Entertainer

Drag is great way to get people to pay attention to me, but it's a difficult way to get people to take me seriously as a musician. So it's a weird Catch-22. It's like a gimmick that gets them to pay attention, but when they see my image, they're like, 'There's no way this is going to have any legitimacy to it.'

I want to look otherworldly, like I was made in a factory.

People on a daily basis walk up to me, panic, and tell me something extremely graphic and violent about their life.

As a kid, I wasn't allowed to have girl toys, but I would take my cousin's My Little Pony and smell it. That weird, synthetic, fruity-sweet smell - that's how I wanted to look. I wanted to look like this fabricated toy. I wanted to look like you could pull a string on my back, and I would say, like, six catchphrases.

I grew up playing guitar and writing music, and I always wanted to be a songwriter and a singer and play the guitar. But while I was finishing college, my drag became lucrative, so I had to pursue what was going to pay the bills - and doing comedy as Trixie was something that I was able to market.

I always tell my mom that if she would have just bought me a Barbie when I was little, I would have gone into real estate.

I'm always myself. Always. The only difference is that I come off as mean out of drag.

People don't realize 'Drag Race' is a certain percent competition, but it's also a game show. There's a certain amount of throwing dice and spinning wheels, and there are twists and turns all the time. Part of it is also having the right idea and pulling the right look together that day. We're all making choices in the moment.

I listened to a lot of what my grandparents listened to: George Jones, Johnny Cash - a lot of old country singers. Patsy Cline.

With Trixie specifically, on the one hand, it's a celebration of femininity. It's that moment when you're playing Pretty Pretty Princess, and there's also, this is what society says a girl looks like, the amount of makeup I wear and the humongous blond wigs.

Something that I love about drag is that it's a celebration of feminity.

I hate drag. It's extremely uncomfortable. It's awful. I'm in a full corset and pads and giant wigs.

I used to make everything myself. I used to do my own hair, make my own costumes, write my own jokes, and write my own songs. There were definitely some days where I had to choose between having tights that didn't have holes in them or having to buy makeup or something I needed for a show.

When I'm in drag, I don't always want to be spoken to, but I love being looked at. Nobody puts that much work into how they look to be ignored.

I think people are slowly realizing that don't have to be looking in a mirror to enjoy something. And they're realizing that watching a show with drag queens in it doesn't make you gay any more then listening to rap makes you black.

As drag queens and as comic people, we listen to our own artistic compass all the time.

I don't expect a lot of people who love drag to also be like, 'I love 'Drag Race,' and then I got to hear my Chris Stapleton album.' Not necessarily an obvious crossover.

I don't pull punches at all, and I write my material for adults. But if kids like it, they can come watch it. I'll never change anything about what I do for anyone. I kind of think that's why kids like me. If you're a teenager, and there's someone onstage talking to you like an adult, that's good.

Trixie Mattel is a product of bad things that happened to me, and it's how I deal with things. It's wonderful.

'All Stars' is a weird game. The rules are weird. However, I think 'All Stars' mirrors the real industry much more closely than normal seasons of 'Drag Race' do. In the real world of entertainment, it really is about the impressions you leave on your brothers and sisters in the room, and that's kind of what it is about.