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Drag Icon Kylie Sonique Love Says Celebs Won't Pay Up For Performances
The Drag Race winner opened up about her great relationship with Miley Cyrus and how some rich celebrities are really cheapskates.
Drag Race alum Kylie Sonique Love spoke out recently about celebrities being unwilling to pay drag performers for their craft. This is juicy, y'all.
Transgender drag icon Love, who first competed in season two of Drag Race and took home the crown on Drag Race All Stars 6, opened up to YouTube documentarian Matt Cullen in a video that dropped on July 30 about how a “very famous celebrity" told her that there wasn’t room in the budget to pay her for a Pride performance.
Before getting into criticisms of stingy celebs, Love talked about how much pop star Miley Cyrus has done for drag performers and the LGBTQ+ community.
Cyrus included Drag Race faves Alyssa Edwards, Laganja Estranja and Shangela in her 2015 VMA performance and in 2021 the “Flowers” singer hired Love to perform alongside her at a July Fourth concert in Las Vegas.
When Cyrus shared a video of the concert on social media she captioned it with high praise for the drag queen. "THIS is the new AMERICAN WOMAN! @xosonique IS my Miss America!!!!!!!!!! You take the crown mama!" Love said in the interview that she and Cyrus have remained close friends ever since.
Although Love wouldn’t give up names, she got candid about celebrities trying to get out of paying drag performers for their work.
“I just worked with a very famous celebrity who during the Pride season did a whole Pride event and a concert but somehow didn’t have a budget for us,” she said.
Love also talked about her frustration with not being paid by rich stars and the difficulty of being a trans drag performer in the current political climate where states across the country are trying to enact drag bans and bills are being passed left and right that strip trans people of their rights.
“This summer especially, we’ve been fighting for our rights as drag performers and trans people to be able to continue living our lives and being able to work and I just thought it was a little odd to do all that,” she revealed. “You’re worth half a billion dollars, and you didn’t have ten dollars at least for us?”
Love also explained that while many people seem to think that drag queens should be willing to work for free in exchange for exposure, it no longer makes sense to do that because social media give queens all the exposure they need.
“If you have the internet and Instagram, you’re already exposed,” she said. “So people that say ‘oh this is for exposure’ – b***h, I am exposed. That’s why you asked me to be a part of your gig.”
Love is far from the only famous drag queen to complain about this issue. In 2019 Drag Race UK star The Vivienne claimed she was asked to perform on The X Factor for free, although a spokesperson for the show has denied the allegation.
Most recently Choriza May, another Drag Race UK star, said a “big festival” in Amsterdam couldn’t pay her for a performance in June “because there was no budget.”
Not this big festival in Europe announcing a MASSIVE drag act after the person responsible for their Drag stage contacted my management asking if I could go and perform FOR FREE because "there was no budget". Let's have some consistency.
— Pollopeluco May (@chorizamay) June 15, 2023
Shady, shady. Considering all the charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent they bring the stage and screen, its a crime not to compensate them! Pay the dolls!
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Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
Ariel Messman-Rucker is an Oakland-born journalist who now calls the Pacific Northwest her home. When she’s not writing about politics and queer pop culture, she can be found reading, hiking, or talking about horror movies with the Zombie Grrlz Horror Podcast Network.
