Kween Kong has issued a statement on the dramatic events of last week’s Drag Race Global All Stars.
For their third maxi-challenge, the 11 remaining queens split into three girl groups to perform a Latinx, Europop and K-pop mix of the track ‘Say Love’.
RuPaul judged the All Stars individually, with Kitty Scott-Claus, Kween Kong and Nehellenia winning rave reviews for their respective performances.
While the tops and bottoms – which consisted of Pythia, Miranda Lebrao and Vanity Vain – received critiques on the main stage, Soa de Muse and Alyssa Edwards theorised in Untucked that Nehellenia would be at risk of elimination.
News of Nehellenia’s praise from the panel elicited confused reactions from the queens – as Nehellenia said in her confessional, “I watch all of these faces watch me like it’s impossible. Why it’s impossible that I’m in the top?”
The Drag Race Italia star later expressed her grievance over her sisters counting her out as the challenge winner as she said: ““They [the judges] love my runway, they loved my dance, they loved my presence on stage. So they don’t underestimate me like some of you do.
“But it’s fine. If you don’t like me, you can respect me as an artist because I don’t feel like everyone respect me very much.”
Nehellenia’s statement caused a passionate response from the other contestants, with many of them refuting her claims. The situation worsened when she refused to name the queens she felt discounted her, which led to Soa de Muse and Vanity walking away in frustration.
Following the episode, fans accused the queens of ‘gaslighting’ Nehellenia. Even Kandy Muse, season 13 and All Stars 8 runner-up, tweeted that she wanted to “jump into the TV screen and fight the girls” on her behalf.
In response to the backlash, Kween Kong issued a statement providing “FULL TEA” on the drama and to remind viewers that they only saw “the last five minutes of a chat that went on for 45 minutes and went round in circles”.
“When Nelly spoke we started off gently asking who and what was she talking about because at that point some of us didn’t know who or what could’ve happened to make her feel this way,” the Down Under finalist wrote on X/Twitter.
FULL TEA: none of y’all were there. You saw the last 5 mins of a chat that went for over 45minutes and went round in circles. When Nelly spoke we started off gently asking who and what was she talking about because at that point some of us didn’t know who or what could’ve happe..
— Kween Kong (@kweenkong_) August 31, 2024
“None of us, tops or btms got to talk about our critiques, coz Untucked was used up with us trying to understand what was happening, we literally met each other 6 days before this.
“The girls who stormed off were told to come back and talk about their critiques because no one got to talk about their critiques coz all of Untucked was about who made Nelly feel this way.”
Kween continued to explain that no one in the cast would want Nehellenia “to feel like she wasn’t welcome or that we didn’t want to understand her”: “Now we’re being accused of bullying her because this edit makes our frustration in the situation an attack on her feelings… This is wild!
“I sat with Nelly at dinner the night before and reassured her about these feelings because we had only met everyone days before. We all come from different backgrounds with different sense of humour, references, language etc.
“We were competing for [RuPaul’s attention not each other’s.”
Kween ended her statement by clarifying that the reason Soa and Vanity “stormed off” was to prepare for the lip-sync “or help the girls get ready to lip-sync”.
Ultimately, Kitty won the challenge while Miranda and Vanity competed in the lip-sync smackdown to Spice Girls’ iconic chart-topper ‘Spice Up Your Life’, with the former sashaying away.
On next week’s episode of Global All Stars, the 10 remaining queens will star in “three boobie movie shequels”.
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