"Drag Race" icon Bianca del Rio on performing in an age of drag bans: "Don't take our brunch"

Bianca Del Rio's new tour may be called Dead Inside, but on the outside, she's plenty lively. In the near-decade since her win on "RuPaul's Drag Race," the former costume designer has become one of the most unstoppable drag queens in the business, with the acerbic wit of Joan Rivers and the glamor of Barbara Stanwyck. 

On the day she joined me for our “Salon Talks” interview, she was channeling Lucille Ball by way of Rosie the Riveter, "sitting here in a wig," but, as the performer known offstage as Roy Haylock put it, "being myself." During our conversation, she opened up about drag bans, why she's not ready to write a memoir and why she says that even in the darkest times, she’s telling jokes. "I'm laughing at a funeral," she said. 

You can watch my full interview with Del Rio here, or read the transcript of our conversation below. 

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

What is Dead Inside? What is this going to be?

Dead Inside is my sixth world tour. We just announced that it's a world tour, and everyone's saying, “America and Canada are not the world.” I agree, but we've just announced the first leg of the tour. It's our first 60 cities, which start on Feb. 12 in San Diego, and we'll go through all of America and Canada. 

It's my opportunity to get back on the road. I don't know if you knew this, but this past year, some acts by the name of Beyoncé, Taylor Swift — you might've heard of them — were on the road, and I thought, "I'm not going to tour." I thought, "Let's give these girls an opportunity to go out and make a couple of dollars." So I took time off. I took time off so that they could do it. This other one, you might know, Madonna, she's doing something too, so I'm waiting a little bit until she's halfway through, and then I'll start mine in February because I am considerate like that.

What is the structure of it? What are you thinking about? You prepare, and then you also like to freestyle.

You have to, especially because the world moves so quickly. All of this is in motion for me to do a tour maybe six months ago. So we're plotting and planning and heading up to the event and there's lots of material that you write, especially since I had about a year off, which was a great year to be off to do television and film work. 

My process is, you have nuggets and moments and notebooks of pages of stuff that you write and create throughout the year. Then as you get to February, so much happens, so much changes, so you have to be on the pulse of all of it. Also, when you're in different countries, different things matter to them. If you're making a joke about the American government, they don't care over there in the U.K. You have to find your balance. Always go in with more material than you think you will need, and then you see how it flows and you adapt each night.

One thing that has changed a lot in just the past year, 18 months, is the state of LGBTQ rights in our country.

Crazy.

Don't say gay laws, drag bans.

I'm old enough to have lived through quite a bit. When I was younger, we were concerned with AIDS when it was a major ordeal, and everyone was saying at the time, "You're going to die. This is the way it goes." Then it was all about protecting yourself and different elements have come and gone. 

I've always thought being gay, I was fortunate, because many of my friends that were older had experienced much worse than I did. We had our places, we had our bars, we had our drag brunches. Now it's getting serious because when you take away a mimosa from a gay person at a drag brunch, this is some serious s**t. This is fighting words. Don't take our brunch; it's all we have. Let our drag queens perform and let us have a good time. 

I'm just mystified that this is a topic or that this is even a discussion at this point. I pay taxes. I live my life. I pay taxes for a lot of things that are not my life, schools and children and things in my neighborhood that I have to contribute to, yet I don't get into the middle of their lives and say, "This is what it should be and this is what it shouldn't be." It blows my mind that that's even a topic, but of course, we're in a political year, so it just becomes this crazy, world and tries to provoke so many of us to say, "This is important," where it's really not important. If it doesn't work for you, fine, go live your life. Don't go to brunch.

 Then it does become political when you're out there going and playing in these states.

Oh yeah.

How does that change for you as a performer, knowing that you are going into states where you're welcome in the community, you're welcome in the venue, people are excited to see you, and yet maybe there's a governor who is trying to actively shut down the kind of work you do?

It's a tricky situation, and so you have to create that space. I'm fortunate enough that I'm not participating in a brunch on the street where a lot of the laws are problematic or not well-defined when it's dealing with a restaurant or a space. Because I'm in a theater, I think I gravitate to the people that are there. The fact that the people are there to show up, that's who I'm there to entertain. You can't change a governor's mind, and if they don't like you, they don't like you. The job I have is to entertain the masses that are there and maybe think outside the box so that we can actually vote these people out. That's where it begins. I think comedy is a big source of, not only inspiration, but basically just voicing what's going on in the world and I try to do that as I travel.

I want to ask you about the comedy. You've been called the Joan Rivers of Drag.

That's a huge compliment.

Which you've earned. You've described yourself as old-school Hollywood meets Don Rickles. You have that insult-comedian lane. It's a very delicate needle to thread because you have to be able to be sassy and funny and read people for filth while also keeping them on your side. How do you do that?

