‘Drag Race’ Runner-Up Kandy Muse on Why She’s Still a Winner, Baby
Q&A
“You’re a winner, baby!” That famous RuPaul line may not have been said to RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 8 runner-up Kandy Muse, but she feels like a winner nonetheless.
The New York-based queen came in second place on RuPaul’s Drag Race for a second time in the Friday, July 21 finale on Paramount+, but she tells TV Insider that knowing RuPaul is her biggest fan feels like a crown in and of itself (though I’m sure the $200,000 cash prize also would have been nice). Mama Ru expressed her love of Kandy two separate times in the All Stars Season 8 finale. That love was clear in Kandy’s original season (Season 13) as well, when Ru sent Kandy packing and then changed her mind seconds before Kandy took her final step off the runway.
Kandy tells TV Insider she didn’t expect a last-minute plot twist from Ru like that in All Stars. But she was aware all season long that Ru seemingly playing favorites could affect her ability to stay in the game. (It gave winner Jimbo moments of doubt in the finale as well. Check out our chat with the victor here.) Thankfully, Kandy told us, she and the other queens were well aware that Ru’s fandom doesn’t mean she’s giving someone special treatment in the competition.
Here, Kandy breaks down her second Drag Race run.
Congratulations on finishing second place in the season. I know it’s not the ideal outcome, but it’s still incredible.
Kandy Muse: Thank you! You know, I knew going into the finale there was a 50-50 chance on what the outcome was gonna be, and honestly, I was happy with either one. Obviously, the crown would’ve been amazing, but I’m so happy to be the runner up — again! [Laughs]
You came into this season knowing that RuPaul was such a huge fan of yours, and she even said so in the finale. How does it feel to have that validation from RuPaul?
She said it not once, but twice in the finale, so that feels incredible. I knew throughout the season, we filmed a lot of stuff with RuPaul. [She] made it very apparent to the other girls that she was a very big fan of mine [Laughs]. So, that felt amazing. And then in the finale, once Ru said, “I think I’m your biggest fan,” I was like, you know what? Win or lose the crown, that is my crown. The fact that RuPaul is a huge fan of mine, I can leave here knowing, OK, I came, I conquered, and the person who has created an income for drag queens is a huge fan of mine. I can leave here happy.
World of Wonder/Paramount+
What kind of influence did RuPaul have on your early drag career? I feel like there’s no drag queen who isn’t at least somewhat influenced by Ru.
Oh, yeah! You know, RuPaul always says, “If they paying your bills, pay them bitches no mind.” RuPaul is always unapologetically herself. And I think that that is a model that I live by. Obviously, being Kandy Muse is a very polarizing character. People may or may not like me, and that’s none of my business. At the end of the day. I’m just here to have a good time and to be a representation for people that feel like me and look like me. And honestly, that’s what RuPaul is about, and that’s how come RuPaul now is one of the most awarded Black men in television, and it’s gotten her to build this empire [by] just being herself. There’s no other role model better than RuPaul for me, because I mean, that is the queen of all queens.
You’re the one person RuPaul has ever eliminated and then said, “Wait, I changed my mind,” and ask you to come back. Were you thinking of that moment at all during this All Stars season?
When I entered All Stars, I do remember I was like, “OK, well, RuPaul did save me that one time, so hopefully she’s gonna gimme some leeway this time around.” Obviously, she was showing me a lot of tough love throughout the season, but it felt amazing because you know, a lot of the girls, they knew that RuPaul had saved me that one time. In their minds they were like, “Well, RuPaul likes Kandy a lot, so there might be a little bit of favoritism,” but [it wasn’t] really favoritism. It was just a lot of love. You know, RuPaul was never shy of showing me love in front of the other girls. So, that was just incredible.
I feel the judges are still fair in their critiques each week.
Oh, very, very fair. Anytime I needed to be put in the bottom, I was put in the bottom. Trust.
Speaking of being put in the bottom, would you say there was a turning point for you in the competition? Like a moment you knew you were going to make it to the end, or maybe a moment of doubt where you had to recalibrate your strategy?
Every single week on Drag Race, it’s a brand new week. It doesn’t matter how well you did the week prior. You have to go into the week with a clean slate. Once I won the Rusical, [we were] six weeks in and thought to myself, “OK, I made it this far, and if I could just keep up the good work, I can be good.” I didn’t land in the bottom until week eight, so by that point I knew, “OK, if I just keep up the good work, I can make it to the end.”
There was never a time I thought to myself — well, besides the time I was in the bottom with LaLa [Ri] and Alexis [Michelle] was the one picking our lipsticks. I thought to myself, “Oh, maybe I could go home this week.” But besides that, there was never a time that [I imagined going home]. I always manifested making it to the finale, so I didn’t want to think, “Oh, I can go home,” because then I would just manifest elimination. I did not want that. [Laughs]
(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+)
You and Jimbo have a shared quality of very easy confidence. I also asked Jimbo this question: Have you always been confident in your creative choices, or did that come from years of work?
