Watch: World's first drag king competition series unveils cast in fierce new teaser
'Bring in the kings!' host Murray Hill announces at the start of the clip. From there, we meet Perka Sexx, who knows how to be 'wildly inappropriate'; Dick Von Dyke, who is 'desperately looking to stand out'; Charles Galin King who is just happy to be seen; Tuna Melt, who is 'going to give it to you raw'; the king himself King Molasses; the oldest person in the competition Big D; Henlo Bulfrog, who 'desperately' wants this; Alexander The Great, who finds 'ultimate freedom' in drag; the energetic Pressure K; and Buck Wylde, who wants 'every bit of it'.
Joining the cast of drag acts will be a star-studded panel of judges, also known as the King's Court. Among the names are Bridget Everett, Jeff Hiller, Tenderon, Sasha Velour, Paul Feig, Gottmik and many more.
The show is set to be a celebration of masculinity in all its forms, serving bold, brilliant and unapologetic talent like never before. Get ready for swagger to meet sequins as the 10 kings take centre stage for this groundbreaking competition.
According to Christopher J. Rodriguez, Co-Founder of Revry, King of Drag is one of the streaming platform's most ambitious programmes to date. He promised that the show will follow a new and exciting format, explaining, 'In each episode, we will learn more about the individual king's backstory, what motivates them, and their goals.'
Rodriguez added: 'We're going to give the drag competition format a run for its money and give audiences something fresh and original.'
In a press release, Revry also stated that the show will incorporate challenges that emphasise comedy, unconventional performances and 'timely commentary on masculinity, which has been part of the drag king subculture for decades.'
Don't miss King of Drag, streaming June 22, only on Revry.
The post Watch: World's first drag king competition series unveils cast in fierce new teaser appeared first on GCN.
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Yahoo
07-08-2025
- Yahoo
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Yahoo
26-07-2025
- Yahoo
'King of Drag's' Perka $exxx says his drag combats 'the horrors in my day-to-day' (exclusive)
For King Perka $exxx, watching himself on the first season of King of Drag was, in a word, a 'mindf*ck,' but doing the show itself was a 'great time' for the drag king, whose wicked paint and endlessly quotable, hilarious quips quickly made him a fan favorite. It's hard to imagine the season without the Charlotte, South Carolina-based drag star, but that's nearly what happened. 'I almost quit. I almost didn't go,' he reveals. When the drag artist isn't thrilling audiences with his transgressive and political performances, he's a college student with a job 'working for, like the big evil bad coffee company,' and finding a balance between all those priorities almost became too much for Perka. 'It was a lot, and I couldn't just quit my job...I wanted to make sure I had a life to come back to. So it was difficult trying to prepare while trying to also keep my life together,' he recalls. 'I just had to talk to myself: 'Calm down. It's okay, don't focus on winning. Focus on having fun and having fun making memories,'' he says. 'I told myself, as long as I keep having fun, I won. And also, if I didn't win the horror challenge, I was gonna quit drag.' Bobby Kerns Thankfully, he did, with a performance that laid bare both his journey to coming out as a trans man and the trauma of the lack of acceptance from his mother. It's a performance so real and so raw that Perka admits he hasn't been able to watch it. 'Oh, I can't watch my floor show. It triggers me,' he says. 'When I do scary horror drag, one of the reasons why I like doing it is that if I'm the scary thing, that means I can't get scared, and I can't be scared if I'm the one that's in control and doing the scaring.' And nothing is scarier than trauma. 'People [online] are like, 'Oh, why didn't they do things like, like spiders or like sharks?'' he reveals. 'A shark isn't gonna tell me to drop dead over eating cereal. A shark isn't gonna do that to me.' 'I see on the Reddit comments people [asking] why is Perk so mean to himself?' he shares. 'I'm like, bitch, that's what my mom said to me as an adult, imagine when I was a kid.' There's no shortage of things for Perka to be afraid of living as a Black trans man in the South, something the performer acknowledges. 'I use horror drag as a way to navigate the horrors that I just face in my day-to-day existence,' he explains. 'I always joke with people — kind of joke, kind of not I want to do something scary and dangerous, I'll just drive past a cop car. If I want to do something that's dangerous, I will just exist at night and walk too close to a white lady, and then that's dangerous for me. I could walk in a neighborhood and not wave to someone, and then that becomes a dangerous situation for me. I could just drive through a really rednecky rural area and see the Confederate flag flying everywhere. I could do that. That's scary for me.' 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It may be a bit, but not forever. 'I feel like after a few years, when my non-compete is over and I can get my bank account padded up a little more, I would audition for something else, I would,' he shares. While Perka might not have snagged the King of Drag title, one thing is clear: he knows he's won anyway. 'We all feel like winners already,' he explains. 'Because it's the first season [and] we're setting up a long legacy that's gonna happen.' Oh, and again, if you missed it the first time, here's his Cash App. This article originally appeared on Pride: 'King of Drag's' Perka $exxx says his drag combats 'the horrors in my day-to-day' (exclusive)
Miami Herald
30-06-2025
- Miami Herald
Philly drag king gets the national spotlight in ‘King of Drag'
