On Thursday night, 22-year-old club kid Aquaria was crowned the latest winner of RuPauls Drag Race. Though it was a tight race, the New York City-based look queen was a favorite to win, thanks to a seamless season full of memorable outfits and performances. In the finale, the last lip sync sealed her destiny. While facing off against Eureka and Kameron Michaels to Jessie Js “Bang Bang,” Aquaria—in a black leather and gold star-spangled outfit—elegantly thrashed about the stage, setting off a mini firecracker and a cheekily phallic confetti canon. Those two tricks have been in her playbook for a while, so it felt right to renew them for her final jaunt on the Drag Race stage.
“It worked out perfectly,” Aquaria said in a phone interview the day after her win.
The queen is still coming down from the all-consuming pace of Drag Race, throwing herself fully into the demands of press and tour planning. On the night of the finale episode, all four top queens attended the shows official watch party in Manhattan, which was packed with hundreds of fans. For Drag Race neophytes: the finale is taped weeks in advance, but multiple endings are filmed to avoid spoilers. The finalists dont know who the winner is until the episode actually airs.
Among the nights crowd was Aquarias mother, Geena, who leapt up with joy and was instantly swarmed by excited members of the audience when the winner was announced. The room exploded into even greater cheers when Aquaria strolled in to make a victory speech while wearing her new crown and a dazzling yellow zebra print gown. There was a slight hitch, however, when Aquaria explained that she couldnt move her head much because “VH1 left me stranded there with no bobby pins for my fucking crown!” To the rescue came Eureka, host Nico Tortorella, and Queer Eyes grooming expert Jonathan Van Ness, who just so happened to be at the watch party (if only all of us could summon Van Ness in moments of bobby-pin crises). Aquaria, still emotional from her big win, was too dazed to notice who was helping her. She also has yet to watch Queer Eye, so she wouldnt have recognized Van Ness either way. But hey, she can appreciate the TV star-crossover synchronicity.
“It seems like he was good at grooming,” she quipped the next day. “Later in the evening I was hanging with Sonja Morgan from the [Real] Housewives of New York, so Im like the crossover queen.”
Perhaps theres a savvy Real Housewives or Queer Eye appearance in her future, but for now, Aquaria is focusing on getting her live shows in order, pouring her $100,000 cash prize into her tour so she can create a chic spectacle for her fans. But shes also not opposed to putting some of that prize money toward “a little pump in the cheeks. You know, something that makes the highlighter reflect.”
Shes also currently preparing herself for the social rigor of living up to the crown and representing RuPauls Drag Race on a global stage. Part of that responsibility includes addressing one of the more serious problems on the show this season: the swelling racism in the fandom. Shes addressed it before on social media, after a particularly heady episode in which she got in an argument with The Vixen, a black drag queen from Chicago. When Aquarias supporters hopped on social media to attack The Vixen with racist comments, Aquaria released a statement supporting her drag sister, explicitly stating that racism has no place in the fandom.
“I think the key to understanding the message about race comes from the people who are affected by it, and I think we need to further amplify the voices of people of color,” Aquaria said, when asked how she plans to address the issue moving forward. “This is not something that will change in the next year. But if we continue to listen to marginalized groups and practice what we preach and act and try to hold people accountable for not being racist pieces of shit, I think that is the first step to trying to overcome this hardship.”
She continued. “Its something that I have had to think about and its something that a lot of white people choose to not think about if it does not affect them. But I think that is where we lose importance. If it doesnt affect you, that doesnt mean you dont have to care about it.”
Its a galvanizing, reassuring message, one that the production team of the show will hopefully incorporate into future seasons. In the meantime, Aquaria is focusing on building her empire, which includes a Drag Race rite of passage: releasing a club-ready single. Hers is the twitchy electronic bop “Burn Rubber,” which she would very much like you to know is available everywhere now. “Download that shit!” she exclaims. “Its $1.29. I dont need it, but you know what, I want it.”
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Yohana DestaYohana Desta is a Hollywood writer for VanityFair.com.
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