Bewildered, the receptionist opened her eyes wide and asked again, "Who's your appointment with?"
"Karl Sanchez."
No, that doesn't ring a bell... Her colleague jumps to her rescue and whispers with a small smile: "It's Nicky." Her face lights up.
"Of course it is! I'll call him right away."
Karl Sanchez had just got in from New York, where he lives. He's better known by his drag queen name, "Nicky Doll." He's in good humor. Jet lag? Not for him. "I'm used to it by now!" he explained. We met him in a small private room in a hotel in Paris's 11th arrondissement. And since it's Nicky Doll who attracts the spotlight, we agreed to carry out this interview using feminine pronouns.
The flamboyant host and juror of Drag Race France (an offshoot of the American reality show RuPaul's Drag Race) is in her native country at the end of April for the press conference to present season 3, the first episode of which will air on France 2 and France.tv on Friday, May 31. The first two seasons of the drag queen competition, won by Paloma and then Keiona, were seen by 7 million and 11.2 million viewers respectively, according to France Télévisions.
It was a phenomenal and unexpected success that has turned 33-year-old Nicky Doll from the big sister of French drag into a queen mother. Or mother hen. "I'm very proud to say that all the queens who took part in the show are now making a living from drag," she said, referring in particular to the careers of La Grande Dame (finalist in RuPaul's Drag Race: UK vs The World), Piche (muse of French queer rap) and Lolita Banana (presenter of the Drag Race Mexico franchise). "It's pretty great!" enthused Nicky Doll. All the more so when you consider how far drag has come.
Drag originated in the queer counterculture around 1870. From the late 2010s in France, queens began to emerge from gay clubs and enjoy greater visibility. In the summer of 2022, the exuberant divas of season 1 of Drag Race completed their conquest of an audience that now extends beyond the LGBTQ+ circle.
As for Nicky Doll, she had to earn her stripes far from France. In 2020, while already living in the United States, she was the first "Frenchie" to take part in RuPaul's Drag Race (season 12). Labeled a "fashion queen" by American viewers, Nicky Doll, who is also a professional make-up artist, wears outfits in homage to the great French couturiers (Christian Dior, Azzedine Alaïa...). But the language barrier and her lack of confidence prevented her from displaying the full extent of her talent. She was eventually eliminated at the end of the fifth episode.
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