In the several dozen seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race that have aired across the globe, there have only been a handful of times where a contestant has so clearly been destined to win the crown. Specifically, we’re talking BenDeLaCreme of AS3 (even though we all know how that turned out), Jinkx Monsoon of AS7, Sasha Colby of S15—and now, Lazy Susan of Drag Race Down Under.
However, upon walking into the workroom for the first time, the Melbourne queen admits that she didn’t feel the same way.
“Was there doubt? Oh, my god, yes. Up until that very last second, I was still doubting it,” Lazy Susan tells Not Safe For Queers. “I don’t think that any ego is big enough in the world to withstand looking at, like, Max doing a cartwheel into a split and think, ‘oh, yeah, I’ve got one over on that bitch.’”
“But, at the same time, I was never comparing myself to someone who’s a dancer or a singer or a showgirl, because it’s just not what I do. The bigger thing for me was, like, if they like the Lazy Susan experience, and if they want more of that, then I have a never-ending supply of that in my cabinet of curiosities.”
Despite these feelings of self-doubt, audiences everywhere loved Lazy Susan’s charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent. So much so that the winner hasn’t entirely been able to process such a vocal outpouring of support.
“For someone whose fuel to their creative fire is, like, spite, getting all of this positive feedback has really, kind of, glitched out my matrix,” she laughs. “I think I need to spend a bit of time just sitting in it to really be able to internalise all this positivity, because it’s kind of too much. I’m just, like, what?”
And it really is Lazy Susan’s creativity that set her apart from her sisters on Drag Race. From her Double Dressin’ & Double Dippin’ look(s) in episode one through to her Liquid Dreams look in episode six, Lazy oozed creativity with every step she took on the runway. And that, for her, was the greatest part of the competition.
“It was an exceptionally exhausting experience unlike anything that will ever happen again,” she says. “But it was so fabulous. I love constantly moving and creating new things, so I think that—every week—having a new challenge to do was really exciting, because it was, like, well, how are we going to do this?”
But for Lazy, the ingenuity didn’t cease when the cameras stopped rolling. As episodes aired each week, Lazy would upload BTS explainers to Instagram and Tiktok detailing the intricacies of her looks (something that we haven’t really seen before from another queen).
She explains, “I’m a filmmaker. That’s my background. And you only get this big surge of attention once. So, I really wanted to make these videos just because it’s fun and silly, but also as a way of showing off the package and the looks.”
“And I think, for me, my dream is to put drag on screen and, you know, make shows and TV and things for drag. So, I wanted to make this like a little audition for what I would like my career to look like after this.”
Stream all eight Episodes of Drag Race Down Under Season 4 now—only on Stan.