No one would look at me and think, ‘obviously influenced by Patti LaBelle.’ But I am!”Īnd then there’s the comedy. Even now, with an established look, “I still take little bits and pieces from stars I like. It may be taking a little thing like a hand movement or a silhouette,” she explains. “First it was drag performers with stage presence as I was coming of age in Tennessee and then Atlanta, but I love Carol Channing, Charo, and Nell Carter. Conscientious drag queens know it is a meticulous study of idiosyncrasies from stage and screen that others may miss, and then blending it all into a whole new presentation bigger than the sum of its parts so that the dress, wig, and makeup “werk.” Drag is more than putting on a dress, wig, and makeup. Moreover, Bunny admits her professional persona is itself an amalgamation of influences. “It’s not what I set out to do, but it’s flattering if I am.” “But you are never going to catch me on tape saying I’m influential!” she declares. Lady Bunny even circled back to her former partner in crime and starred in RuPaul’s Drag U. There were roles in Sex and the City, the movies Party Girl and To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar, and she was one of the burners in the Comedy Central roast of Pamela Anderson. That same year she created Wigstock, an outdoor festival celebrating all things drag going strong to this day. First conquering the Atlanta bar scene (alongside her roommate, a fellow up-and-comer named RuPaul), she moved to New York in 1984 and enmeshed herself into the Club Kids, a flamboyant group of hard-partying personalities that became the body-glittered lifeforce of the city’s night culture. More, she holds the rare distinction of achieving a level of fame outside of a gay club on her own terms. With her 60’s-on-shrooms gowns, out-the-door eyelashes, and wigs big enough to snare the occasional satellite, Lady Bunny reigns as one of the most venerable drag queens in American history and a veritable celebrity in LGBTQ+ circles. “I thought ‘let’s all have a laugh now, release the tension about it, and get it out of the way.’ Now I’m not so sure we will not be needing the COVID-19 jokes…” “Back in March, I sat down and wrote a ton of COVID-19 jokes to get them out there because I thought we wouldn’t be needing them in six months from then,” says the bumptiously bouffanted Lady Bunny when the coronavirus pandemic first began making headlines. A drag legend injects comedy into a year desperate for it.
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