‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Winner Sasha Colby Talks Her Longtime-Coming Victory
Q&A
Sasha Colby, you’re a winner, baby! Everyone’s favorite drag queen’s favorite drag queen was crowned the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 on Friday, April 14 on MTV, and her performances certainly earned her the crown.
The drag legend, now America’s next drag superstar, performed a new original number first. Clad in a snake-inspired ensemble, the former Miss Continental performed “G.O.D.D.E.S.S.” to raucous applause during the RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15 finale, landing herself a spot in the final two where (let’s be real) we all knew she’d end up.
The final performance of the night was a lip-sync battle between Sasha Colby and Anetra, the season’s other strongest contender and duck-walking extraordinaire. Only one queen could take home the crown, however, and mother RuPaul chose one of drag’s longtime elites.
TV Insider caught up with Sasha Colby following her landmark win. Here, she breaks down her creative process, the inspiration behind the three layers of her “Knock On Wood” ensemble and the “G.O.D.D.E.S.S.” narrative, and what it means to have earned this global platform as a trans woman of color in a time when trans lives are under constant attack by U.S. legislators.
First of all, congratulations on your win. I and everyone else I know was rooting for you all season long. It was so exciting to watch you get the crown. How do you feel?
Sasha Colby: Oh, such a payoff! It feels really good. It feels surreal, especially as a competitor, a pageant girl, I just always wanted to achieve the goal. It was really a good pat on the shoulder, pat on the back. And then, just having everyone literally so invested and so Team Sasha to the point where they felt like they won in a sense — just seeing all the reactions of people bawling as if like they won — it felt so nice to have people have your back like that.
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As you say, you’re everyone’s favorite drag queens favorite drag queen. So, you’ve won Miss Continental, you’re a drag legend, but what does the RuPaul’s Drag Race win specifically mean for you?
I mean, being a drag legend, being a queer icon is still pretty condensed. It’s pretty niche. Being on Drag Race, it’s global. It allows this platform to be so much bigger. For me to be a trans person of color that just loves doing drag so much and loves performing in any sort of outlet, it means that I can reach so much.
It means that I can travel. It means that I can experience cultures, which for me, like the nerdy part of me, I just love travel. I love understanding other people’s cultures and civilizations. So like in Europe or in any of the U.K., I would probably love going to all the castles and seeing all these things. It allows me to just find connection in humans. So, it just means that I can be of better service, more use by being a Drag Race girl, and really normalizing what it means to be a happy trans person.
I love that. When it comes to your performances on the show, what’s your process for finding the essence of a song and figuring out how you can best showcase your talents through it?
Well, in drag in general, I’m moved first by the song. Some girls, they’ll do a look and then figure out the song for it. Some are different, and some numbers just call for different ways of approaching it. But learning from dance and my dance instructor, it’s like you do a number, you have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. You tell a story, and you have to believe the story. That’s really the biggest thing is what I have to hear. It has to be like, some sort of trigger in the word of a song, or maybe they give a crack in the singer’s voice, or some sort of thing that will make me connected to an emotion. It will inevitably make me think of something that happened, and then I let a number come out of that.
There’s also three different Sashas on stage. There’s like the Ballad Sexy Sasha, there’s the Naked Sasha, and then there’s Dark Sasha, the one that goes off and dances, you know, Stripper Sasha. But all of those things are all based on the same thing as finding the beauty in empowering women, empowering trans women, and now empowering queer people. Not just people who share my body type or look like me, but people that find their strength in being queer through me. That’s always what all my numbers are. It’s like finding this person that you think maybe might be put together, but there’s a crack in them. No pun intended [gestures cracking neck, laughs].
I’d love to take the idea of “My Mind” that I did with Yebba and taking the idea of having men who are trans-amorous fall in love with you, but there’s this shame attached and finding that beauty and thinking that a lot of people probably think that looking on the outside, you have it all together, but really you’re being put down and you’re called into question about your transness all to find this love. Lowering your love for someone else’s insecurities are all the things I put into that number. And maybe it doesn’t show it for you, but you connect with something about it, or like this angst that I had about it. Something reminded you of like, “Yeah, I totally get where she’s coming from.” Trauma bonding! [Laughs]
It sounds there’s a lot of acting and performance art elements that inform your entire creation process. That’s cool. Your final “Knock on Wood” number, the actual ensemble you wore, had three layers to it. Can you break down the meaning of each one and what the ensemble as a whole is meant to evoke for you?
I just wanted to show that sexy Naked Sasha that really hasn’t been seen yet. I’ve done everything else, but if you really know me and my performances, I was pretty clothed and pretty like mother [during Season 15]. I was like, “OK, I’m mother, but I’m gonna show y’all Sasha Colby now,” which is unapologetically ferocious in her transness.
I really wanted to wrap it up in this burlesque idea, so it was taking the old school burlesque techniques with the corsetry and the unraveling and even the color combinations of having like these dark, dark clouds around you, and then breaking off into this dramatic, pageant-looking gown that still to other people were like, “Oh my gosh, that’s kind of confining. What is she gonna do?” And then, this payoff of hopefully a Sasha Velour rose moment with my, uh, budding flower. [Laughs]
I needed some wow factors. You’ve got a minute and a half to make Ru [Paul] pick you, and you’ve gotta go for it. So, while I’m naked, I’m gonna dance, dance, dance.