In my artwork I’ve always been very, very confident and very overly confident. But that comes with a lot of years of work in my personal life. For years there was a lot of self-hatred and doubt. Going through high school and middle school bullying, you start to question yourself and doubt yourself. But you sit down one day and look in the mirror and think to yourself, “Well, no, I need to love myself because no one’s gonna love me the way I need to love me.” You tell yourself, “I need to find something that I love about myself.”
Once you find your self-love, nothing in the world can knock you down. Truly, truly, truly. I carry that not only in my artwork, but also in my personal life. There’s nothing that can bother me. There’s nothing that can make me doubt myself because at the end of the day, I feel confident in who I am as a person and what I bring to the table.
Did your choreographed finale number encapsulate that feeling?
Oh my God. That to me — and I said it in the final critiques — was leaving everything, all the pain, all the sadness, all the happiness, all of the emotions on the stage. I was serving my pop star performance realness, I was living my life. It was encapsulating two amazing seasons of Drag Race and leaving it all for RuPaul to make her decision. And in the end, I knew win or lose, I have put my heart and soul into this. And I was so proud of that performance because it really was a hard number to learn.
I remember telling the choreographer, Miguel, “I wanna be lifted up in the air almost like a phoenix.” It’s like me rising to the top of all the bullshit that I’ve had to overcome to get to this point. And once we did the choreography. I was lifted up in the air. And that to me was just like, “OK, wow. I did it. I made it to the very end of this competition.” I am so happy [about] where I am and where I stand.
World of Wonder/Paramount+
How do you think your drag has evolved from Drag Race Season 13 to All Stars Season 8?
I think on Season 13 I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do, so I was trying out all these new styles and looks. Some of them are great, some of them are not so great. But on All Stars, I knew that I wanted to embody sexiness and confidence, especially as someone of a plus-size frame. I wanted to show people that you can be sexy. It doesn’t matter what size you are. And that is the motto that I live by, being confident. So, on All Stars, it was about showing a lot of body and showing a lot of high fashion and just feeling the fantasy, honestly, because you can really make anything work. If you wanna make a fantasy come to life, then you do it on the runway. And that’s what I did on Drag Race.
There have been so many Drag Race moments — your almost elimination included — that have been enshrined in the show’s history of legendary moments. There’s the Sasha Velour rose petals in Season 9. There’s the Anetra tuck and roll over Marcia Marcia Marcia in Season 15. What’s your favorite shocking moment of the franchise?
Honestly, I’m gonna have to say myself. That elimination on 13, I knew me and Symone were [two] of RuPaul’s favorites of the season. So, when we landed in the bottom, I was like, “Oh, f**k, I can’t believe it’s both of us in the bottom.” And then I remember I finished the lip-sync and thought to myself, “Oh, I slayed that. There’s no way I’m going home.” And then when RuPaul said “sashay away,” I thought, “There’s no way. I still have so much to show. I can’t be going home.”
When she called me back, I had no idea that was gonna happen. So, that is one of my favorite moments in Drag Race because it just lit a fire under my ass and it got me all the way to the final two. And it just showed perseverance, honestly. It might sound a little self-centered, but that’s one of my favorite moments on Drag Race.
I think that’s a fair opinion. Do you have a favorite lip-sync of all time from the series, one that’s not your own?
Everyone knows like the Tatiana and Alyssa [Edwards “Shut Up and Drive” lip-sync]. I love anything Coco Montrese has been in. One of my all-time favorites I think is a very underrated one. It’s when my drag mother, Aja LaBeija, did “I Need a Hero” vs. Kimora Blac on Season 9 because there was a lot of fire and drive to stay in the competition, an d she demolished Kimora in the lip-sync. So yeah, I think any lip-sync where you can see the fire of [any girl] wanting to stay [are my favorites], because being in the bottom two, it really feels like you’re gonna die, honestly. [Laughs]
To go back to when you and LaLa were in the bottom and Alexis saved you, were you surprised that Alexis saved you? Because there was a perception in the weeks before that she wouldn’t stick to promises that she made, even though she said she didn’t necessarily make that promise to LaLa explicitly.
One hundred percent. I remember being there just thinking to myself, “Well, this is it. I’m going home,” because the entire time in the Werk Room, Alexis kept telling LaLa while we were getting ready, “I’m not gonna forget what you did for me.” I knew that the week prior, LaLa had just saved Alexis. So, I was like, “Oh girl, it’s a chop for me. It’s done. I’m going home.” So to me, the only thing I can do in Untucked — when we were doing our deliberations and telling Alexis why she should keep me — do was kind of kiss her ass, just feeding her whatever she wanted to hear. So when she kept me, I was very shocked and thankful.
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, Season 8 Available Now, Paramount+
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