The Drag Race franchise continues to expand with the launch of RuPaul’s Drag Race Live Untucked on WOW Presents Plus. The new series offers a behind-the-scenes look at Drag Race’s IRL spinoff, Las Vegas’ RuPaul’s Drag Race Live! While you don’t get to see much of the actual Vegas show (you gotta buy tickets — that’s what the QR code is for!), Drag Race Live Untucked gives you the opportunity to kiki with all the queens in the cast before and after they hit the stage. So — is RuPaul’s Drag Race Live Untucked worth the price of admission? Or should the spotlight turn off the second the queens leave the stage?
Opening Shot: It’s Las Vegas, baby! What else did you expect? The Las Vegas setting is one of the major selling points of the show, especially since RuPaul’s Drag Race proper exists in a hermetically sealed bio-dome consisting of the Werk Room and Mainstage. Now you actually get to see these girls go out on the town!
The Gist: RuPaul’s Drag Race Live Untucked is here to — well, it’s here to sell you tickets to the Las Vegas show, or at least sell you on the idea of eventually going to Las Vegas to see the show. The series picks up where VH1’s RuPaul’s Drag Race: Vegas Revue left off in 2020 by showing audiences what goes into putting on a live drag spectacle five nights a week at the Flamingo Las Vegas. You get to see the queens rehearse, beat their mugs, throw lots of shade, and then hit the town after another successful performance. And since every queen on the show is a superstar (Alexis Mateo, Latrice Royale, Coco Montrese, Kennedy Davenport, Derrick Barry, Lawrence Chaney, Pangina Heals, and Bosco), you better believe they know how to werk a camera and pull storylines out of thin air.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The aforementioned RuPaul’s Drag Race: Vegas Revue, of course, as well as the entire Bravo lineup.
Sex and Skin: Fresh off a dramatic breakup, Pangina Heals has “oats to sow” and she’s ready to plow through all the gay boys in Vegas.
Parting Shot: The first episode leaves us with Pangina bringing her first of presumably many “new friends” on the queens’ party bus, and then we get a teaser of the drama to come later in the season (which is essentially the trailer you can watch above).
Sleeper Star: If there is a reason for RuPaul’s Drag Race Live Untucked to exist beyond getting butts in seats at the Flamingo, it has to be the return of Coco Montrese to our TV screens. The last time we got this much Coco was almost eight years ago on the legendary RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 2, and that was not Coco’s best moment (she has yet to live down her talent show number, as this episode of Live Untucked confirms). But what’s great about a show like Live Untucked is that it removes queens from the competition format and just lets them be — and Coco Montrese makes everything entertaining. Even better are her scenes with her backstage roommate Lawrence Chaney, the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK 2. Coco is Generation X and Lawrence is Millennial/Gen Z cusp, and that makes these two a highly unlikely yet hysterical dynamic duo.
Most Pilot-y Line: “If you’re not watching RuPaul’s Drag Race Live Untucked, girl, you crazy.”
Our Take: If one were to lodge a complaint against the Drag Race franchise, it would be that the competition format doesn’t really capture what it is to be a working drag queen. When you go to a local drag brunch, bingo, or bar gig, you’re not going to see queens onstage trying to sell you on a bathroom design or impersonate a TikTok star. And as I mentioned, yes, this does read like a commercial for RuPaul’s Drag Race Live — but this is drag. That shameless salespersonship is to be applauded. If there is content to be mined, honey, grab the pickaxe!
I say all that with the warmest of intentions, too, because RuPaul’s Drag Race Live Untucked is a delightful little watch. It’s another example of how drag queens are consummate entertainers no matter the situation. Much of this show is built around that fact, as it’s mainly just the queens shooting the shit with each other. And when those queens are legends, you’re getting pure entertaintment.
This show works — and I would dare say is important to this moment — for two very distinct reasons. The first is that Live Untucked comes at a time when shade is a hot topic in the Drag Race fandom. The strong reaction to shady queens on Seasons 15 and 16 of the mother series, presumably from younger fans of the franchise who are way too eager to “defend” their faves, has resulted in many queens explaining how drag queens talk to each other and have always talked to each other. Drag Race Live Untucked is a real-time, unscripted example of that. And when shade is dealt in a show about co-workers and not competitors, it will hopefully educate the uninformed — and get them to fucking calm down and stop getting queens banned from Instagram.
The other reason why Drag Race Live Untucked works, specifically in comparison to the previous Vegas Revue series, is that it low-key flips the tone of the “unscripted” docu-series/docu-soap format. Vegas Revue, like the Housewives and Selling Sunsets of the world, tried to stir up staged drama. Live Untucked, however, stirs up… well, backstage ridiculousness. I have no interest in watching Derrick Barry get into fights with her sisters because one of her partners “coincidentally” showed up somewhere “uninvited.” I do, however, want to see Derrick Barry try to find out who smeared buttered bread on her makeup mirror. Call me a reality TV stick in the mud, whatever! I just want to watch these girls have fun, and when that fun is as laugh out loud hilarious as what I just watched in RuPaul’s Drag Race Live Untucked, I’m a happy customer. Still can’t afford to see RuPaul’s Drag Race Live in Vegas though.
Our Call: STREAM IT. RuPaul’s Drag Race Live Untucked is the kind of relaxed, genuine fun that the franchise — nay, the world — needs right now.