Kenya Pleaser first got the call at her day job, frantically typing door codes at the Shaw Air Force Base Spratt Education Center to get to the parking lot and answer her phone. When a casting offer for RuPaul’s Drag Race is on the other end of the line, it’s best not to keep anyone waiting.
“It felt so surreal,” Pleaser said. “I was scared, I was nervous, I was excited, I was terrified again and then wrapped right back around to excited. It was a lot.”
A regular performer at Columbia hotspots like the Capital Club, Pleaser was publicly announced as a contestant on the 18th season of reality television phenomenon “RuPaul’s Drag Race” in early December. The season premiered on MTV about a month later to record-breaking viewership. Each year, a group of 14 queens compete for the title of "America's Next Drag Superstar" in challenges designed to test their comedic chops and fashion campy couture.
Queens are sworn to secrecy about their casting on the show until the official announcement and stay in a hotel without outside communication with friends or family for the duration of filming. Other contestants have discussed the pressure's impact after the show, and Pleaser was no exception to the strain, balancing the competition's demands for emotional vulnerability and professional excellence.
"No other reality TV show requires you to be as vulnerable as Rupaul's Drag Race," Pleaser said. "You can tell all your business about what you go through as a child, but then you have to turn around and compete in a comedy challenge."
Though Pleaser had a shaky start in the competition’s first main challenge, she held on to advice from her mother in her lowest moments.
“On the first episode, I wear this shirt in the work room — when I was having that breakdown — it said, ‘the mindset [i]s everything.’ My mom actually bought me that shirt to wear on the first day of Drag Race,” Pleaser said. “That was probably the best piece of advice that anyone has ever given me in life.”
Even before filming began, Pleaser’s life was thrown into chaos by preparation for the show. Drag Race contestants have upped the ante on the show as its popularity skyrocketed, setting the bar high for looks, performances and, notably, budget. One of last season's finalists, Lexi Love, even admitted to taking out a second mortgage on her house to finance her looks in an interview with queer publication Them.
On top of quitting her job to film, Pleaser had to pull together the funds for a stellar drag wardrobe and to cover the bills on her apartment for the months she’d be gone. She traveled as far as Los Angeles and Florida to gather the skills and costumes she’d need to take with her. Pleaser worked up until a week before she left, but she wasn’t going to let the price tag shake her confidence.
“Girl, I was pinching pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. I’m just working my butt off to make this happen,” Pleaser said. “I know I'm going to be around people, they have all this money, they have all this access, they have all these things, and one thing I knew that they did not have over me was a personality.”
That personality has won her fans across the country, with Drag Race viewers from both Columbia and elsewhere praising her humor and down-to-earth character. The judges praised her charisma on several occasions, and Pleaser's confessionals — private cutaways of a queen's inner monologue à la “The Kardashians” — made for many a quippy transition. "Kenya Pleaser is one of the best things to happen to #rupaulsdragrace — she exudes star quality,” wrote X user @wondisims.
The high-energy lip sync in episode four to “Lights, Camera, Action” by Kylie Minogue drew even more attention to her abilities. “Kenya Pleaser is a PERFORMER!!!!!!! What a star wow!!! #DragRace” posted X user @aboynamedpierre following her matchup with fellow queen Briar Blush.
But, according to her, the “Pleaser Experience” isn’t only about the performance and glamour. Raised in Manning, South Carolina — a town with a population of fewer than 4,000 people — Pleaser understands drag as an art that carries impact far beyond the stage. Her persona itself is a way for her to deconstruct internalized homophobia and toxic masculinity — topics she feels are particularly underdiscussed within the Black community.
"I think we have to deconstruct what politics and what being political truly is," Pleaser said.
And going from being the only openly gay student at a high school of 600 to competing for the Drag Race crown is breaking the mold even further — now on a national scale and at the highest level of drag.
“I’m a plus-size Black gay man from the South. Me getting up in drag is already a statement in itself, and then me being good at it, it's like, ‘oh my goodness,’” Pleaser said. “Me stepping out of the norm and doing what I am ... that is political, and that is something that I should be proud of.”
