‘Drag Race’s Alexis Michelle Explains Why She Sent LaLa Ri Home on ‘All Stars’ Season 8
Q&A
Alexis Michelle knows she has some explaining to do to fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars.
The former Season 9 queen, now the latest eliminated from All Stars Season 8, tussled some fan feathers when eliminating LaLa Ri in Episode 8. The surprising elimination came one week after LaLa won the Episode 7 challenge and after she had saved Alexis from going home that night. When Episode 8’s sewing challenge came around (a challenge LaLa felt particularly wary about, given that she was sent home on a sewing challenge in Season 13), LaLa asked Alexis to return the favor by saving her from being cut from the competition. Alexis said she would never forget LaLa’s kindness but sent her packing that night anyway.
TV Insider caught up with Alexis following her elimination in All Stars Season 8 Episode 9. Here, she explains why she sent LaLa home, what really happened in that Werk Room disagreement that led to Heidi N Closet leaving the competition early, and more.
I’d like to start out with the LaLa elimination. What did you base your vote on in Episode 8 when eliminating LaLa?
Alexis Michelle: I’ve said, and this is very true, that there were a million things going through my mind and a lot of voices in my ear. And it was hard to make sense of it. I’ve mentioned online that it felt impossible, and it really did. Because one way or another, it was going to feel like a betrayal. That might be hard for people to understand, given that they saw conflict go down between me and Kandy [Muse] in episodes leading up to LaLa’s elimination when Kandy was also in the bottom. That might throw people, but I also had a deeper history with Kandy than most of the people on this season.
Let me reiterate. I know why everybody thinks I promised LaLa even though I didn’t. And people who paid close attention to my choice of words can acknowledge and have acknowledged that I didn’t promise her that I would save her at all costs. Even when we were in Untucked, I said, “What’s it gonna be like if I choose not to?”
The first thing that we would all do every time we were faced with time to vote as a cast was we talk about track record. I know some girls said, “Oh, I didn’t care about track record. I voted how I felt it,” [but] it was still a discussion that we had every single time in Untucked. There was weighing out of track records, and what’s difficult with LaLa and Kandy is, they had identical track records. They both had a win, and they had both had the wins in succession of one another. So yeah, there was so much going through my head and I would’ve felt conflicted either way.
Keep in mind, this is a year ago we’re talking about. So honestly, the freshness of this is dim in my mind and my memory. But what I will say is, I don’t remember it feeling hugely strategic in the competition sense. I wasn’t really thinking, “Oh, who’s the bigger competition?” It wasn’t so much that. Was I thinking about fallout response from people, response from the judges? Yeah, those were things in my mind for sure, so there was some strategy there. But it wasn’t my most competitive moment in that I wasn’t think about, “What’s my strongest move to keep a sure footing to stay in the competition?” If anything, it may have weakened my position in the competition.
So, anyway, I know I’ve just said a lot. But that’s the real truth of it. There was so much going through my mind and none of it was crystal clear.
(L-R) Kandy Muse, Jimbo, Lala Ri, Alexis Michelle and Jessica Wild on the runway in ‘Drag Race All Stars’ Season 8 Episode 8 (Credit: World of Wonder/Paramount+)
In Drag Race, it seems poor track record is primarily the reason queens get sent home. But if someone’s doing really well, wouldn’t you want to eliminate the competition?
And that’s what I mean when I say that I wasn’t thinking competitively that way. I swear, that was never the way I voted. I never once in the season voted being like, “I’m gonna take out the person I think is the biggest threat.” It just wasn’t the way I operated. But you know, in talking about track record, what we would talk about when it came to track record is how the judges were critiquing us and how we were performing in the judges’ eyes in the challenge.
But in my own personal assessment, when it came down to Kandy and LaLa on that day — and you have to keep in mind particularly when you’re creating garments, there is a bit of a buffer that the camera provides, so you may not have been able to see all the finishes that I saw in person.
When it came to the actual challenge, which was a design challenge, and as somebody who knows how to sew, I thought about the technical level, the skill that went into it, and the execution. And while Kandy was wearing a very simple dress, it was also not a bad-looking black dress. For me, a black dress is really classic. I felt like it was something Kandy really could wear. She’s been photographed in it. She looked beautiful on the day, and LaLa looked beautiful too. That orange color was gorgeous on her skin. You know, it wasn’t bad looking. But when it came down to finishes, LaLa’s dress was rougher around the edges than Kandy’s was.