Well, I'm the biggest joke there is. The choices I've made in my life, I never would've thought I would've ended up like this. For me, I'm a joke, and that's how I present it. It's almost as though, "Let's laugh at the world together because this is insane." 

For many years I performed in gay bars and theater, so the platform that “Drag Race” gave me was putting me into a different world. You're like, "Oh, wait a minute. I can go on the road and I can create a show and people can come and see it. I don't know if they're going to like it. I don't know what their opinions are." But the platform was a television show because TV's a very powerful thing, so it gave me this chance to go out.

What's interesting is that I tried so many different other ways of presenting myself because I thought, "Well, now I am on the main stage, so I need to do this to need to do that." And what you end up scaling it down to, and it's really funny because I'm sitting here in a wig, but it's ended up being myself, and that's what people gravitate to. That's kind of the balance for me, is knowing that I'm the joke and that we're there to laugh in this moment at that time. But I have to find humor in everything. I mean, I'm laughing at a funeral. I don't know if that happens to you. Do you do that?

Of course. If you loved the person and you're with the people you love, then I hope you're sharing laughs.

Always. I'm always complaining to the person I'm with going, "This bitch died and she owes me $20. That is rude, just dropping dead, owing me money. That's some shady s**t.”

But you also have people who take it seriously. You have dealt with hecklers. I want to know how you manage it, because we all have haters in our lives. What can we learn about how to deal with the haters in our lives in a way that lightens it up, brings the humor, but also gets in that last word?

I think it's important to let them talk, because when you realize that buffoons really don't really have a point. They'll say something trivial like, "Well, you're a man." This is just, let's say the comment section on Instagram. You post a photo and someone will come in who doesn't follow you, who has six followers themselves. I'm not saying that matters, I'm just saying this is just to give you context. So a person that's probably not even a real account, the profile photo is a little anime picture, they'll say, "But you're a man." And you think, "Now, do I take the energy to explain to this person, yeah, I'm aware, or do I just allow them to go and allow everyone else online to go after them?" That's what I've learned, is to not entertain them on that level.

When it comes to the real world people, I was in Palm Springs because it's where I live, and I was literally at a stop sign and a guy on a golf cart — because this is what happens in my neighborhood — a gentleman over 70 in a golf cart just zooms on by. I made my right turn to go into my driveway, and he zipped back and wanted to inform me that that was a stop sign. I'm thinking, "Yeah, you son of a b***h. I saw you." "You almost killed me!" "No, no, that's diabetes." I'm thinking to myself, "What is the point of this? Let him rant, let him yell." And he did. I just thought, "There's nothing as cruel as I could say, as what God's going to do to him soon." He's going to drop dead. So let him have his moment, let him unleash his demons. But in the end I'm thinking, "Who does that? Who drives and then drives back to say, 'That was a stop sign'?" That's a lot of f**king energy.

In those instances, I don't entertain them. Now at a show, I love it because they usually give you so much information. When I was touring the last time, it was right after COVID, so one of my big questions was, "What did you do during the pandemic? How did you make your money? Obviously you couldn't have been a hooker because you're not that attractive." Those types of things happen, and they're usually in on it with me. Now that people are paying to come see me, the hecklers are a little more tame, and I just try not to entertain the ones online because it's endless. Instead of me getting angry, I go, "Oh, that's a story I can use." It all becomes part of the act.

You mentioned, of course, “Drag Race.” It changed your life. It also changed the culture. You were one of the early winners. You've talked about what that show did in terms of showing drag to the world and showing the drag culture, but also who the drag queens are, the person standing behind those eyelashes and underneath that wig. How has it changed how we understand, not just drag, but identity?

I was around at a time where gay men only performed drag in gay bars or in theater. We were very limited in terms of spaces. To see this huge platform that has changed my life, that puts drag in people's living rooms, there's amazing perks to it all. I'm sitting here with you because of this scenario. But in the end, there's also the downside. We have social media. We have everybody with an opinion. We've got people telling you that you're right and wrong. People are saying that now drag is homogenized. So I think it is a tricky scale that we deal with, but overall, in the end, it's kind of amazing. 

I didn't expect it to be as exposed and well-liked, but also I didn't expect it to be banned in Florida. Overall, I think it's important to hear our stories, and for me in particular, when I did the show, I think I had done drag at that point for 18 years. No one ever asked or cared what I looked like out of drag or what I did out of drag. No one cared about the behind the scenes. That was my first initiation into the world of, "Oh, this is me as a person and this is what I do." It totally drastically changed my life. I was fascinated by the people that were fascinated with me in general, which had never really happened before. Most of my drag friends don't even really do interviews. The older queens that are friends of mine, don't really do interviews out of drag. I think ["Drag Race"] definitely unmasked that side of drag that many people hadn't witnessed before.

