![]() Someone commented on one of the videos that they felt like they were a part of drag history. The energy in the room that night - I’ve been doing drag shows for seven years, and I’ve never felt that before. Everything kind of fell into place after that. Everyone hates it.īut I thought, okay, if George Santos was going to finally do drag again, this is what he would do. It’s so overplayed every time someone performs it, they wipe their makeup off and take their wig off and it’s a big proclamation of, well, this is me. Now, the backstory behind “This Is Me” - which is the song I’m lip-syncing - is that it’s a total drag cliché. So I said to myself, I’ve got to do a George Santos number. Meatball as George Santos Courtesy Meatballīut, I don’t know, there was something in me that knew there was something else for me to do. I have a podcast called “Sloppy Seconds with Big Dipper and Meatball” and the minute the news came out, I was like, oh, we have to get Marisa Kabas on - she’s the journalist who first got the photo.Īs a joke, I dressed up like him for the interview, and she said to me, “It’s so uncanny, it’s hard to look at you.” A friend messaged me after like, “You need to turn George Santos into your new personality.” I made a couple of TikToks, but I’m an old man so they flopped. Meatball: I saw the photo of him in drag the day that story broke. How did your “George Santos drag” come about? You’ve received a ton of attention in recent weeks for one particular performance. Seven years later, it’s my full-time job. All of my friends in that moment were like, you have found your calling. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I absolutely ate it up. I was absolutely terrified to be on stage. My first drag show, I performed Whitney Houston’s “It’s Not Right but It’s Okay.” I was wearing a solid gold kaftan that did not breathe, so I was very sweaty. Surreal portraits show drag queens posing - with themselves But I’d never seen myself in it until that moment. I was like, oh, this is something I think I’ve been interacting with for years. She blew my mind - as a bigger girl, she was doing splits, death drops and all these tricks. ![]() And then there was a season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” with this queen named Latrice Royale. I’d always wanted to be a stand-up comedian I went to drag shows here and immediately connected with them because it was the first time I’d seen drag queens telling jokes. I didn’t start performing until after I’d moved to Los Angeles as an adult. You were having too much fun.”īut I wasn’t playing with makeup or drag in high school and college - it just wasn’t something I thought about. She was like, “You put them on a little too much. So she had a bunch of human hair wigs, and she did say I would put the wigs on a lot. ![]() Meatball: When I was a kid, my mom had cancer. This interview has been edited and condensed.ĬNN: When was the first time you encountered drag, or felt the urge to perform? This is something that, in the last few years, has been turned into an issue that never existed. Why are you so obsessed with trans people and drag people? The problem is at your door. They were preachers and teachers and youth leaders. “I just don’t understand what drag has to do with any of this… In the last few weeks, I’ve seen (reports of) people arrested for assaulting children not a single one of them was a drag queen. “The current climate’s a mess,” Meatball told me in a discussion over the state of drag in this moment. More states are proposing bills targeting LGBTQ rights. REUTERS/Demetrius Freeman/File Photo Demetrius Freeman/Reuters/FILE Last week, Tennessee became the first US state (though almost certainly not the last) to restrict drag shows and performances.įILE PHOTO: Transgender rights activist waves a transgender flag at a rally in Washington Square Park in New York, U.S., May 24, 2019. That was perhaps the toughest part, Meatball explained in an interview with CNN Opinion, because after all, “a drag queen’s worst nightmare is a flat wig.”īeyond the emotive lip-sync - which yielded an incredible response from the audience, and has since gone viral across social media - Meatball’s act hit all-too-neatly at the intersection of a number of current “culture wars.” The borderline-campy spectacle that surrounds Santos, yes, but also the politics specifically the fear-mongering and rhetoric targeting LGBTQ people and communities which has, in recent years in particular, led to a drastic rise in anti-trans and anti-drag legislation. Performing a camp classic from the film, “The Greatest Showman,” she transformed from Santos’ slacks-and-sweater Congress attire (in drag, this is known as a “reveal”) into a replica of the sparkling red gown he’d worn during his own dabbles with drag as a young man in Rio de Janeiro, replete with the feather boa and cheap wig.
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