Racers, start your engines!
Canada’s Drag Race will be back on television Nov. 20, and its sixth season features more talent from Quebec than ever.
Sami Landri, Velma Jones A.K.A. Johnny Jones, and Paolo Perfección will compete for the crown with glitz, glamour and humour in the new installation of the RuPaul’s Drag Race spinoff.
Meet the local queens ready to blow you away with their charisma, uniqueness, nerve and talent.
The first gender-bending performer
Those who like to spend evenings at Cabaret Mado, Montreal’s biggest drag club, are familiar with the name Velma Jones — and her counterpart Johnny.
Jones is the first contestant in the Drag Race franchise to perform both as a drag queen and drag king, meaning she has both female and male alter egos.
A theatre kid at heart, Jones has plenty of talent in her wheelhouse and loves to put on a show. She’s been performing on Mado’s stage for nine years.
Outside of drag, she’s dabbled in modern and jazz dance, theatre and studied cinema.
“I’m really a theatrical chameleon; I love to play, I love to dance, I love to perform. I just love being on stage. That’s the place I feel the best in my life,” she said.
Velma’s personality is very whimsical but fierce. Johnny, on the other hand, is more of a laid-back type who likes to charm and flirt.
“They really have different personalities. It’s funny to see, right?”
As a cisgender woman, Jones says she often questioned her place in the drag scene, which is best known for female impersonations.
“Usually people, when they come to see a show, they expect to have a cis man doing a female version of drag … but there’s also trans people, trans women, trans men, and non-binary people. There are cis women that do drag and drag kings,” she said.
“They were there since the beginning. So, it’s important to that people know that we are all part of this community and we are all doing it for the creativity of it.”
She’s excited to bring her Montreal flavour to the Drag Race stage as the city has a unique cabaret style.
“We love to do silly things. We love to recreate shows that we watch on TV. We like it big. We love to have dancers with us and to have extras and really bring the show in another level,” she said. “It’s more than having an outfit ... We create something together.”
She added that the language barrier was another challenge. Montreal is unique in its style, but also linguistically.
“I’m so much funnier in French!” said Jones.
Still, viewers can expect the extraordinary, she said.
Will we get a drag king performance this season?
“Well, you have to catch up on the show to see if Johnny will be there. I don’t know. I don’t know what he’s doing this time of year,” Jones teased.
A viral sensation
Those with a TikTok account will instantly recognize Sami Landri, a drag queen who rose to fame with her bilingual comedy clips.
“Veut-tu savoir c’est quoi mes pronoms? Qué/bec, Fran/çais, Bar/be/cue, Go/Habs/Go,” she famously says in a viral video.
Landri, originally from Moncton, is the first Acadian drag artist to make it on the reality TV show — and the first from New Brunswick.
Montrealers will easily recognize her as she made the city her home back in 2021 and learned to adapt her meme-able comedy style to the stage.
Last summer, Landri hosted shows at the Just for Laughs festival in both French and English and has been on a pan-Canadian tour.
Landri is proud of her roots and says she’s excited to show the world New Brunswick’s particular sort of drag.
She describes her style as “trash-chic” with an aesthetic frozen in the 2000s.
“It is giving ‘la matante’ who never changed her style for 20 years, and she’s having fun. Is there a problem with that? I don’t think so,” said Landri.
Landri says she’s been told she has a “trashy” look while in drag, but never fully identified with the label.
“Maybe I just am trash, and I didn’t even know it, authentically,” she said.
“I like to be messy, and I like to get down and dirty, and I like to just have fun and let loose. But I’m still the best version of myself, so that’s the chic part.”
That’s exactly what Landri wants to bring to our screens.
“What can you expect from me on the show? A good time. I’m there to have fun, and if I’m not having fun, then I don’t want to do it,” she said.
She added that having the show on the air is more important than ever with the current political climate around drag queens, trans people and the LGBTQ+ community as a whole.
“The more visible we’ve become, the more hatred we’ve been receiving,” she said.
“We’re not going to let other people dim our shine. We’ve worked so hard, for generations, to come to this point where we are part of the mainstream, where we are part of the conversation. So, we’re going to take our place in the conversation, absolutely.”
A star is born
Paolo Perfección was born on the Drag Race stage.
Before going on the show, Perfección mostly existed online and had never put on a performance.
“I just always love to dress up as, like, a gorgeous celebrity or something. And then I thought maybe next time I want to start to perform,” she said. So, she sent her audition tape to Drag Race Canada and the rest is history.
She describes herself as “unhinged,” nonsensical and chaotic with a bit of an airhead persona. When she was cast on the show, she told her friends she was going on a “spiritual retreat in Bali” — which they believed.
Perfección is a fashion designer before all else and has been sewing since age 12.
“I would always go fabric shopping with my mom. And then there was this little poster for a Victorian corset class, and my mom was like, ‘Oh, baby, we’re signing you up,’” she said.
She then started wearing the corsets and making herself clothes. Fashion school was the next step.
The potential with clothing and fabric, she says, is limitless.
Perfección says she was lucky to have a supportive family with her grandmother buying her high-heeled shoes to play dress-up.
When the pandemic hit, she spent her time playing with makeup and wigs.
“Once a week, I would sew myself a brand-new outfit, and then I would spend a full day making a full photo shoot, talking to no one, it was so fun,” she said. “I went crazy, diva, yes.”
She also started creating characters and posting videos to TikTok – in one, she’s a nurse. Then, a pilot or a dental hygienist. And her alter-ego was born.
Being on Drag Race was Perfección’s first experience meeting other drag artists in person and collaborating. She felt intimidated at first, but says the experience led to “sisterly love” with her co-stars.
“You know what drag is? A big fat family,” she said. “There’s just so much love. It’s really like a big community. I didn’t have a drag family, so to meet all these girls, my heart was so full,” she said.
Viewers can expect jaw-dropping garments and picture-perfect looks from Perfección — and can catch her exploring her newfound confidence on a Montreal stage.
How far will the three queens go in the competition? Tune into Canada’s Drag Race on Crave Thursday to find out.