Kandy Muse in her handmade black dress for the ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ Season 8 sewing challenge (Credit: World of Wonder/Paramount+)
I wonder, why not take out the threat?
That is the question that bothers me when I think about myself in a competition setting. Why don’t you operate that way, or why can’t you operate that way in the heat of the moment? That is something that I’ve done some internal sort of searching and dialogue on because it’s not my instinct. Maybe that just says something to me about competitions of this nature in general and me. Maybe they’re questionably not for me.
In other reality competition shows like Survivor, for example, taking out the biggest threat is the point of the game and something you get rewarded for if you can pull it off. But with Drag Race, the queer aspect makes me wonder — and I’m queer myself, so I think of it from this context — if queens don’t want to take out a big threat because we inherently want to be good to each other since so many people aren’t good to us. I wonder if it’s like a, “I want the queens who are really thriving to continue thriving because we’ve got to” kind of thing.
That’s the thing. I feel very strongly about that and I speak to it frequently. People may not understand my reasoning there, because if you’re talking about uplifting, then how did I not save the person who literally uplifted me in the competition the week before? I get that it’s confusing. In the spirit of uplifting each other, I get that this is part of this game, but I really wish that wasn’t a part of this game. As queer people, I wish it were a little bit more “RuPaul’s Best Friend Race.”
Switching gears to Episode 9, you made an alliance with Kandy that she didn’t end up holding true to. In the trailer for Episode 10, she says she couldn’t trust that you’d honor your end of the deal because of LaLa’s elimination. You did end up keeping your promise to Kandy. What do you think about Kandy voting for you?
I don’t hold that against her. At this point in the competition, just like last week’s with LaLa and Kandy in the bottom — and imagine had it been Jimbo or had it been Jessica [Wild] — I would have come under the same fire or similar fire for eliminating anybody that late in the game. So this late in the game, I’m not holding any grudges against any of these girls.
Jessica and I were very close during filming, even though that’s not something we really got to see, as viewers. We were very close, and Jessica and I had this semi-drunken heart-to-heart in Untucked when we were talking about how to vote in this episode. I said, “I can’t vote for you, you’re my friend. I love you. How can I?” And she kind of threw the same thing back at me. And yet we both chose each other’s lipstick. And I don’t hold that against Jessica for one breath. And I don’t hold it against Kandy either. Maybe Kandy is more strategic or a stronger competitor than me in that way. And I admire Kandy for [that].
Let’s talk about the Werk Room fight that led to Heidi leaving the competition. You seemed to agree with her at first about the Kandy-Jimbo drama, but then you seemed to change your mind. Fans were confused. What happened there?
I’m gonna answer it exactly how it was in reality. People interpreted the look on my face or the way I responded, and what actually went through my head was, I didn’t remember overhearing that. I’ve talked to Heidi about it since, and she reminded me of the moment when I would have overheard it. And she acknowledged that I was halfway across the space where this conversation happened and that I was not a part of the conversation, that I didn’t say anything. Her perception was that I heard it, and I said to her, “I very well may have. You might be totally right.” I didn’t remember.
Alexis Michelle cries in the Werk Room during ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ Season 8 (Credit: Paramount+)
What I had a very clear memory of was someone else coming to me and asking me about this question of who was going to eliminate who if they landed in the bottom. And my response when I was asked that was, “I haven’t heard that, but I wouldn’t be surprised.” So in that moment where I looked confused, or at least like I was in agreement, and then I took it back, what was going through my head was, “OK, somebody did talk to me about this, but it’s not what I’m being asked right now. And it’s not my place to bring up this thing that was said to me or asked of me off camera.”
It wasn’t Heidi and it wasn’t Kandy who came and asked me this. That’s why I looked confused, because in an adjacent, like, sideways way, I had been questioned about this. And I said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear that,” or I don’t remember hearing that. But it’s possible because people were playing a competitive game. And again, I don’t hold that against anybody.
Do you have any regrets from this season?
Yes, I wish I had not sent LaLa packing. There were so many things going through my head, and I made that choice. After sleeping on it, even while we were filming, I felt like what have I done? And that is not a dig at Kandy. I wish I hadn’t had to eliminate anybody. But that yeah, looking back on it, that’s my regret.
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