By Charlie Duncan
Copyright thepinknews
RuPaul’s Drag Race star Katya ‘told RuPaul to send [her] home’ during her final episode of season seven, while she was struggling with her sobriety.
Katya, the star of RuPaul’s Drag Race season seven and later finalist in All Stars 2 has opened up about asking RuPaul herself to eliminate her from the 2015 season, amid struggles with substance abuse while being unable to attend AA meetings during filming.
“They didn’t air this, but I told RuPaul to send me home,” Katya shared on The Bald and the Beautiful podcast with Trixie Mattel, on which the pair are conducting a season seven recap.
“I didn’t want to win. I didn’t want to win,” she continued, referring to episode 11 of the season, which saw Katya eliminated after landing in the bottom two against Kennedy Davenport.
“On the mainstage, after Santino [Rice] literally ripped me a new a*****e [during critiques], I was like … I knew that [they] were going to read me.
“I was so naive, and I was legitimately struggling, and I had made a comment that ethically [RuPaul’s Drag Race] could not use [on air]. I said: ‘I am freaking out, I haven’t been to a meeting, I am really struggling.’
“So it was basically like: ‘Send me home.’ I felt so embarrassed.”
She added: “To a fault, I couldn’t fake anything,” referring to pretending not to be struggling with her sobriety.
Earlier in the episode, Katya shared that she had a panic attack in the Werk Room, that did not get aired.
“I was truly having a [mental breakdown],” she said, later adding: “I just wanted to go home, I hadn’t been to an AA meeting in six weeks. That was very difficult.”
“I was a year and a half sober, for the first time, so that was tough. I was unraveling.”
Years later, Katya has remained admirably open about her struggles with sobriety. In 2024, she checked into treatment, postponing a tour with Trixie at the time.
While hosting Viceland’s The Trixie and Katya Show in 2018, Katya stepped away from the production and checked into rehab amidst mental health struggles. The ordeal, which included a fallout with Mattel, was later aired in the latters’s documentary, Moving Parts.
Trixie and Katya, as well as dragging season winner Violet Chachki for calling them ‘weird’, have not been afraid to spill some extra behind-the-scenes tea from season seven, including a “hysterical” line from Katya that no-one laughed at, and a “bizarre” segment that never made it to air.
Elsewhere in the Drag Race runiverse, Drag Race UK season seven is just days away, and the All Stars 11 cast is already kicking about…
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