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The Capital Late Show with Sonny Jay 10pm - 1am
29 January 2024, 16:49
On the eve of her latest theatrical spectacular, The Big Reveal Live Show, touring across the US, UK & Europe in February through to April, global drag icon Sasha Velour takes a trip down memory lane to answer our My Life In 20 questions.
I have famously bad taste in film but there are 3 movies I’d put in that category: The Fall by Tarsem Singh, Housu by Nobuhiko Obayashi, and Female Trouble by John Waters. I’ll admit: visuals are more important than plot to me. But I do like a weird plot.
The intersections between the history of drag and queer and trans activism. Also the Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.
At 18, I lived in St. Petersburg, Russia for a year with family and worked as an English language teacher. It taught me how to be very uncomfortable, and still find joy and opportunity. I think that’s served me well.
Kyan Douglas from the original Queer Eye. I (ironically) find a great head of hair so attractive. Also, he was always so earnest and kind with his makeovers, at the time I’d never seen a gay person in media like that before.
I spent the day at the Illinois DMV and got my driver’s license—I was trying to get out of there! Now I’m a typical New Yorker and don’t drive at all.
Sasha Velour's "The Big Reveal Live Show" Tour Teaser
Tomatoes—I still find the texture alarming, but the flavour is worth it.
I decided I was too much of a hipster for TV and became obsessed with Orson Welles and Agnes Moorehead in “The Shadow”—a 1937 radio mystery program I copied from library cassette tapes!
I’m only superstitious about January 1st. Following Slavic tradition, I believe how you spend the day will set the tone for the entire year.
Someone who’s retired and living in the mountains…
My only friends in middle school were boys from the ESL program. I always remember Shi Yin’s 11th birthday party where he told me my name “Sasha” sounded like “kill kill” in Cantonese, and I felt very seen.
Spiralling about if I did a “bad job” at something.
I was terrified of speaking in public because my voice was so high pitched, people always thought I was a girl. Of your now I have one of the deepest voices of any drag queen! I remember visiting Plymouth Rock and one of the actors said “a young girl like you would be sweeping the house.” Core memory!
An actor. And my dream was to only play villains.
I don’t have any bit of that Catholic shame in me! I think the mixed Jewish and Protestant “deadly sins” are more about hurting people’s feelings or not working hard enough in life. And I’m in therapy about those to this day!
My artistic heroes: Barbette, Divine, RuPaul, Sylvia Rivera, Josephine Baker, and Andy Warhol. I don’t think they’d get along, but that could be even more iconic!
Fiction, mirrors, the sublime beauty of nature, “masculine” scented candles, and anything sweet.
Intense, artsy-fartsy, earnest, camp.
'Au Fond Du Temple Saint' - Bizet (the Bjorling/Merrill recording), 'Wild is the Wind' - the Nina Simone version, 'Toxic' - Britney Spears.
To star on Broadway or in a feature film. And to buy a house (all I own now are clothes and costume jewelry).
DRAG—the art and the community.
'The Big Reveal Life Show' is directed, written, and produced by Velour. The 90-minute, one-queen show is billed as Sasha's "most shocking, hilarious, emotional, and campy theatrical production to date—and still her most intimate one yet." Find tickets to The Big Reveal Live Show tour here. Full tour dates below.
U.S.
UK
Europe
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