Sasha Velour

A superstar doesn't just use the spotlight for themselves.

People are so serious about ourselves, and drag suggests that maybe it's all just a bunch of ideas, and we can be a little bit more flexible with them.

From the second there was drag, trans people were doing it. And when cis women started being allowed in theaters, then cis women doing drag was part of theater.

I grew up in this house of intellectuals, and for me, it wasn't, like, a negative thing. And what I've discovered is, for a lot of people, it is. But I think knowing history, liking to talk about ideas - like, I just genuinely like to geek out and go on these intellectual thought journeys.

I love hearing the same songs over and over again - as long as queens challenge themselves to come up with new ways of performing them.

At the end of the day, I just love drag so much that it's not enough for me to be a successful drag queen. I want to do right by my drag community as a whole... creating opportunities for other performers, documenting and uplifting amazing drag, and generally just contributing a lot of love and respect to our fabulous little world!

I've always been committed to tuning out the trends of drag and doing styles and fashions and performances that are really true to what I love, to the movie references I've always loved, fashion that speaks to me for whatever reason - no matter what people say.

The loss of my mom really inspired me to go to a place with my performances that were emotionally honest, and I found that audiences really responded to that. People need to see heartbreak transformed into beauty.

I love being kind of reserved and serious and then having these explosions of passion when it comes time to perform.

I love biting off way more than I can chew, and that's a great motivator because it forces me to rise to the occasion.

That's what I wanted 'Pirate Jenny' to be: a queer, revolutionary fairy tale for the people that I love.

I love 'Threepenny Opera'; I was exposed to it as a little kid because my parents, my mom and my dad, had bonded, when they were dating, over 'Threepenny Opera' and introduced it to me, a child, who could barely understand it. But I immediately gravitated even from that early age.