'RuPaul's Drag Race' Season Six :: The Interview with Winner Bianca del Rio

Kilian Melloy READ TIME: 2 MIN.

For those of you reading this column on a regular basis, you know I have made it very clear for about six weeks that Bianca was my favorite and should win "RuPaul's Drag Race Season 6." This is the first time in all six years that I predicted who the winner should be. I could not have been happier that RuPaul crowned Bianca, until I started thinking about the fact that I would be interviewing her, and then I got very excited! It was a pleasure to sit down with Bianca for this exclusive Hotspots interview.

At what age did drag become an interest and how did you pick your name?

I started drag when I was 20. I was working for a theater company and there was an awkward moment when they needed someone to do drag in a play and I volunteered. I have since been on an 18-year journey of being a man in a wig.

I got my name when I was drunk in a bar and a friend said I looked like a Bianca and it clicked. She also picked my last name.

How many times did you apply to be on "RPDR," and how did it feel when you found out you were chosen?

I only applied once and it was overwhelming when I got chosen. You send in an audition tape and you wait months, and then you get the call and only have 4 days to get everything together and travel to California.

Tell me about your "RuPaul's Drag Race" experience.

It's surreal and you feel like you are in the TV. You never know what's to come and that's the part I loved about it. I never thought about winning, just about the individual challenges and trying to do the best I could do. There is no down time between challenges.

How crazy has your life become since the start of this season of "RuPaul's Drag Race?"

My life was crazy before "Drag Race," but now it's even crazier. It's time-consuming, interviewing and planning and traveling all over the country. I just didn't realize how time-consuming it really was going to be. I am just lucky it happened to me now at 38 instead of at 20, because I can digest it now. It's an adjustment, but I definitely wasn't ready for this when I was younger.

If you couldn't win, who would you want to win and why?

All three of us discussed this and we said whomever won, we would be grateful. I wouldn't have been upset if either one of them won. They are both so talented.

Tell me about the man behind Bianca.

He has to shave all the time...LOL. The show has shown all of me so I have no secrets; he is the same person as Bianca.

What are you going to do with the $100,000? What's the first thing you are going to buy?

I have to pay my dentist a lot of money, but I am an old queen, so I am going to do an adult thing and put a deposit down on a condo.


by Kilian Melloy , EDGE Staff Reporter

Kilian Melloy serves as EDGE Media Network's Associate Arts Editor and Staff Contributor. His professional memberships include the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association, the Boston Online Film Critics Association, The Gay and Lesbian Entertainment Critics Association, and the Boston Theater Critics Association's Elliot Norton Awards Committee.

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