Trixie Mattel Isn’t Just Making Over a Motel in ‘Trixie Motel,’ She’s Making Over an Entire TV Genre

Trixie Mattel can do it all. She can win Drag Race, she can write bestselling books, she can talk about literally anything and make it hilarious, she can perform country music on late night TV , she can educate the children on the history of Barbie — and now she’s renovating a motel. In Discovery+’s new series Trixie Motel, the skinny legend and her partner David Silver take on a ridiculously high stakes project: they need to flip an entire Palm Springs motel on time and under budget while keeping the authentically kitschy vibes correct. It’s a tall order, but luckily Trixie is one tall woman. With the help of designer Dani Dazey and a who’s who of guest icons and legends, each episode includes one gag-inducing room makeover as the Trixie Motel transformation inches its way towards completion.

Now that the first two episodes of Trixie Motel out now on Discovery+, Decider got the chance to talk to Trixie about this one-of-a-kind project that pushes drag queen TV into fresh territory. We talk about glazing tubs, the gay energy of Property Brothers, crying over the Brady Bunch, and what it feels like to have your partner stumble into reality TV fame.

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Decider: From the moment this show was announced, I was like, “This is my dream show. It has everything that I love.” Legitimately.

Trixie Mattel: Isn’t it psycho? Oh yeah — you said that my boyfriend is a standout/ breakout star. A: Do you think I have no star quality? And B: Are you trying to fuck my boyfriend?

Well, I mean, he is a star. He’s adorable, and I have kaftans as well.

He is so funny. He was all nervous because — this is inside baseball — when I pitched the show, he was not a main character. And then the network was like, “No, we’re obsessed with him.” And I was like, “Alright.” Honestly, there’s nothing more interesting than somebody who doesn’t care to be on television being on television. He doesn’t even want to be on TV. It’s really funny to watch him be the star. I live in LA where people go to casting calls every day to play a dead woman on Law & Order and David’s now accidentally a reality star. It is so funny.

Before you started doing the show, what was your take on motels? Did you have a relationship with them?

I’m from Northeast Wisconsin, right? In my area, we don’t have hotels. We don’t have Holiday Inn, we don’t have Hilton. The only places you can stay are resorts that have cabins, or very small 10-room motels where they’re still advertising that they have color TV. My grandma cleaned motel rooms for a living. My mom cleans motel rooms. My first job was at a chicken restaurant that was attached to a big motel in Crivitz, Wisconsin, so they’ve always been in my peripheral. And then when I started traveling the world as a world famous drag queen, I started staying in big fancy hotels.

But big hotels, let’s be honest, are made for straight, white, old men on business trips, right? Everything’s dry. There’s no counter space for getting ready. There’s no beauty lighting for putting on makeup. There’s nothing. It’s just gray rooms with gray pillows for men to maybe take off their suit and jerk off and go to sleep. So if it was gonna be my name attached to something… ? What I’ve learned from drag is that packaging matters, right? These rooms have an opportunity to be truly a transporting experience where you don’t even want to go to sleep because you can’t believe the room you’re in. This place is like that. We really succeeded in making something that if you put my motel in a police lineup of 100 motels, you would know exactly which one is mine.

And what I love about Trixie Motel is that you’re also giving a makeover to renovation show, because they have a very straight vibe too. How did you discover what a Discovery+ makeover show looks like when it comes from Trixie Mattel?

I’m glad you picked up on that because there’s not really anything more heteronormative and formulaic than renovation, because renovation is usually about people moving in together, people expanding their families, people getting married, people buying their dream home. It’s all very aspirational for a group of people, which is completely fine! I mean, these people want shiplap, they want open concept, and they want white walls.

For Trixie Motel, we were way more inspired by The Simple Life and My Life on the D-List. That’s the show we were trying to make. We were trying to make The Comeback with renovation. If you think about it, we’re following a protagonist who’s not really a real person — Trixie doesn’t have a social security number — but the stakes are extremely high because it is real money, two people in a real relationship spending real money that really was earned by really crossdressing for years. So we’re talking about very high stakes. And we’re basically spoofing a genre as we participate in it, which is very drag. It’s very drag to be making fun of something while you’re doing it.

The designer Dani [Dazey] — we’re putting designs on designs on patterns on color. We’re making these rooms right up to assaulting, and then pumping the brakes. But it still stays very chic. These rooms are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Every room is just unbelievable. These rooms are better than any room in any hotel. Put a gun to my head, hook me up to a lie detector test, you know?

You’ve talked previously about how the show was inspired by watching A Very Brady Renovation, which I was obsessed with. Like, thoroughly crying at every episode level of obsessed.

You kidding me? I don’t even cry at funerals. I was at Christmas with my partner’s family and I was watching the Brady movie where Mike gets called in to work on Christmas Eve and he gets trapped and he finds his way out because Carol sings “O Come All Ye Faithful” and he follows her voice. I was sobbing. My partner goes, “You don’t even cry at funerals and you’re sobbing from this made-for-TV movie.” And I’m like, “Yeah.” I love The Brady Bunch.

How did A Very Brady Renovation inspire Trixie Motel?

Well, the Brady Renovation kind of is the closest thing to what we’ve done, right? We’ve built an environment based on a fictional persona. It’s not fictional for me. I basically live as Trixie at this point. I think of it as a Disneyland/Walt Disney/Mickey thing. She’s my Mickey, so we made Disneyland. And what’s more Trixie than charging people to come inside? Every time someone comes inside, I always charge.

How did you get hooked up with Dani, the designer? It’s a match made in kitsch heaven.

