Santino Rice Loves Judging RuPaul's Drag Race

"How do episodes of Rupaul's Drag Race work? What are the competitions?

It does spoof on a lot of other reality competitions. In every episode the contestants have to compete with some kind of exercise that usually involves a photo shoot or performance. It's not just about their visual and their looks, but they also have to use their experience, knowledge, and personality in order to win the challenge. Each week after the winner is chosen, there is a bottom two that are left. Those two have to lip-sync for their lives, to a song that they were given prior to the episode. It's their homework, just in case they are in the bottom two. We watch them perform against each other simultaneously. It's always evident who did the better job performing, but that decision is up to RuPaul and RuPaul alone.

Why do you think you were asked to be one of the judges?

I think that they chose me for my point of view. All the aesthetics that I hold true, as far as what makes something creative, imaginative, and beautiful, all come into play here in this competition. When they first asked if I would be interested in doing this show, I said, "Yes of course". This is the spice of life. This is one of those things that gives me a lot of inspiration. Watching performers like this... I think the overused word on Project Runway is 'chic'. I think the word I said most often in RuPaul's Drag Race is 'passionate'. I always talk about it because you really feel the passion from every single contestant. Everyone is on their way to becoming huge drag queen superstars."

Darlings, we'll have plenty to say about the show. Read the entire interview here, and here's a here is a link to LAist's event coverage of the premiere party at World of Wonder.

Interview: Santino Rice Loves Judging RuPaul's Drag Race [LAist]

[Photo: Tom Andrews/LAist]