RuPauls Drag Race / YouTube Ariana Grande on "RuPauls Drag Race"
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” season 15 premiered last night, January 6, on MTV (after making the move from VH1 this year), and “The Voice” judge and pop superstar Ariana Grande joined RuPaul and regular judges Michelle Visage and Ross Matthews as the premiere episode’s guest judge.
Grande has been a vocal “Drag Race” fan for years, often sharing photos of her favorite contestants on her Instagram story. She has appeared once before as a guest judge back in season 7 (and revealed in last night’s episode that her season 7 appearance was taped the day after she filmed the “Bang Bang” music video), but was announced as the special guest for both hours of the two-part premiere episode when the trailer for the new season came out over the holidays.
Other guest judges this season include musicians Maren Morris, Hayley Kiyoko, and Orville Peck as well as actors Amandla Stenberg, Janelle Monáe, Harvey Guillén, Julia Garner, and comedians Megan Stalter and Ali Wong.
Ariana Grande Surprised the Queens in the Werk Room
The “Drag Race” season 15 cast was split in half at the beginning of the premiere. After the first half of the queens walked into the Werk Room (the contestant’s dressing room), Ariana Grande entered the room in disguise. Grande was dressed in a replica of a memorable entrance look from season 6, where contestant Vivacious entered in an oversized jacket, which covered her face, with a mannequin head sitting on top of her own head. Vivacious unzipped the jacket to reveal her actual face and said “Mother has arrived!” and later revealed that she had named the mannequin head Ornacia.
Grande’s homage to Vivacious and Ornacia had all the contestants wondering who was under the jacket. They assumed it was another contestant, and were very pleasantly surprised to see it was Grande and be able to meet her in person.
While the first half of the contestants were taken away to work on their first challenge, the second half were introduced in the Werk Room, and somebody in the Ornacia costume came back in to surprise the remaining queens. While viewers assumed this would be Grande repeating her same reveal, when the jacket was opened it was shown that this time it was actually Vivacious behind the zipper, who had come to surprise the new cast and introduce RuPaul.
2 Queens Lip-Synced to an Ariana Grande Song
As is customary with every episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race”, the season 15 premiere ended with a “Lip Sync for Your Life” between the bottom two contestants to decide which of the two would be sent packing.
The bottom two after the premiere episode’s talent show challenge were Irene DuBois and Amethyst, who were both unable to make their jokes land during their talent show performances. The two lip-synced to Grande’s hit song “7 Rings” in a performance that had Grande bowing in praise. In the end, Amethyst was declared the winner of the lip sync, and Irene DuBois was the first drag queen sent home this season.
New episodes of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” season 15 air Friday nights at 8 pm Eastern on MTV.
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