Lady Bunny is an icon: full stop, point blank, period. She has been a champion for New York City drag for four decades, and her signature look and provocative sense of humour have made her a lodestar for a new generation of drag performers raised on the RuPaul cinematic universe. Bunny is about to embark on the Canadian leg of her Don’t Bring the Kids Tour, which includes dates in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.
Canada’s Drag Race superstar Miss Fiercalicious is a rising icon herself. Ahead of her stint on the second season of Crave’s spinoff reality series Slaycation, Miss Fiercalicious asked Bunny about her legendary status, what’s wrong with Drag Race and why a Lady Bunny show is—and will always be—for adults only. Their conversation, which took place over online video chat, follows.
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Miss Fiercalicious:
She cut out. Hello?
Lady Bunny:
Sorry, someone was calling me. I didn’t put on the do not disturb. Well, she’s got creditors.
Miss Fiercalicious:
Girl, the CRA was just calling me this week, too. They’re on me.
Lady Bunny:
That was the landlord. Anyway, I’ve never done a tour of Canada, but I’m so excited about bringing Don’t Bring the Kids, which is a very dirty show, there. It’s mostly my usual poo-poo and penis jokes, but there’s a little bit of a serious part to it too, because I talk about how conservatives have tried to say that drag queens are sexually grooming kids by reading to them during story hours.
And the thing that I want to make clear is that I perform only for adult audiences. I don’t have anything against drag queens who read during story hours to kids. But what I do is definitely not appropriate for kids. I’m sure another queen could do a beautiful Whitney Houston number that would be acceptable for kids. But when I used to do Whitney Houston, I did it with a crack pipe.
Miss Fiercalicious:
Yeah, there’s different types of drag and every type of drag is catered toward different audiences, and not every audience is meant to enjoy every drag queen.
Lady Bunny:
That’s true, but I think one thing that’s different now is that there are these drag brunches where people can get in with their kids. I think that if kids are present, the drag queens need to be a little bit more careful. But I don’t really know how to navigate that myself, because now gay people have kids. I always say before I go on, if you have kids, go get some cotton candy or a hot dog for the next 20 minutes, there’s going to be something dirty going on up here that’s not appropriate.
Miss Fiercalicious:
When you go to the movies, there’s always a disclaimer that this movie might not be appropriate for all audiences. If our shows are going to be a little more graphic, a little more mature, the audience should be able to know what they’re getting themselves into.
Lady Bunny:
Well, mine definitely will not be graphic. I will not be stripping.
Miss Fiercalicious:
No, I think that’s what we want to see from you, Bunny. That should be the next step for your career.
Lady Bunny:
No, honey, you young girls can strip. If I start stripping, they’re not gonna have me at comedy clubs. They’re gonna be tragedy clubs.
Miss Fiercalicious:
So what drew you to drag and how did Lady Bunny come to life?
Lady Bunny:
I was always fooling around with drag, you know, since I was a kid, I would make eyeshadow and put it on and wear Clearasil medication as foundation. I got in drag for Halloween when I was about 11 and my best friend—who was a straight guy—went as my husband. Nobody said a word.
Miss Fiercalicious:
They couldn’t clock.
Lady Bunny:
They knew it was me in drag, but it was par for the course, because, honey, we had jacked up all our neighbors on everything from donuts to chocolate bars. No wonder I’m a diabetic.
Miss Fiercalicious:
So you’ve been around for a long, long, long, long, long time. How would you describe the differences between the drag scene now and in the ’80s and the ’90s?
Lady Bunny:
Well, I’d say that the drag scene that I was a part of, in the ’80s and the ’90s in New York City, was more experimental and grungy. A lot of New York queens, we didn’t really have the impersonation thing.
Miss Fiercalicious:
Let’s blame RuPaul for that with the Snatch Game.
Lady Bunny:
I blame RuPaul for everything. I’m not interested in drag with rules. I’m already entertaining them, why do you want me to put on 10 pairs of pantyhose?
Miss Fiercalicious:
There’s been a lot of discourse about drag bodies and queens who pad and who don’t pad and who corset, wear boobs and who don’t. But the thing is, women’s bodies come in all shapes and sizes and I don’t think it’s anybody’s place to be talking about how anybody else looks.