I want to ask you about that because I found an interview with you from 13 years ago. You said that doing drag is like being Batman, because you have your day life and you have your night life, and you get to have these two identities. But we know Bianca, and we also know Roy. Do you still feel like Batman, or are the lines between Bianca and Roy more fluid now?

I think it's more fluid, and I think that because of the exposure, it does change things. You can be at the airport minding your own business, ready to get on a flight, and a TSA agent's like, "Hey, Bianca." And you're like, "Oh, hey." I'm just myself at the airport. So it is kind of funny that the identity is out there as what it is, so you have to accept that, you can't be mad about it. You can't complain and go, "It's so dreadful that someone stopped me to say hello or to take a selfie." No, it's kind of amazing that someone even gives a s**t. 

I think the lines get blurred, but I also know that when I'm in the clown suit and I'm there to perform, I have a job to do. The packaging always, enhances it, I should say. I still do that when I'm doing a show, for instance, Dead Inside. I'll be on the road, you're doing a meet and greet before the show, which is like 200 people. You take photos with them and you get to interact with everyone and schmooze for a minute, and then you have the actual show, which works out great for me because usually the meet and greets are the first 20 rows of the audience, so if all else goes to s**t, I've got those 20 people that I know who had on the stinky perfume, who's got the husband she hates, who didn't sleep last night, all of that then can get worked into the act. So, my interactions with people are kind of blurred at the moment, but I'm not mad at that. I would've been scared of it had I been much younger, but as an adult, I go, "Yeah, well, this is my life."

You also managed to keep the line between your private self and your public self. Your last book was not a memoir. It was very, very conspicuously advice. RuPaul has another memoir coming out in the spring that is going to be much more intimate about the early years. Have you thought about telling that story?

No! No one cares. Listen, RuPaul can write a book like that. RuPaul has lived a life. Maybe in 20 years, I say, maybe I'd have a different tune. But right now I go, "I haven't done s**t." I did a reality show, woo-hoo. I mean, I've done other stuff, but nothing that I could write that many pages about, that many words. 

It's a commitment to write a book. A publishing company came to me and said, "Would you like to do it?" And I said, "Absolutely not about my life." I have friends that have written books about their lives. Kudos. Good for you. Mine wouldn't be that interesting. So I thought, "Let me give advice." If we've got Dr. Phil in the world who is giving advice, this bloated walrus who's got an opinion on everything, well, why can't I? So that's where I came into it and I thought, "This is what I will do. If you're asking me for advice, let me give you the worst advice possible, or sometimes the best advice." 

But I just don't think that my personal life really matters. I don't want anyone to say, "Well, let's go buy a ticket to her show because so-and-so was an alcoholic." I'm like, "What does that have to do with anything?" And also, I think it's only fair that I leave all the dirt for my assistant to write after I'm dead.

That is extremely generous.

Yeah, while you're laughing at the funeral, then just know that book is coming.

You're not a hater, but you have said you don't like Taylor Swift. What have you got against Taylor Swift?

I can say this publicly. I don't hate the girl at all. I like her a lot. I think she's very, very talented, very smart, got her s**t together, taking over the world. What I don't like is the people that like her. Does that make sense? It's the fanatical people. They make you hate the person because you're like, "Shut up, I know the song exists. Shut up, I know you're going to the concert." But that's with anybody. So I guess I hate fanatical people because it happens a lot with a Taylor Swift or with a Beyoncé or with a Madonna or anybody who's fabulous and touring at this point in their lives, is that people make you hate them because of their behavior towards that person.

I can look at it and go, "I like Taylor Swift, I like this song, but I don't like that song." And people lose their s**t, "How dare you?" That's the part that I have an issue with. We all can get a little criticism every now and then. And, everything's not my favorite. But I don't hate her. I don't hate her. She seems lovely.

I send a Not Today, Satan meme at least once a week. As a meme yourself, what was the last meme you sent?

Oh, it was a really bad one. It was really a really bad one because you know there's certain friends you can send them to. It was two photos of Mitch McConnell, it was really funny because I hate Mitch McConnell, and this is not a political thing, this is a human thing. I hate Mitch McConnell. There was the situation where it was him at the podium at two different times when he had those freezing moments, and it said, “Different strokes.” The reason why I laughed, people are going to say that's rude because it's an elderly person with health issues. Listen, I pay taxes and this son of a b***h has got the best healthcare in the world, and none of us do in this country, so therefore I can make fun of him. No matter what happens to him, he'll be taken care of, the rest of us, not so much.

Not today, Satan.

Not today, Satan. Not today.