‘RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars’ is on it’s 10th season, and fans are overjoyed to see so many returning faces, especially this time around with a whopping 18 queens returning for this season. To break things up and to make sure fans stay engaged, All stars 10 has broken the 18 queens up into 3 groups of 6, with each group sending 3 finalists to the semi-finals to compete for the crown. Now that the first rotation of queens has finished and chosen their final 3, the next rotation has taken the stage by storm, but one queen in particular has managed to stand out long before her All Stars episodes even aired.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 08: Nicole Paige Brooks attends RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 10 Red carpet … More
Nicole Paige Brooks, of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ season 2 fame, has managed to capture the hearts of fans through a rare currency in the world of reality TV: Authenticity. Nicole’s return to Drag Race brings back of era of contestants that existed before Drag Race had become the multi-Emmy award-winning reality competition show that it is today. While social media was still prevalent, with she show using hashtags for fans to interact when it still aired on Logo TV, the Drag Race fandom was nowhere near the juggernaut that it is today, with the season 2 premiere having 301,000 and the latest season on MTV having its series peak at 3.2 million viewers as an example.
Fans have noted that in earlier seasons of the show, when the social media presence of the fandom was nowhere near as strong, queens didn’t seem like they were “self-editing.” With several queens across the franchise receiving threats and unmitigated amounts of hate, it’s no surprise that newer contestants deliver an onscreen persona to protect themselves and their brand. Still, this is what has driven Nicole Paige Brooks to the forefront of fans’ discussions of contestants. She just doesn’t care.
With clips resurfacing on social media of Nicole’s original season, press conferences for the latest season, and queens talking about her larger than life personality while talking to fans on social media; Nicole has endeared fans to her by showing that she embodies the raw and unfiltered spirit of early seasons, even a decade after the fact. Nicole comes across as a polished performer, but she also shows that she isn’t trying to manufacture a moment, and her interactions with other contestants don’t feel like she’s rehearsed in hopes of having a viral moment; she’s just naturally funny and entertaining.
Even outside of Drag Race, fans of other reality television shows have talked about how they crave authenticity from the casts of the shows they’re watching.
Nicole Paige Brooks reminds us that Drag Race is about more than serving looks, building your brand, and winning the competition; it’s also about community and vulnerability, everything else is just a bonus. As her bracket of All Stars 10 continues to unfold, fans can only hope that Nicole is chosen as one of the 3 queens to go onto the semi-finals, but even if she isn’t picked she’s managed to endear herself to a whole new generation of fans that have been craving authenticity like hers for seasons on end.
“I haven’t had to change my fact to change my career,” Brooks said on the latest All Stars episode. “My pronouns are icon and legend.”
