RuPaul, the world’s first drag supermodel, is coming to Pride Toronto.

The 55-year-old actor, author, podcaster and TV personality will be making a guest appearance on the last day of Pride. He is to speak at the finale at Molson Canadian Stage in Yonge-Dundas Square at 7 p.m. Sunday.

RuPaul Andre Charles grew up in San Diego, Calif., before moving to Atlanta to study theatre at the North Atlanta School of Performing Arts in high school. Then he moved on to New York City, where he made a name for himself performing in drag on the club circuit. His 1993 breakthrough song “Supermodel (You Better Work)” set him on the path to becoming a household name and an LGBT icon.

Now settled in Los Angeles, he works on four TV shows — Skin Wars, Skin Wars: Fresh Paint, Gay for Play and Logo’s number one series, RuPaul’s Drag Race.

He’s appeared in more than 50 movies and TV shows, released 13 albums and was the first face of MAC Cosmetics Viva Glam campaign, which raises money for HIV-AIDS research.

Needless to say, RuPaul is ready to inspire on his weekend trip to Toronto, a city he says he loves.

“There’s a sweetness about the people there that my heart just longs for,” he says.

In past interviews, you’ve talked about dressing in girl’s clothing as a child and how your family didn’t deter you from it, which is great. How did you realize this felt natural, or comfortable to you?

It didn’t feel natural or comfortable — nothing about being a human felt natural or comfortable. I didn’t see it as girl’s clothes, I saw them as costumes. I always felt like the little boy who fell to Earth and so, the clothes, the colours, the music, the sounds, the tastes, the smells — all of it was something I wanted to explore as a human on the planet. But I never felt comfortable. I don’t even feel comfortable to this day. It’s all super surreal, the whole experience of life on this planet.

Why did you keep your real name as your stage name?

It was a big mistake, I’ll tell you that much. Because you don’t want your real name on public records when you buy property or when you go to the dentist’s office. There are some things you want to keep to yourself. And I tell all my kids who want to go into show business: change your name, use a different name.

Have you managed to keep anything in your private life to yourself?

Some things. But in this day in age, privacy is a thing of the 20th century. I’m totally sad it’s gone. I’m a Scorpio, so I’m very, very secretive. I’m very, very cautious about lots of things.

Who were your idols growing up?

I loved anyone who was free enough to have fun with life. Those are the people that I looked up to. I gravitated toward people who didn’t take life too seriously. But you get to a certain age and you don’t need to hitch your wagon to a star anymore.

It’s like when Dorothy says, ‘Follow the yellow brick road. I’m going to see the Wizard!’ Then you get to a point in your life where you get to the Wizard and you go, ‘oh, YOU’RE the Wizard!’ and then after that, you don’t need a star to realize your guiding force anymore. You find that your star emanates from within.

I read that David Bowie was a big inspiration for you. Did you ever get to meet him?

Oh my God. When I was 14, I used to carry a Magic Marker around with me and write Bowie on everything that wasn’t moving. Everything. I love him so, so much and I did get to meet him several times. He was absolutely lovely.

There are some people and you look them in the eye, and you can see that they get it. You can see their intellect and their sensitivity, and he was one of those people where he got it. He just got it. And you know there are certain rock stars you meet along the way and all you sense is just ego and a lot of pretentiousness. There was none of that with him.

How do you stay humble regardless of all your success?

My whole show business career? It’s a ruse. It’s a big hoo, hoo, hoo! Doing drag is saying to society and to the world of ‘you’ve got to be what it says you are on your driver’s licence’ — it’s saying, ‘Uh, screw that!’ I’m going to shape-shift and change and for all of us to be connected to the source.

We’re all God in drag. And it’s important to remember that and to not get swept away by all of the pretentiousness. Nothing is real, except perhaps love. Everything is changeable and moving.

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Can you elaborate on how God is drag?

We’re not separate from one another and we’re not separate from the source — that thing that we don’t know how to describe. The closest we’ve been able to describe this thing is the word “God,” which is limiting. It’s limiting because unfortunately certain people have taken that word and used it in a hideous, misinformed way. So we can just say “the source.”

So we are all the source and we’re just playing dress-up, and dress-up is drag. Whether you’re dressed up to be working on Wall Street or working at McDonald’s, we’re all dressing up.

Everyone in the LGBT community is holding each other a little tighter lately after all the terrible things that happened this year, from the massacre in Orlando to losing icons like Bowie. Is this part of why you’re coming to Pride this year?

I’m coming to Pride Toronto because I love Toronto, and I love people who dance to the beat of a different drummer — people who have cracked the code on humanity. These tragedies have turned into a real benchmark for humanity on this planet because we have an opportunity here to shift the collective consciousness and really wake the human race up.

We have a choice here, as humans on this planet, to decide whether we want to be gun-slinging cowboys, led by our emotions and our fragile egos. Or to elevate the human experience to a brighter consciousness, a consciousness that understands that we are of the source, that we are not these small, fragile egos wrapped in skin. We’re much bigger than that and we have to see ourselves as precious.

You’ve said before that you’ve lived like it’s Pride every day for the last 55 years. So how do you celebrate Pride — the parade — differently from in your everyday life?

For me, Pride Toronto is about young people who are searching for something to hold on to and trying to find their tribe. So Pride Toronto really means that young people are just now getting their footing and finding out they are the source.

So for me, it’s every day. But for some people, they’re just now getting into asking those questions.

Was there a moment when you felt like it clicked and you found your tribe?

I felt very alienated really, up until about the time I was in my early teens. And that’s when I found Monty Python on public television, and that’s when I thought: OK, they’re out there! My tribe is out there, and I have to find them.

And not specifically Monty Python, but people like them, with that mentality, who didn’t take any of it seriously. They were in drag, out of drag, they joked about religion, language, race, everything. Nothing was off-limits, and that’s how I felt.

So that’s when everything clicked for me. Then years later, in my acting class in high school, I found other members of my tribe, and I went: OK, here we go! And I never looked back.