Drag Race Down Under Star Yuri Guaii Confirms RuPaul Was Right About One Thing
Image: Yuri Guaii. Image: Supplied
Reading is fundamental, RuPaul Charles doesn’t fail to remind the queens in his Drag Race franchise. The queens of RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under Season 2 did not appear to have received the memo.
Episode 5 started off with a fan favourite mini challenge – reading. But it turned out to be a case of all shade and no reads! Kween Kong was the only one who aced the challenge, with some hilarious reads and not surprisingly, won the mini challenge.
Note: Spoilers Ahead
The queens fared much better in another fan favourite maxi challenge – the girl group challenge. The girl groups BAB’Z and Hung Divas put on an entertaining show.
No Drama
Alas, it was time to bid farewell to another queen and this time it was the fashion and makeup diva Yuri Guaii.
Yuri was the shyest Season 2 queen with the least drama, who got along well with the other queens. “I always felt like I had more drama with myself than anyone else,” Yuri tells Star Observer in a Zoom interview after her elimination.
“I was my worst enemy on RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under,” the Kiwi queen, who started dragging at the age of 18, quips pointing to her many disasters on the show – tripping on her dress in episode one and being rushed to the emergency department with an eye infection in episode three.
The Drag Brunch style challenge, which she won with her challenge partner Spankie Jackson, gave us some glimpses of what this Auckland-based queen was capable of.
“Honestly I felt like Spankie (Jackson) did not want to be paired with me. And I was like, ‘okay, it’s fine’,” says Yuri. “Watching the episode I agree with what I said,’Don’t underestimate me, don’t sleep on me’ because I am not always this shy little person inside when I’m by myself. I’m really confident and I know I’m like the best in my head.”
She didn’t let an eye infection stop her from delivering an effortless performance. “They told me ‘don’t put makeup on your eye, wear an eyepatch’. And, I was like, ‘I’m not wearing an eye patch’. I’m going to put on makeup. I’m going to do this because I’m not going to let Spankie down with all this work that we put into the brunch,” reveals Yuri, who also turned in a strong Snatch Game as Courtney Love in episode four.
‘I Just Froze’
Yuri reveals that she almost didn’t make it to the competition. “I auditioned and when I got the call, I didn’t answer. I was like, if it’s important they’ll call back. Luckily, they called back and it was Drag Race,” chuckles Yuri.
Yuri started dragging in 2014 when she turned 18. “I spent six months teaching myself how to sew and how to do makeup at home in my parents house in the bathroom. I created Yuri,” she says. Thought it seemed she had been preparing all her life to be on Drag Race, when she actually made it to the competition, Yuri says she “froze”.
“I just got in my head and seeing all these big personalities I just froze. I was like, ‘oh gosh, I don’t know what I’m doing. Why am I here?”, recalls Yuri. She recovered soon enough to showcase her own brand of drag in the competition.
“I’m great at what I do. (I told myself) I’m here to show the world that there are different types of drag. You don’t always have to be loud to do drag and to be amazing.” Yuri is happy that she had the opportunity to showcase her own unique fashion and makeup style. Asked to define her fashion style, Yuri responds: “It is so ugly that it’s pretty”.
A Toxic Relationship
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While her fashion and runway always won praise from the judges, they pointed to her lack of confidence. Ru wondered if there was something in her past that made her not trust herself.
Asked if there was any truth to the statement, Yuri confirmed Mama Ru was right and she was “in her head a lot” during the competition for a reason.
“A couple of years ago I was in a relationship with an ex partner and he was really toxic. It was a really toxic relationship. I went into it as a confident drag queen, but then I came out of the relationship all torn down. I was told my voice doesn’t matter, my drag didn’t matter. That did tear down my confidence a lot,” reveals Yuri, adding, “It almost two years ago and I’m slowly building back my confidence as a person.”
Will she ever return to Drag Race. “Yes, 100 per cent,” she says, without missing a heartbeat. “If I were to do an All Stars or Versus the World, I would be a lot more confident in myself. I wouldn’t be as shy and reserved. I’d still be awkward, because that’s just me, but I would have a bit more confidence and I would own my stuff better than I did this season.”
Any last words. “I was robbed,” laughs Yuri as she signs off.