Here’s what you got in this show: you’ve got a drag queen who’s never renovated before, and your actual designer who has never designed a commercial space. It’s a little bit Troop Beverly Hills energy when we’re doing this project. It’s a little bit “I’ll get the fondue,” you know what I mean? We don’t always know what we’re doing. We don’t always know if it’s gonna work. There’s things we do to this motel that disintegrate in front of our eyes on camera, and we have to redo it. We learn as we go.

But we looked at a bunch of designers and Dani’s point of view — she’s sort of the Rachel Zoe of maximalism. She’s taken this movement that’s mostly existed online and kind of developed during COVID when people were at home and starting to get bored with their houses. Dani’s always into another pattern, another color, another texture, and she just has a way to assemble things that never makes it look crowded. The first room, the flamingo room, there’s a lot of pattern and color in there but the way it’s thrown together, it’s so cohesive and cozy and clean and open.

That hotel had so much potential and none of it was realized. You have this tall ceiling, the location could not be better. You get to Palm Springs and take a right and you’re at our motel. So there was a lot of things going for it, fundamentally. But this is a motel that was built in the ’50s, so even things like HVAC were a struggle, adding outlets. There’s a lot of things we had to do that aren’t even pretty to look at.

In the premiere episode, you have this moment in the bathroom where you look at that pink tile and your point of view was like, “No, we’re keeping the tile, obviously.” And I think other renovation shows, they’re like, “Let’s get that out of here. Let’s get a new tub. It needs to be a walk-in shower.” But you heard “green tub” and were like, “Yes please.”

It was pretty crazy. I would be a sixth generation plumber, so I spent a lot of my life on jobs with my aunts, my uncle, my grandpa watching them do plumbing. I never knew what they’re doing and I never had to worry about it until now. But this motel being old, it has these giant cast iron tubs that weigh probably hundreds of pounds. And I know that there’s a lot of ways to update a bathroom, and when we learned that we could basically glaze these tubs any color we wanted — that green tub is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen. That original tile reglazed? You will be showering in a motel with a 50-year-old shower — a 70-year-old shower where everything is completely clean and brand new. There’s nothing like this in Palm Springs. There’s nothing like this in the world.

Does Trixie Motel have a soundtrack? Like, when you’re at the pool, what music would you want to play?

So get this: one of the first things David and I did was, when we closed on the property, we started hunting for vinyl. So each room has a personal record player and the lobby check-in will have a comprehensive, very gay, very Palm Springs vinyl library that you can borrow whatever you want, go listen to it. I mean, we got a signed copy of Iggy Azalea’s debut album, we got Adele, we got Sylvester we got Sonny and Cher, we got Dolly Parton, anything you want. And then also like Disneyland, we will have sound out there that will play. Dave and I have basically been crafting a playlist that is, I think, days long at this point. Every time we think of a new song we want to play at the motel, we add it. I mean, the first thing I did when we closed on the property was I went home and wrote the theme song for the show, “Stay the Night.” I hadn’t even sold the TV show yet and I was like, “We’re going to and I need the theme song. I’m gonna write it.”

You manifested it.

I manifested it! The thing is, for better for worse, I’m very stubborn. You can’t tell me anything. So when I pitched the show to Discovery+, it was like, “Girl, we’re about to do something that is so fierce and you can either be a part of it or watch it on TV when it happens.” It was very aggressive. But I was like, Dave and I have come up with the coolest renovation show ever and Discovery+ and the Scott Brothers Entertainment (SBE) they were hook, line, and sinker thrilled. They loved the idea. As a queer person in a wig, it’s nice to pitch something and immediately get enthusiasm. They were like, “This is amazing.”

My husband and I watch HGTV all the time and the Property Brothers franchise is the biggest and kind of the straightest of them all, and to see them get on board — it’s just so cool.

You know what’s funny? They are obviously straight. I mean, you know, they have wives and children. But their energy is gay. tTey both love drag. They love drag.

And in the trailer we see a moment that looks like Zooey Deschanel — who’s partner is Jonathan Scott — in the Brady Bunch house. Is that true? Can you talk about that?

Girl, I can neither confirm nor deny but let me just say… if you don’t watch this show for any reason, you need to see this Brady house. I’m not gonna say we got to go there, but it was the gaggiest thing I’ve ever seen. It was the most starstruck I’ve ever been, and I was starstruck by a building. It was unbelievable. And honestly, Drew and Jonathan privately had texted me and both were like, “We’ve watched the show. The renovation is amazing. You should be so proud of yourself.” And it was just nice. Normally even pitching to queer people, you have to kind of sell yourself as a drag queen. But when I pitched to SBE and Discovery, they were just completely over the moon about it from the start.

Is there a specific Drag Race alum that you would be honored to have stay in your motel?

Well, as you can see from the trailer, I have a lot of familiar faces already. I have a lot of close relationships with drag queens and they’re all so supportive and so believe me, I wish more of them were asking if they could rent a room instead of texting me to see when they can get a free stay. These fucking leeches. These fucking whores. You know I’m a Tammie Brown superfan, so Tammie of course.

These rooms are so beautiful and the guests have to be responsible. You think Drag Race queens are going to take care of a motel room? Are you kidding me? Like piss on the wall, makeup on the sheet, blood in the bathtub. Listen: I’m a drag queen and I know I’ve ruined hotel towels. So if I see you checking into my motel and you seem like you have a wig, I’m taking a security deposit. Because I know what the tea is: drag queens ruin motel rooms.

Trixie Motel is out now on Discovery+ with new episodes premiering every Friday

Stream Trixie Motel on Discovery+