race again, think again.
Del Rio rose to prominence while winning the sixth season of the American reality TV show, with her success on the show often credited as one of the reasons the show became so popular.
However, speaking to Kita and Anita's Happy Hour ahead of their New Zealand tour next month, the former New York staple said they have no desire to return to the show, despite a recent All Winners season giving former winners another go.
"It's just not my thing. I had a wonderful experience with Drag Race when I did it, but I look at it this way. I go, who wants to go back to high school? I came out unscathed. I had a lovely time."
Bianca Del Rio covers off everything from Covid to politics in their new show, Unsanitized.
There isn't even time for a return trip to the mega-franchise anyway. Del Rio is bringing their Unsanitized tour to Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland in September, with Auckland the final stop on a tour that has travelled across North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
This is Del Rio's fifth solo tour, and while some Drag Race content remains on the agenda, she admits that she doesn't watch the show religiously any more.
"The last thing I wanna do on my off time is watch a bunch of drag Queens on TV," the comedian laughs.
"There's a type of people that enjoy it and watch it. And for me, it's this weird thing [because] I've also been behind the camera. You know, once you've been there filming it, [you] look at things differently.
"It's a little more complicated for me to watch, but I do revel when my friends do well, I really enjoy it when my friends do badly."
The tour ending in New Zealand is the reverse of what was originally planned in 2020, when the original iteration of the tour was meant to begin down under, but Covid scuppered that.
Instead, Del Rio told Happy Hour that Unsanitized will touch on the past few years and the madness that has happened there and is still unfolding.
"I think through the Covid madness, through politics, through, Drag Race, all of these things that are hot topics now, to monkeypox now, it's the gift that keeps on giving.
"All of that gets covered in the show, but each night it is always a different step up. There's the same setup for me, I should say outline, but you never know what's gonna happen from night to night and that's the magic of it. And that's the magic of live theatre.
• Tickets and New Zealand tour details for Bianca Del Rio: Unsanitized can be purchased from biancadownunder.com
Kita and Anita's Happy Hour is out every Wednesday. You can follow it on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
