What Injury Was This Week’s Eliminated ‘Drag Race’ Queen Suffering From?

If you don’t want to see which queen was eliminated after this week’s team TV challenge on RuPaul’s Drag Race, sashay away until you’ve safely watched it all. After an episode where Trinity and Eureka clashed over leadership styles, Shea and Sasha won the challenge by making out of a stalk of broccoli, and Aja and Valentina made peace, Charlie Hides was dismissed from the show after getting pretty well demolished by Trinity Taylor in a Britney Spears “Lip Sync for Your Life.”

By her own admission, Charlie was an underdog from the start. At 52 years old, she was the oldest queen ever to participate on Drag Race. She also was decidedly not a lip-syncing queen, which tends to be important on a show where the elimination challenge every week involves a lip-sync. Things were looking pretty rough for Charlie this week, starting with some communication and timing problems with her scene partner Cynthia Lee Fontaine. After a live performance that guest judge Naya Rivera called “dead behind the eyes,” Charlie was sent to the bottom two, and one immobile lip-sync later, and it was all over.

In the wake of her elimination, Charlie answered our questions about her relationship with Cynthia, her moving words about living through the height of the AIDS crisis, and the injury she suffered that you never saw.

Decider.com: I think I want to start off talking about the live-TV-show challenge. I feel like the queens who did well on this challenge had very strong chemistry with their scene partners. There was Shea [Coulee] and Sasha [Velour], who won the challenge, and Nina [Bo’Nina Brown] and Eureka [O’Hara] who also did well. Did you feel like a lot of the problems for you came down to your chemistry with Cynthia [Lee Fontaine]?

Charlie Hides: I do definitely, because there was a language barrier. I don’t speak Spanish, and English is her second language. I adore Cynthia, and we got along really well before the challenge, and we got along really well ever since. But in a very pressurized situation on zero sleep, I was trying to understand her and she was trying to understand me, and it took us a while to understand that we come at comedy from different points of view. I like to say funny things, and everything she says sounds funny. So when we finally got there in the end, we had lost an awful lot of time, and we hadn’t had enough time to rehearse. And then we didn’t have enough time to write some jokes until the very end. I thought I started off very strong. I’m not sure, I haven’t seen the edit, but I had a lot of laughs in the studio. I actually had a lot more laughs than Peppermint. I’m not sure what they’re showing, but I had a much stronger performance in the studio on the day than Peppermint did.

That’s very interesting, because I know on the runway you were complimented on your runway look, and Peppermint was read for her runway look a bit. And I know after last week’s episode there was some talk both on Untucked and among the fans that the runway looks weren’t being valued as much as performance aspects of the challenge. Did you find something like that frustrating?

Yeah, in the past, on a design challenge like [last week’s] princess design challenge, more would have been made of it. I know that every episode, I slayed the runway. I know I looked amazing, and even at 52, I rocked that lingerie. I defy almost any other 52-year-old — let alone a woman — to look as good in lingerie as I did.

During the judging, I know Michelle Visage’s one quote about you [that made it] on the air was that she thought you were a control freak during the challenge. Do you think that was a fair criticism or do you think she was being overly harsh?

I think she was being overly harsh. What she was calling controlling was, she was commenting on the fact that I pointed to my cue card. I was suddenly pointing to Cynthia to where her line was, because she had messed up that line 5 times in rehearsal. So I thought I was doing my sister a solid. I thought I was being helpful, and I was being a team player, and I was just prompting Cynthia. Michelle called it “controlling,” so I’ll let the viewers decide.

Certainly this week you had a moment backstage, while the girls were getting ready, where you talked about your experiences in the 1980s and ’90s during the height of the AIDS crisis. From your perspective as the oldest of the queens, were you surprised that the other girls were so attentive to your words, with them being so young?

Not really, because I found that whenever I speak from heart and share those painful experiences, people tend to respond. I don’t think most of the younger generation realizes the huge sense of loss and what it’s like to lose all of your entire peer group. I’m one of the few survivors from my era, because we came out prior to even knowing that the act of making love could be a death sentence, and so we weren’t playing safely weren’t wearing condoms. Quite a few of [this season’s queens] pulled me aside later on and said “I just can’t imagine what it’s like to have buried everybody in your address book.” So the response was phenomenal from the girls, and yeah I’m really pleased that the topic came up. It came up organically, and I’m really proud that that’s a moment that I’m leaving Drag Race with. If I’ve accomplished nothing else, it’s to honor the legacy of the people that organized and fundraised and marched and protested and made a difference. Most of my friends lost their lives. I’m glad that I was able to leave that legacy. And to tell people to know your status, get tested, and play safe.

