If you know, you know. And if you don't know, you need to know that RuPaul’s Drag Race, the fabulous and over-the-top cult reality show, has long taken both TV and pop culture by storm. It bagged an Emmy nomination for 'Reality Competition' and the series 9 finale was the show's most-watched ever and, perhaps most(ish) importantly, it introduced us to Michelle Visage.
Drag Race wouldn’t be Drag Race if it wasn’t for, of course, enigmatic drag icon RuPaul and his tough-love best friend of nearly 30 years, Michelle Visage. Visage may have only replaced predecessor Merle Ginsberg on the judging panel in season 3, but no one can imagine Drag Race without her now.
While it's a long old wait for season 10 (apparently that's not happening until March 2018), in the meantime here's everything you need to know about Michelle Visage, the tough but fair mama of RuPaul's Drag Race.
So, why is Michelle Visage famous?
Born Michelle Lynn Shupack, the 48-year-old Visage’s huge personality and even bigger voice have made her career as a TV host and personality, radio DJ, author, and singer. She was born in New Jersey and adopted at the tender age of 9 months old, which she told PQ Monthly is something that made her feel connected to aspiring drag queens, because of how 'weird and different' she felt.
Visage said: 'The drag queens are my other children. And for me, I think with every drag queen there is a connection because I never fit in, never ever… I was one of the people that always got chosen last, and I think I bulked up my comedy bone to make up for my lack of friends'.
Is Michelle Visage a Madonna fan?
It's no secret that Visage is a Madonna superfan. She won a Madonna look-a-like competition back when she was 16 and has been impersonating the pop queen and singing her songs ever since. She even recently volunteered her daughter Lillie Case to babysit Madonna’s twins if the latter would come and be a guest judge on Drag Race. Can. You. Imagine?!
Visage also revealed in an interview with Screener TV that Drag Race asks Madonna, Cher, Liza Minelli, and Dolly Parton - all legends among the drag queen community - every year to be guest judges, but, sadly, they often have tour commitments.
Are Michelle Visage and RuPaul friends for real?
Drag Race isn’t by any means the first time Visage and RuPaul have appeared on television together, the two are thick as thieves in fact - in the late 90s, RuPaul had a talk show called The RuPaul Show which featured Visage as a co-host in 1998 (if you're fan of anal jokes as told by someone impersonating Spock from Star Trek, you'll enjoy the clip below).
RuPaul also hosts a YouTube series called* RuPaul Drives…* - basically the original Car Pool Karaoke, minus the karaoke and with a bunch of drag queens - and drove Visage around for an episode in 2014. In the episode, Visage explains the birth of her stage name which included her mother giving her a fake ID at the age of 17 to get into bars and clubs in New York City, the gay community nicknaming her ‘cara’, the word for ‘face’ in Spanish because she had a face for drag, and resulting in her choosing the French word for ‘face’ instead - Visage.
If that isn’t enough RuPaul-Visage action, the duo ALSO co-host a podcast called ‘RuPaul: What’s The Tee? with Michelle Visage’, where they chat and gossip about the show and other celebrities like the best huntys in the business. Visage also told* Screener TV*: 'We [her and RuPaul] have been friends for a very, very long time. Our chemistry is true because we completely get each other. There has never been an instance for which we haven’t see eye to eye.'
Who's Michelle Visage's husband, David?
Visage has been happily married to husband David Case for over 20 years, and have two daughters, Lillie and Lola Case, as well as two fat, happy rats she likes showing off on Instagram adorably named Wellington and Algernon. David, an author, screenwriter, and former track coach at a high school in California, studied Drama at Julliard, and worked at Paramount Pictures and The Food Network in the past. He keeps a relatively low profile, but is super sweet when he shows unbridled support for his wife on social media.
Is Michelle Visage scary IRL?
Okay. Visage’s iconic arched eyebrow might make her look quite intimidating, but she’s really just a mama bear - not just to her daughters, but also to the numerous queens who come and go on Drag Race.
Eliminated queens from the series sits down with Visage in ‘Whatcha Packin’?’ and she is super kind and gives the disappointed queens legitimate hope for their futures. She's one of those judges who actually, really cares. Speaking to series 9 Nina Bo’nina Brown, Visage said: 'Whoever told you that you’re not good enough was wrong. You’re amazing', to which Brown takes Visage’s hand and thanks her for her 'words and kindness throughout the whole competition' - a sentiment most of the queens share towards Visage.
That being said, she isn’t everyone’s cuppa; last year, in an ‘All Stars’ series, her harsh criticism of fan favourite Adore Delano, which resulted in the contestant walking away from the show, made Visage the target of death threats and insults. Visage told Huffington Post UKthat she stood by her words, but did apologise to Delano “because I love her and I didn’t want her to think it was something that it wasn’t'.
Was Michelle Visage on Celebrity Big Brother?
If the name sounds familiar, it might be because she was on the 15th series of Celebrity Big Brother in 2015 - she left the house in 5th place, Katie Price won and Katie Hopkins got runner up. Yep, it was *that *year. Visage and Hopkins seemed close during the show, but the Hopkins' ridiculous comments about immigrants in the same year (which we all know earned her plenty of backlash) seemed to tip their friendship over the edge. Visage told RuPaul in an episode of their podcast that: 'She [Hopkins] crossed a line for me, talking about immigrants, saying they should be killed. Human lives are human lives. For her to be calling them all cockroaches and saying they should all be killed is disgusting and I can’t support it.'
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.