With TikTok, I used to think it was just for kids doing dances to Renegade, Renegade, Renegade… I did my first few videos but really didn’t know what the app was about. Then I moved back to the UK and after that experience, I was thinking of quitting drag because it wasn’t really paying off. So I stayed there until March, when everything with coronavirus started happening. I don’t want to sound shady, but a lot of them weren’t really drag queens.
They weren’t just bitchy, they were horrible.
The experience was fun, but the queens there were bullies and it wasn’t really for me. Mills: I moved to Tenerife last January to work as a drag queen. Why did you decide to take your drag onto TikTok?īailey J. You have to be at the bottom and work your way up. You need to work to get to where you are. A lot of people, especially new queens, expect to get up in drag and to get a gig straight away. Even though I was travelling and then paying for a hotel every month which would cost me between £120 and £170. They asked me to become part of their cabaret which was for charity. Then I went down again a few weeks later because I loved it so much, and I was out of drag. And then I was just flipping my wig all night… I just felt so confident.
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She then took me into the toilets, duct taped my hair and showed me how to put on a wig so it doesn’t fall off. I remember going on this little stage they had, and danced hard while flipping my hair, and then my wig fell off. I remember walking in and there was this drag queen, we’re now really good friends – her name is Izzy Hard. When you start drag, everyone has that bit of delusion where you feel like you’re the shit, even though you’re wearing hot pants. Mills: First time I was in a club, I remember going to the Scene in Lincoln. How did you continue from the theatre and into the nightclub?īailey J. So I thought I wasn’t good at acting, but then realised I am – in comedy rather than drama. I always thought acting is serious, when it isn’t. My first show was a murder mystery where I played this woman who I gave the name Dana Darling. I could wear wigs as they were really open with me doing drag. So I started doing it and really found myself. With my beauty teacher, she was quite open to it, but my hairdressing teacher was very old school.Īt the end of the year, she told me I hadn’t passed and suggested I try performing arts. The lip glosses from Wilkos are actually so good! I got this make-up, I played around with it and then started wearing it out. I remember going to Wilkos, and I robbed £20 worth of make-up – that’s lip gloss, foundation, and lots of brushes for 50p. Obviously, I could have practiced on other people but I’d rather practiced on myself to understand the basics of a glam make-up. My tutor for beauty said we had to do make-up, and I knew nothing about it. Mills: I started playing around with make-up when I was 16 and was doing hair and beauty at college. Mills discusses their path from being bullied for being different at school and at drag shows to transforming their own autism into a powerful tool in entertaining the world via social media.īailey J. Ever since, videos of Bailey embodying a rich arsenal of colourful personas with questionable hairlines have spread across all social media as they have become the uncrowned queen of lockdown entertainment.įrom parodies of Nicki Minaj, Boris Johnson, and Scooby Doo’s Velma to a wide array of made-up characters like Cathy Lee, Susie, and Georgia (seriously, there are just too many to mention), Bailey dances, sings live, acts, and pulls some pretty legendary looks that defy the classic idea of drag promoted by Ru and his dolls. The inexplicably funny video that just feels so familiar to anyone who’s shared a taxi now counts over 1.5 million views. The catchphrase ‘Laura, I’m paying,’ has now been heard around the world. Bailey first got the mass attention back in October when they uploaded a video of them paying a taxi fare while dressed up for a night out, completed with a Louis Vuitton Speedy bag and a harsh brown bob. Hailing from Lincolnshire, the multi-talented performer is best known for their viral TikToks capturing the essence of bizarre British humour through the medium of drag and dressing up. What’s wrong with high-street drag? Why didn’t Ru yell at some of the other queens for being boring and unfunny? Was she angry at the effects the high street has on the environment? When did she become such a bitch? While they might not have the answers to these questions, Bailey J. When RuPaul yelled at Joe Black for wearing H&M on the main stage of Drag Race UK a few weeks ago, the LGBTQ+ community echoed in distress.