How ‘We’re Here’ Queens Pulled off a “Bigger and Better” Season 2

TV shows don’t generally get do-overs. An episode is filmed and aired and everyone involved moves on. But the extreme circumstances of COVID-19 called for a lot of unexpected yet necessary choices to be made in 2020—and the repercussions still ripple in 2021. In the case of HBO’s Emmy-nominated drag docuseries We’re Here, the unexpected-yet-necessary choice involved calling for a do-over.

“I’m Shangela, the queen of coming back,” quipped one of the show’s three leads in an interview with Decider. She ain’t wrong, either; fans know Shangela from RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 2, Season 3, a cameo on Season 4, All Stars 3, and the Holi-Slay Spectacular. But her return on We’re Here Season 2 was a bit more complicated than just being wheeled into the Werk Room in a giant box. In March 2020, the We’re Here production team was preparing to serve catharsis and eleganza for its Season 1 finale in Spartanburg, South Carolina—and then the world shut down.

“It was heartbreaking,” remembered Johnnie Ingram, series co-creator and executive producer. “I literally stood in front of our crew of 60 people—I was bawling. I could barely talk because it was just so sad. But at the same time we knew [shutting down production] was the right thing to do.”

This meant leaving the town for the safety of quarantine—and it also meant leaving the Spartanburg citizens chosen to appear in the episode. “I was so disappointed because in Spartanburg, I had already met my drag kid Olin,” said Shangela.

“I already knew that his story was going to be really powerful, the way that he was showing solidarity for his brother, [a drag queen]. And I met the family, so I knew there were some things to work through there. But I knew we could do it—and then we were shut down. I was disappointed because I really wanted to tell that story. And then also in a pandemic, I was super uncertain if we would come back at all.”

But, thirteen months after shutting down, come back they did. “Going back to Spartanburg was very important to us,” said Ingram. “There was a lot of excitement to be able to make the show again and get back to telling these stories, especially as drag artists haven’t been working at all whatsoever other than in these little boxes for over a year. And it was incredible.” Now the Season 1 finale is the Season 2 premiere.

With the comeback machine up and running, the team started piecing together stories for Season 2. “There’s certain stories in our minds that we’ve wanted to tell, so we all discuss it together and then [the casting producers] go out and look and see what they find,” said co-creator and executive producers Stephen Warren. “Then they find some of these stories that are so beautiful.”

Lead casting producer Jeffrey Marx found that casting during quarantine was a more intimate experience. “I was talking to the candidates and the people we ended up casting more in depth than we usually do. When you’re sitting alone in your house and all you have to do is focus on work, my work is other people and finding out what other people’s lives are, what their stories are, what they want to change in their life. And during COVID that can be a very deep conversation.”

As for where the season would go, sometimes you just have to follow the candidates. As Warren explained, “When you find a James, you’ve got to go to Temecula because where are you going to find a trans, 20-year-old male who is neurodivergent? There’s people like Kaïs. How could you not go to [Evansville] and show this incredible man who has suffered through such hatred, who’s so beautiful internally and externally?” And while we’re on the topic of casting, Warren has one more thing to add: “By the way, I want Jeffrey getting nominated [for an Emmy]. His casting is insane.”

Obviously the pandemic impacted production every step of the way, turning Season 2 into a production. “This season took 10 months to film, which was not our projected time,” explained We’re Here co-lead Bob the Drag Queen. “But because the world changes every couple of days, we had to update and postpone and move things around.”

“With us working so closely, everyone had to be super tested, and most people were vaccinated,” said Eureka! And BTW, all three leads—Eureka!, Bob the Drag Queen, and Shangela—act as series producers, meaning they’re involved in pretty much every aspect of getting this show on the road. And, as Eureka! explained, this show required a lot of care and attention to happen. “[The production] took the stipulations of making sure that everyone was in a good health state to be able to work closer together, to be able to be in the same room without masks on.”

“I’m a bit of a hypochondriac so, for me, walking around was a little crazy—but we we did it,” said Ingram, who also attributed the production’s endurance and ultimate success with the LGBTQIA2S+ population “being over 90% vaccinated at the time. I think that really helped us get through this.”

Even more so than Season 1, Season 2 is bigger and queerer than ever with more stories in every episode built around these small—but mighty—communities in these small towns. As lead casting producer Marx recalled, “It was always a thing in my mind that I’m like, ‘Does every episode have to have a straight guy?’ I think we asked ourselves that once things shook out from Season 1, which did not have a straight person in every episode. I think switching over to Season 2, I think everyone organically was on the same page. If a story with a straight person pops up, hey, great. But if not, we don’t have to worry about that. This show really wants to highlight the stories that don’t get told in these towns, the queer people in these towns who don’t have access to amplify their voice. And I think very early on in Season 2, everyone realized, let’s not even worry about outreaching to a straight story or panicking if there’s not one in the pitch for that episode. Because the queer stories we pitched were all so strong, that’s really where we wanted to focus.”