I watched the Sasha Velour “So Emotional” this morning. I watch it sometimes just to feel something, you know? I think your and Anetra’s final lip-sync will definitely be added to that watch list. When you laid down on the fur coat, I was like, “She won. Give it to her. That’s it.” It gave the feeling of laying down in front of a fire and it’s this sexual moment.
Yeah! And that’s an old drag thing, too. Tommie Ross would do Diana Ross, lay down her ostrich fur and just lay out it at the end and collect tips. Everything’s a nod and a reference, you know. It’s about how you reference.
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The luxury of it all. So, when you’re preparing a monumental lip sync, such as the finale performance, do you leave room for improvisation in your choreography?
Yes, absolutely. I knew that choreography with the dancers was very important, so that was when I was focusing on being clean. But I even told the other three girls [Anetra, Luxx Noir London, and Mistress Isabelle Brooks], “This last one, girls, we’re just doing brunch! We’re doing a brunch number. Like, whatever, this is like what we do. I would pull out all your tricks that you do at brunch that gets you a dollar, and let’s just go, you know?” And I did everything that I would normally do at a brunch, which is get naked, do my hair flips, get in a split, and make you hard, I hope. [Laughs]
Absolutely. [Laughs] And then for the “G.O.D.D.E.S.S.” number, how much time did you have to prepare that, and how quickly did the idea come to you? Was it something you were maybe envisioning throughout the season?
Especially with that last one, you usually just prepare with a leotard or something easy, ’cause it’s a what if, you know, you make it to the finals. So already that was pretty bold of me making this whole outfit on a just what if, but I wanted to do something that was gonna have some gag factors. I didn’t know how it was gonna come about. Me and my best friend, we were trying to figure this whole thing out about what to wear. And then, it all started coming off.
Especially with the state of the government right now and all these bills and everything, it just was important to show my love for this hyper-goddess, this beautiful silver screen goddess in a burlesque moment that happens to be trans. We watch women get objectified and sexualized all the time on TV and don’t bat an eye … but I’m gonna make it where it’s fine. [Laughs]
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I thought it was really fitting, too, to give it a kind of Medusa-like character because of the myth of Medusa and everything that was done to her.
Yes! And especially the snake idea. Everything was goddess in my head. It was a different sorts of goddesses that I would represent, like a silver screen goddess with my nod to My Fair Lady. In my head, it was always this goddess energy that was flowing through everything, but I had to be a nerd and do something about Greek mythology. And even though [Medusa’s] a Gorgon, she still has goddess energy. And it gives you like trans energy! Like her trans story. It’s kind of like very that.
You said you see yourself on TV next. What do you want to do on TV?
Well, hopefully not Cops! [Laughs] No, kidding.
Oh my God. [Laughs] Cops should just be canceled.
Period. No, I just wanna do everything. I genuinely use Drag Race as my resume to show the world that I can do whatever you ask if given the opportunity. I’m open sitcoms, I’m open to movies, theater. I’m working on music while doing a tour as Season 15’s winner. I just feel like with this opportunity, the world, it’s just open. I literally feel like I just opened a genie’s lamp and I just kind of have unlimited wishes that I could ask for.
I’m so excited to see what you do after this. And I would love to see you on a sitcom, a drama. Anything you want to do, I’ll be tuning in.
I would love to write and make my own stories, because it’s important to have queer stories being told by queer people. And I have quite some stories. Wait for the book.
The memoirs, the tell-all will be fierce. Already those last 20 years is already like volumes, so I can’t even imagine what’s gonna happen next.
Off the top of your head, what would you call the memoir?
Oh gosh. Well, probably the first tell out will be Goddess. If it ain’t broke.
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You made a powerful statement in your winner’s speech in support of the beauty of trans people and trans lives. What did making that statement on that stage, on a network like MTV that has massive reach, mean to you?
You know Ru’s going to ask you if you have anything to say, and it’s just always in the back of my head what’s going on with our basic human rights. So I just wanted to say in a really concise way that I am a product of the people, of the trans people before me in the past. I am here to represent the people now that are being persecuted and killed and discriminated against. We are doing this all to help the trans people of the future.
It just resonated so much in this moment. We can’t deny the fact that both of these things are happening simultaneously. They’re saying this rhetoric about trans people, and then I happen to be something that they’re trying to talk about that is negating all of their rhetoric. So it’s a powerful moment.
Yeah, it absolutely is. I’m queer myself, and seeing the beauty and joy of a Drag Race finale paired with current headlines, it gives me whiplash. It makes me very grateful that we have people like you and moments like Drag Race to remind us that it’s a powerful community.
Yeah. And having this reach with this show, it’s important to use it because I mean, we’re in all different countries. We’re all over the world. We have different franchises. It’s important for us to stand up for the ones who can’t.
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