Lady Bunny:
Then what are all these competition shows? You’ve just slammed the entire Drag Race franchise and RuPaul.
Miss Fiercalicious:
Well, if you’re entering a competition, obviously you are setting yourself up for judgment, but on social media, everyone feels like they have the right to critique anyone just because they have access to the internet.
Lady Bunny:
The fans are all critics. I do think that the Drag Race scene emphasizes queens’ looks more than their ability to perform because they don’t even lip sync until they lose, typically. And also, some of the most popular queens post-Drag Race, they don’t even lip sync. So why are you making them lip sync? Bianca Del Rio doesn’t lip sync, Jinkx Monsoon sings, Bob The Drag Queen does stand-up comedy. It’s a little limiting to looks, whereas the drag I came up with was definitely a lot less polished on the looks and maybe more inventive.
Miss Fiercalicious:
They’re always expecting you to push drag to the limits and it’s becoming more and more expensive. It’s becoming more unreachable and untamable because every year they expect the queens to top the queens from the year before.
Lady Bunny:
There’s nothing wrong with walking out there in a great wig and a great dress.
Miss Fiercalicious:
Bring back mall drag.
Lady Bunny:
And just to touch on what you said about the discourse over queens that wear pads or don’t wear boobs or whatever, I’m just gonna give you this advice. If you’re shaped like me, you will want to wear boobs because otherwise your gut sticks out further than your tits. And that is not the look.
Unless you want that Alfred Hitchcock unmistakable silhouette.
Miss Fiercalicious:
What’s one thing that you think younger queens could learn from the club kids and queens of your generation?
Lady Bunny:
If you’re skinny and pretty and young like Miss Fiercalicious, you should retire from drag so that the boogers like me can outshine you.
Miss Fiercalicious:
What’s been your secret to a long career?
Lady Bunny:
I’m just not shutting up.
Miss Fiercalicious:
Because you’ve been around since people were writing in hieroglyphics, so teach us.
Lady Bunny:
That’s right. And it looked like somebody did a hieroglyphic with that contour on your nose last time I saw you. I think it said, “Get me away from HDTV!”
Miss Fiercalicious:
Get the Vaseline out.
One of the differences I’ve noticed between the generations is that it was dangerous to do drag in certain places, but people did it because they had a love and a passion for it. And now I’ve kind of just noticed with the younger generation, a lot of people are doing drag because they want to get on Drag Race.
Lady Bunny:
Well, appearing on Drag Race is one of the few ways that drag queens have ever been able to make good money.
Miss Fiercalicious:
I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but I think people just need to find what makes them different in the drag world, why they’re doing this art form, why they love it. I was part of the generation that learned of drag from Drag Race because I grew up in a very religious family, very sheltered. But when I started drag in Canada, we didn’t even have Canada’s Drag Race. So I was just doing it because I wanted to get out there, have fun, explore this creativity, see a different side to myself. And then eventually it did lead to Drag Race and I’m very grateful for it.
Lady Bunny:
One thing that you’ve said stuck out to me, and that is that you should do your own thing and be unique. And I think that’s a problem with Drag Race. People who have never done drag get inspired by the drag that’s in front of their face.
Sixteen new queens on your TV, and you don’t even need to be able to go to a club to see them. So it’s natural to want to emulate people who you like, we all have our influences, but more and more, I’m seeing queens on Drag Race whom it’s easy to confuse with Violet Chachki or Trixie Mattel or Latrice Royale. I’m kidding. Nobody ever wants to be Latrice Royale.
And would someone please tell Trixie Mattel to stop ripping me off? I found my own thing and then she found it.
Miss Fiercalicious:
I struggled with that. When I started drag, I thought I was Naomi Smalls. Nobody could tell me I wasn’t Naomi Smalls. I looked up to her so much. And when I first auditioned for Canada’s Drag Race, I think that’s one thing that kind of hindered me, because I didn’t have my own individuality and uniqueness. And then it wasn’t until I homed in on my craft and found what I loved about drag and what made me special. I really made sure to step away from the Naomi Smalls comparisons because I wanted to be myself.
Lady Bunny:
You have to love what you do because if it sticks, you may end up like me and be doing it for 40 years.
Miss Fiercalicious:
Forty, 60, 80 … we’re never getting rid of her.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
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