It was a great tribute, I thought, so that was wonderful.

Thank you.

We saw a little bit in this episode the conflict between Aja and Valentina, and I think on Untucked it was pervasive among the other queens, this sense that Valentina is getting treatment from the judges that not all the other queens are being afforded. Do you feel like that’s an accurate assessment or not?

Yes, to a certain extent. Valentina is painfully beautiful; she can make a burlap sack look good. And she made [last week’s] basic skating costume look good. But it was a design challenge, and — perfect example — I made a bone-pleated hand-draped, strapless ballgown with 15 yards of fabric and was only safe, and her little basic skating costume was raved about. And other contestants saw that as well. We all thought it was really basic and simple, and not much effort went into it. And we thought [the judges] were being overly exuberant in their praise for something very basic. But it was happening quite a bit, like “Oh my goodness! Look, she just walks down the runway, she looks adorable! She woke up, she looks adorable!” And she does, there’s no doubt about it, you can’t take your eyes off her. She’s gorgeous.

So it was something the rest of the queens are feeling frustrated by as well?

A bit, yeah. It did come up, yeah. It’s just indicative of, in general, pretty people get an easy ride. I was young and pretty once! Let me tell you, I batted my eyelashes and I got out of a speeding tickets!

I wanted to talk about Lip Sync for Your Life for a second. Watching your performance, and even the interview where you mentioned that you were just waiting for Ru to give you the “sashay away,” was this something where you walked into the season knowing that lip-synch was not going to be your forte, and if you ended up in the bottom, so be it? Or was it something about this particular song, or how you were feeling that particular day?

Okay well there’s a lot to unpack there. No, I don’t lip-sync, I’ve only lip-synced twice in my life, and that was to get on the show. I’m a live singer. If I had been given, say, B52s’ “Love Shack” or Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero,” those two songs I knew backwards and forwards, so my lip sync would’ve been spot on. But I had a broken rib, and I couldn’t move. I didn’t know the Britney song, I never heard the Britney song, only listened to it twice. So I just knew this was going to be epically bad. I just have to give them authentic Britney 2007: I’m dressed like a slut, I’m dead behind the eyes, and I’m lip-synching terribly. Job done.

Was the broken rib something you came into the season with, or was from that from the cheerleading challenge?

From the cheerleading challenge. I had broken it twice in the past couple years, and then after lifting Shea for the 30th or 40th time in rehearsal, on the day of the dress rehearsal I felt it go. It was like a sharp knife in my side. So I wasn’t sleeping, and I was duct taping using duct tape instead of a corset, just to hold my rib in place…

Oh my god!

… I was an awful lot of pain. That’s why I didn’t move. I couldn’t be exuberant. You can’t really lip-synch for your life when you’re already dead.

Who would you say of the other queens was the one who you were particularly closest to?

Alexis Michelle definitely. And, surprisingly, Cynthia and I are very close and were very close; we immediately bonded. But Alexis instantly, we were constantly chatting off-camera together and now we’re best buddies. So yeah, I would say Alexis and Cynthia. I also really really like Sasha, and I would’ve loved the chance to get to know her better. Because we had several moments where we were starting to bond. Sadly, my time on drag race was shorter than Tom Cruise. I’ve had STDs longer than that.

It’s a shame, too, because certainly you’re very much well known for being a celebrity impersonator. And obviously Snatch Game is the most beloved of Drag Race competitions. Could you tell us who you were going to portray if had you lasted that long?

Yeah, I had I brought along with me Theresa Caputo, the Long Island medium, Lana Del Ray, and Joan Rivers.

Oh my god, what a selection.

My Lana Del Ray is epic, and my Joan Rivers is second to none, so that’s a major disappointment to me that I didn’t get to do it.

Oh I think it’s a major disappointment to everyone that we didn’t get to see it so…

There’s always All-Stars!

Where to stream RuPaul's Drag Race