Making of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’: ‘Power to the queens’ roundtable panel

“’Power to the queens’ ended up being the calling card of the season,” executive producer Tom Campbell reveals to Gold Derby during our Making of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” video roundtable alongside lead editor Jamie Martin, director Nick Murray and choreographer Jamal Sims. “Our contestants are faced with a lot of racism and homophobism and transphobism,” he says during our lively Q&A celebrating the show’s acclaimed 16th season and its status as a global pop culture phenomenon. “On ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ we remind them and the world that we’ve got the power. They’re not just celebrated, they’re elevated, and given a lot of love. That inspired us and hopefully it will wear off on some of our viewers.” Watch our exclusive video interview above.

“Drag Race” premiered in 2008 as a mini-budget niche reality competition for drag queens, and over the years it has become a hugely successful and influential pop culture sensation. It loudly and proudly celebrates drag culture for a worldwide audience and is a powerful, sought-after platform for queer artists globally. And it has spawned numerous spin-offs and international shows, with the original series having won 29 Emmys, including five for Best Competition Program and eight for host RuPaul Charles as Best Reality Host. For the show’s 16th season, 14 brand-new contestants were put through their paces, competing for $200,000 and bragging rights as America’s Next Drag Superstar. The Top 3 (Nymphia Wind, Sapphira Cristál and Plane Jane) battled for the crown during the April 19 grand finale, with Nymphia claiming an emphatic victory.

Among the many highlights from Season 16 was the main challenge from episode 10 (“Werq the World”), in which contestants were tasked with writing and performing verses on a new inspirational anthem “Power,” that was staged as a spectacular mid-episode production number. “Every year we do musical number or two. We wanted to do something special because it was an election year. And on ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race,’ whether it’s the midterms or this presidential election year, it’s all about Sissy That Vote; register to vote at vote.gov. We wanted to do something that led people to the polls, got them worked up. RuPaul, who is the instigator of everything is like, ‘don’t tell people what to do. Make him feel it, make them want to be part of it,'” Campbell explains about adding some more activism to the mix this season. “We try to deconstruct the show every year and rebuild it. We don’t rest on our laurels. We catch ourselves, we’re like, ‘well, we already did that already,’ or ‘how can we do that different?’ So, there are going to be some twists and turns. There’s going to be some fine tuning of some strategic things,” he says. “We have this magic factory because we have all these like-minded people working together in all the different departments.”