PHILADELPHIA -- Painter Joy Taney knows how to awe and unsettle viewers. With dynamic makeup and body painting skills, she has transformed actors into ghouls at Eastern State Penitentiary for Halloween and designed stunning looks for contestants on "RuPaul's Drag Race." Taney first met RuPaul in 2016 when she competed in "Skin Wars: Fresh Paint," which the celebrity drag queen hosted, and won the $10,000 grand prize. With the winnings, the West Philly native relocated back home to work as a professional makeup artist and quickly became a regular behind the scenes of drag shows - and on the three latest seasons of "Drag Race" - where her talent was sorely sought after. But Taney had "more outrageous ideas." She wanted more horror and gore with prosthetics and latex; she wanted something monstrous and extraordinary. Her clients found that too extreme. "I realized I was having those ideas for myself," said Taney. "The only person who was really going to be embodying the thing that I was looking for in the drag scene, but wasn't quite seeing, was me." Enter Henlo Bullfrog. Around 2017, Taney created the stage persona where she could embrace a fantastical mess of a character: "Henlo Bullfrog is Joy Taney's changeling twin brother who was stolen by the fairies at birth and dropped in a frog pond for 30 years," she explained. "He is very fae, but he's also very monstrous, because he's a shape-shifter." Bullfrog has brought Taney out of dressing rooms of other performers and thrown her into the spotlight with her own brand of dazzling weirdness. Now, Bullfrog has earned a spot representing Philadelphia on the nation's first-ever drag king reality competition show, "King of Drag," now airing on the free LGBTQ+ streaming service Revry. Philly's drag kingdom Philly's drag and burlesque workshops taught Taney the art of being a drag king - typically a female performer who dresses in masculine clothing and emphasizes gendered stereotypes. (However, as a queer art form that gleefully blurs gender divides, drag isn't prescriptive; not all kings are women, not all queens are men, and not all drag looks the same.) Drag kings constitute a smaller subgenre of mainstream drag, often booking fewer gigs and earning less stage time than the more popular drag queens. That discrepancy has played out on national television, too, as "RuPaul's Drag Race" has run for a whopping 17 seasons, expanding with franchise spinoffs like "All Stars," before the arrival of "King of Drag." For Taney, becoming a drag king meant experimenting with monster drag, embodying horror characters like the Babadook at Philly Pride Parades, and learning the best ways to showcase her artistic talent onstage at venues like Frankie Bradley's and Tattooed Mom. Airbrush makeup is Taney's speciality, a practice she learned from Philly artist Bryon Wackwitz, who, for years, ran South Street's Mutt Airbrush and Art Supply. Unlike performers who rely on dance, Taney lives with a disability called reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome that limits her movements. Instead, she focuses on stagecraft, costume transformations, and illusions, like layering makeup to "tear off" her face and reveal gore underneath. On King of Drag, Henlo Bullfrog delivers a unique amphibious aesthetic that helps him stand out from the other nine contestants. Nearly a decade into performing drag in Philadelphia, Taney, 38, says the queer nightlife scene has become more welcoming of drag kings. "Philadelphia is gaining a reputation as one of the better cities in the U.S. for drag kings," she said. "We have the biggest drag king scene I've ever seen in Philadelphia right now, in terms of variety of styles of king performance, visuals, and gender expression." Philadelphia drag gained more recognition on last year's season of RuPaul's Drag Race, which saw the first drag queen to represent the city: the charismatic opera singer Sapphira Cristál. Taney was part of Cristál's creative team, airbrushing a bodysuit with fig leaves to evoke Eve in the Garden of Eden and helping design winning looks like the massive flower outfit and the spooky Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater character. Cristál was a finalist for the crown and won Miss Congeniality. In classic Philly underdog fashion, some fans believe she was robbed of the title. "People were like 'RuPaul better not come to Philadelphia. We're going to fight,'" Taney recalled, laughing. Taney and Cristál first met when the latter took Taney's airbrush makeup classes and today they're close friends; Henlo Bullfrog is part of Cristál's drag house, which includes about a dozen other local drag performers. Becoming Bullfrog Raised by folk musicians in West Philly, Taney has developed her own musical talent for the stage. As Henlo Bullfrog, she pushes her performances to be more unhinged; Part of the "King of Drag" audition included a video of Bullfrog playing trombone with his feet. Beyond the folk influence, Taney's dad, Peter, has been a guiding light for the creation of Bullfrog. "My dad is so present in Henlo. I contour based on my father's bone structure," said Taney. "He's even done some monster drag with me, and wrote a song called 'The Ballad of Henlo Bullfrog,' and we play it together." At 75, Peter Taney regularly travels from his home in the Poconos to see drag at Philly nightclubs, and to occasionally participate in local activism. In recent years, the Taneys worked to successfully petition the city to rename Taney Street, which recognized their notorious ancestor Roger B. Taney, the U.S. Supreme Court Justice behind the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which denied humanity to enslaved African Americans and claimed they could never become citizens. That street is now named LeCount, after local civil rights activist Caroline LeCount. For Joy Taney, performing as a drag king represents another activist practice in the face of the Trump administration's calls to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth and attacks on drag performers. "One of the most fun things about the drag king medium is that you punch up at the people at the very top - the men holding power over all of these systems that are making it worse for all of us," said Taney. "Drag kings are so perfectly and uniquely posed to make fun of them … It is so punk to queer masculinity right now." ____ "King of Drag" airs weekly on Sundays on Revry. On Monday nights, Henlo Bullfrog hosts a watch party for the show at Strangelove's. Copyright (C) 2025, Tribune Content Agency, LLC. 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