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Season nine of RuPaul's Drag Race concluded Friday with one of the most dramatic finales in Drag Race herstory — a sudden-death lip-sync battle between the top four queens. After besting Shea Couleé on "So Emotional" (rose petals will never look the same again) and Peppermint on "It's Not Right but It's OK" (ditto white ball gowns), Brooklyn-based Sasha Velour took home the crown just before celebrating her 30th birthday. "It was a pretty epic way to turn 30," she says. "On Pride, on the float, having just won Drag Race. It was very exciting." Here, Sasha talks about what she learned from the judges, when she thought she might go home, and the moment she realized she could win it all.

Throughout the season, you talked about wanting to represent a new kind of drag. What does that mean to you?

I don’t think that I’m necessarily inventing anything new with drag, but there’s a lot of different aspects with the drag world that haven’t always been represented or haven’t always been shown successfully on the show before. So I wanted to bring the culture of drag that we have in my hometown of Brooklyn, which loves a kind of intellectual drag, a kind of serious drag, an artistic drag, and a very political drag. I wanted to demonstrate that we can be successful, even within a framework that puts a lot of emphasis on beauty and humor. All those elements right now are really important — humor is so important, beauty is so important, but also strength and political awareness and real cleverness is required for a drag superstar in this day and age, and I wanted to show that I have all of those things.

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Something that kept coming up on the runway was whether or not you were being too intellectual with your drag. What was the best piece of advice you got from the judges?

They told me that I didn’t need to work so hard to show the level of thought in my drag, that it would come through even if I was being light, even if I was being silly. I think part of me didn’t believe that was true. I pushed myself to try just going fully for the silliness, and even then, people still thought I was being too intellectual, because the truth is that’s the reality of how I am. That’s how I grew up, my parents are super intellectual. At the end of the day, I think that was the reason that I won. I put a lot of thought into how I wanted to present those last performances, with only 24 hours basically to prepare those songs. I was able to think fast and on my feet. That was an example of how intellectualizing is such a powerful tool. It’s needed in the world now more than ever, but at the same time, you don’t want to go too far with it, and you want to maintain that spirit of lightness and silliness. That was the lesson that I learned most strongly from the judges. Especially RuPaul, who’s also someone who’s totally an intellectual at the core but has learned how to use that and present it in a way that’s successful on a mass scale.



You only had 24 hours to get ready for the final lip-syncs?

We had some awareness that we were gonna have to perform but the final song choice, we had only a very short time to prepare them. I practiced it once in my hotel room, in the hallway between the door and the bathroom mirror.

Sasha at the finale taping in June. Getty Images

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Before the finale, you hadn’t had to lip-sync at all. How did it feel to have to do it for the first time at this huge moment?

Kind of amazing, because I wanted to show that aspect of my drag. I felt a kind of regret when I came home from filming, because the essence of my drag here in Brooklyn is my performances, and I didn’t really get to show that passion and that fire that I have when I get to lip-sync. But at the same time, the pressure has never been greater for a lip-sync than it was in that moment! I saw it as an opportunity that I really had to step up to, a final chance to show that I have the makings of a superstar.

What was the hardest moment in the competition for you?

It was probably right after the ball, when I wasn’t given the win, even though I was told that I did really well again. I really had a hard time understanding why I continued to do so well in the competition but was not able to secure a solo win for myself. I really worried that my chances of taking the crown were completely lost, that there was something about my drag or the way that I presented myself that the judges just weren’t responding to. That gave me a fire to show that I do have the kind of confidence and bravado that my competitors were showing, that I sat with for months and months [before the finale taping].

Did you go into the show thinking, "I could win this," or did that sort of evolve as the show progressed?

I definitely did not go in with that expectation! I tried to have no expectations because I knew that I would be completely wrong. Everyone says that you cannot prepare for what the experience would be like and that is so, so true. The fact that I made it to the end was, like, success to me. I really began to feel like I had a chance to win while the show was airing. I felt that I was worthy of it, that I had grown enough with my drag, improved it and strengthened it as a result of my experience on the show, and that I was finally ready to take the crown by the time of the finale.



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How do you think RuPaul's Drag Race is influencing drag for future drag queens?

Drag Race always showcases lots of different styles of drag and indicates how important diversity in the drag world is. Every year, they find new ways to expand what people are familiar with when it comes to drag, and that’s so important. My favorite thing about this season is this final insistence on live performance and the importance of being able to captivate an audience. That really cuts to the heart of what drag has always been about and I’m really excited that there’s kind of a renaissance of lip-syncing thanks to this finale.



Follow Eliza on Twitter.

