King of Drag's Henlo Bullfrog on masculinity, mischief, and kings leading the new counterculture

"I love what I brought to King of Drag,” Henlo tells PRIDE. “I stand by everything that I did through the entire experience of growth.” Henlo was deeply inspired by the experience of being with his fellow kings in the Man Cave. “It’s magical to be able to connect with other artists who are among the top of their city. It’s given me a brotherhood. It’s given me a siblinghood, and people who understand what I’m going for, who see it, who don’t do it the way I do it," he recalls.

As with everything Henlo does, his time on King of Drag was full of thought and intention. Beyond aspiring to claim the crown, he wanted to inspire more people to feel accepted in the art form.

"Everybody is welcome to kinging, no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, no matter how you identify ... there is no gatekeeping,” he says, pointing to the way the cast treated one another as an example. “You didn’t see any of us gatekeep on the show, our resources, our skills, even our makeup. They were available to each other, because we really do believe that everybody is welcome in the kingdom."

He hopes that the audience not only had their eyes opened to the level of artistry and polish on display, but recognize the validity, importance, and “necessity of kinging” as a part of queer counterculture. “One of the things that really interests me about it as a medium is that it's … this up-and-coming thing,” he says. “Drag queens used to be more of a voice of the counterculture. Now, because there's been this incredible, necessary, wonderful uplifting of the voice of certain types of drag, [they] become more of a mainstream cultural voice — which, congratulations, that's good. But then what fills in that countercultural voice, which is left over?”

For Henlo, the answer is obvious: Kings. “We have aspects of drag that can still hold that place of being edgier, of challenging norms, of being a little more shocking, of taking the word 'revolting' in both the terms of resolution and in the terms of being off-putting," he explains.

Being “off-putting” and “revolting” through their art is something close to Henlo’s heart — and not just for the shock value, but because art, he explains, should make the mainstream and the powerful uncomfortable.

"Drag kings hold this unique place that we get to punch up at the very top. Who's at the very top? It's these fucking white men in power who are making it worse for everybody," he says, explaining that kings are perfectly positioned to offer transgressive critiques of the most powerful. "We get to be the ones to poke fun at them, to criticize them, to be playful with the people at the very height of power. That also means we're making the people at the very height of power uncomfortable, which can be dangerous, but that's amazing, right?"

"Art comforting the disturbed and disturbing the comfortable — there's such incredible, incredible value in it," they add, paraphrasing Mexican poet and academic Cesar A. Cruz.

From the moment he walked into the Man Cave, his alter ego Henlo Bullfrog stood out from the pack of handsome gents. Not only due to his neon color palette and wild silhouette, but because of the way he complicates his exploration of masculinity by filtering it through a mythological lens — one informed by his history with performing folk music.

"There’s a very specific man in the folk music world that gets explored a lot. He’s a complicated man with a past. He’s morally gray,” Henlo describes, while explaining how his character unpacks a different take on masculinity. “Henlo is always this masculine archetype. He’s never the man at the height of his powers... He’s not King Oberon. He’s like Puck or Bottom. He is, you know, he’s the one who throws the plot into chaos. He’s not exercising power over others, but power is often being exercised over him."

Despite that character not being particularly alpha or hyper-masc, Henlo acknowledges that by creating a male character, he is offered the freedom to explore the trickster archetype in ways he would never have the freedom to do as a femme-presenting character.

"When we have fucked up trickster characters that are nonbinary or feminine, we will see them subjected to more broad fan critique or fan hate... even within communities that know better, it is more permissible to be a certain way when the character is masculine," he explains. This is true even when your character leans into the monstrous, as many of Henlo’s performances do.

"When we think about a movie monster that is female or feminine, their gender is inextricable from their monstrousness,” he begins. “But with masculine monsters, you can basically throw the gender away. And that is very interesting to me, because Henlo is masculine, but he’s — I mean, is he a muppet of a man [but] he is masculine so that his gender can be to some degree irrelevant and to some degree more acceptable in the archetype that he inhabits, without people being critical or hateful of him."

Henlo cites one more essential influence on his drag: his father. "My drag is so heavily informed by my number one positive wholesome masculinity influence, which is my father,” he shares.

While Henlo opened up about his relationship with his father on the show, it barely scratched the surface of the beautiful connection they share. “Only with a parent that supportive could I be as weird as I am,” they joke. Unlike many queer and creative folks, Henlo grew up with “hippies” who never told him who he is, but rather asked him. This, he explains, removes a lot of the hurdles of discovering who you are, when you don’t have to first unpack who you’ve been told you are. “From the moment I could communicate, I got to determine that… it's why I am so strange and idiosyncratic, because I've gotten to determine who I am my whole life, and I've had people interested in asking me at every stage of my life, and delighted by the answers,” he says with a smile.

In turn, it means that Henlo has been able to enthusiastically bring his father into his world. "He actually is also one of my drag kids. So I’m my own grandpa,” he jokes. “He does creature drag as well as drag king, and his drag name is King Oberon, so he very much lives in the same canonical fairy world."

And Henlo’s father has been embraced by the Philadelphia drag and queer community in return. “He has come with me to some of the most alt clubs,” Henlo reveals. “He will watch some of these performers... and just turn to me after seeing a queen do an extremely filthy performance, and say, ‘What a bunch of wholesome, nice young people. It really reminds me of the folk scene in the ‘60s and ‘70s. You’re just trying to make art make sense in a really difficult world right now. And I’m so proud of all of you.’"

"I’m so lucky, and like, you know, so few queer people get to have the parental relationship that I have,” admits Henlo. “My dad has told me that he gets the best of all worlds with me in that he gets to have both a son and a daughter in me."

So it’s no surprise that at least one of Henlo’s next projects includes collaborating with his father — this time on an EP called Cryptid Highway (which is out now). But that’s not all. We have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll be seeing more of Henlo’s work on our TVs again soon. "I have some projects coming out that will — I mean, at this point, I feel like it’s bad luck for people in the northeast to go off to a drag competition television show without my work. So, you know, I’ve got some projects coming out in the near future.”

And Henlo may be making the jump from our screens to the written word. "[Henlo] has a depth of lore to him. He has an extensive backstory and many chapters to his novel that can be explored more deeply. I’ve already made some Henlo comics, I just haven’t published them, and written stories that inform the way I play him, [but I] haven’t felt ready or haven’t chosen to share pieces of it with my audience for one reason or another. Yeah, though, I would love to, I could put that out there."

Truthfully, fans will take more Henlo any way they can get him, and with this much talent in his fingertips and mind, there’s no doubt there are plenty more tricks up his trickster sleeves.