Because We’re Here is here to serve the underserved queer communities of America, that meant traveling to destinations with iffy track records on inclusion and—a new wrinkle for Season 2—COVID protocols. “Obviously, we’re concerned with the safety of our crew and we have our own standards,” said series director Peter LoGreco. “To be perfectly honest, most of the places that we were going to, they could not have cared less what we did. There were not a whole lot of COVID restrictions.”

“There’s a town that I was like, ‘Oof, I do not feel welcome here,'” recalled Bob the Drag Queen, half joking but also half not. “In Grand Junction[, Colorado] I was like, ‘Oh my god, I think I need to leave this town.'”

Normally the We’re Here crew stands out because, well, they love standing out. But this time around? “We were in South Dakota shooting at the end of July, which arguably was the point in the pandemic when things were the most relaxed anyway,” said LoGreco. “I would hear hilarious stories from the glam team going into a hunting outfitters store and getting called out for being from the film crew from one of the clerks and then going like, ‘Is it because of the way we’re acting and the way we look?’ And they’re like, ‘No, it’s because you’re wearing masks.’ That was actually the thing that they saw as the most outrageous even though literally you had people in hot pants and heels walking around a hunting outfitters store.”

Most importantly, though, the team had to make sure that the crucial bonds formed during every We’re Here episode could stretch the six feet between drag queen and drag kid. “We were fearful of that, and at the same time, it was proven exactly false,” said Warren. “Some of the episodes where we had more restrictions are more intimate, and some of the revelations come from that intimacy.”

The bonds were first tested in Temecula in December 2020, which was the first episode filmed for Season 2. “When I met my drag kid Andrei, I knew that the story deserved to be told. So whatever we need to do, whatever mask I need to wear, goggles, how far to sit apart, that doesn’t matter. We got to do what we got to do to tell this story because this kid deserves to feel that there is a community in the world of support for him.” And, as Shangela points out, pretty much everyone in America was navigating that exact same six foot expanse. “That’s what We’re Here is. We’re Here is a real life docu-series that deals with real people in a real world. And that’s what the real world was at that time.”

“We were able to do everything we needed to do with our drag kids because they were they were all vaccinated and tested,” said Bob. “The only thing I think it did affect was our connection to the audience at the live shows, because in some of the towns, we had very small audiences. Everyone who came to our show had to be vaccinated and tested with proof of both those things.”

But unlike a lot of other shows that were able to stay put and operate in a COVID-free and heavily tested bubble (like RuPaul’s Drag Race), We’re Here gets around. And not only did the show have to deal with the different COVID protocols of each state, they had to deal with the rapid rise and fall of COVID numbers across a 10-month span.

“While we were in Hawaii, things just spiked,” remembered co-EP Warren. “It started off pretty good when we started there the first day, and we were going to be able to have X number of people—like 150 people outside at the drag show. Then things got worse and they went down to 75 people, then 50. It kept on getting worse and we had to adapt.”

“[Co-executive producer] Nicco [Ardin] was constantly moving stuff around,” said LoGreco, “and worked hard to help me and make sure they could accommodate us getting the queens to be able to interact with the community in somewhat of a spontaneous way, keeping it outside as much as we could. It was definitely a moving target and I think we all hoped that it was just gonna get easier and easier and easier. And it did for the first few going into Del Rio, then going into Indiana, and then it started to tighten up again.”

And on top of all that, the queens and their glam teams had to turn locals into superstars. “A lot of people think drag is easy,” said Shangela. “Put on the wig, the makeup, outfit, boom—I’m a drag queen… but you’re not a drag performer, baby.”

After filming Season 1, Eureka! brought what she learned to Season 2: “I would make them write me a list of their top 10 songs so I can see what kind of genres they’re into and what direction would be fun for them. It’s little things like that that helped the process be a little more smooth.”

“When I’m programming a number for my drag kid, I want them to have a moment where they feel like a Beyonce or J. Lo or Pink—or a Shangela, halleloo,” explained—who else?—Shangela. “But if you’re going to be one of those people, you have to work for it and you have to work at it. I want them to have a moment at the end of their number when we hit that final ba-ba-ba-ba-bum-boom, that they feel like, ‘I did it, and I was comfortable doing it because Shangela helped to prepare me for it.'”

All the hard and important work put into getting We’re Here on the move again, from casting during quarantine to filming in the wild west of pandemic protocols, pays off in a season that outdoes the Emmy-nominated Season 1. “Bob loves to say that this is the best drag on TV,” said Stephen Warren. “The designs, everything that’s going on, he will say, ‘This is not seen anywhere.'”

As comeback queen Shangela summed up: “We had six episodes last season. We got eight this season. And there are so many amazing queer stories that deserve to be told voices that deserve to be amplified. And the fact that we got to do this again…? I was like, ‘All right, baby. Second time, bigger and better. Let’s do it.’ And this season delivers.”

We’re Here Season 2 premieres on HBO on October 11 at 9 p.m. ET. And keep coming back to Decider for more peeks behind-the-scenes all season long from Bob, Shangela, Eureka!, and more.

Stream We're Here on HBO Max