One phone call can change your entire life; take for instance the one that informs you that you’ve just been cast on the new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. The only problem: You can’t really predict when that call is coming — and what you’ll be up to when the phone starts ringing.
That’s unless you’re Marmalade, who, as it turns out, may be more than a little psychic. This queen, who hails from Cardiff, Wales enters the competition with a famous legacy. Both her mother Victoria Scone and grandmother Tia Kofi have become beloved of the fandom, and she’s poised to follow in their glamorous footsteps.
Courtesy of World of Wonder
Maybe she was fated to be on the show; based on what she was doing when the call came in, it certainly seems that way. “I had this premonition that I was getting [on Drag Race]. I felt it in my bones, in my waters,” Marmalade tells PRIDE. “So, I’d already started making my looks for the show. I’d started straight away making my finale outfit,” she admits. When the phone started ringing, the queen was in her sewing room trying the garment on. When she realized who was on the phone, she quickly took it off. “I was like, it would be really funny if I answered the call in this big, grand outfit. But I thought, no, that’s a bad omen. So I took it off, I put it down, I answered the call, and just hoped that all this work I put into it wasn’t a waste.”
Thankfully it wasn’t. “I ended the call and went right back to making it again, just at twice the speed with about four times the stress,” she jokes.
While Marmalade’s call was appropriately glamorous, not every queen can boast the same. Even so, Kyran Thraxx’s big moment was absolutely hilarious.
“I was having a poo. I was having a poo. I’ll hold my hands up. I was having a poo,” Kyran confesses to PRIDE, going on to reveal how it all went, ahem, down. “No caller ID. I answered it. She said, Hey, Kyran, it’s Drag Race. Can we [go on camera]? And I was like, maybe not right now. So I put my phone face down. Wipe my bum, come out. Boom, you’re on Drag Race.”
Truly iconic behavior. But that’s not all. Later that night, Kyran says they did something they’ve never done before: Sleepwalking — and sleep peeing. “I got out of bed and the gaggiest part about it is that I opened my drawer — I opened the drawer and pissed inside it. The only reason I woke up is because my partner started screaming from the bed,” they recall. “I was like, ‘Oh!’ Then it was too late. Once you’ve started, you’ve started, so you just gotta let it go. We emptied the drawer, my passport, everything was floating. It was really one of the craziest things that I’ve ever experienced, and it kind of felt like a good omen.”
Courtesy of World of Wonder
Kyran is a Lancashire-based queen who’s no stranger to making a spectacle. In addition to their drag career, they’re all about the drama — and by that, we mean they studied acting and contemporary theater at drama school. Oh, and they also recently starred opposite Caleb Landry Jones in the film Dogman.
Speaking of second careers, Actavia’s is about to change for good. This queen hails from a very small town in North Wales called Bala, but she made the move to Manchester, where, in addition to gigging, she was working in a call center. It was during that nine-to-five job that she got the call that would change her drag life.
“I’m not psychic, and [my story] unfortunately doesn’t involve poo and pee,” she jokes to PRIDE. “I was actually working my day job at the time... I could see the text [from Drag Race], and I was like, right? I need to wrap this up,” she recalls. “And then I was screaming, and I was like,’ Oh my god, oh my god.’ And then I went straight back to work. So it was very weird because I wanted to cry, I wanted to burst, and I just had to be professional and talk to some people.”
Courtesy of World of Wonder
While she didn’t quit on the spot, Actavia did tell her manager she would need a few months off.
While learning that they’d been cast on the show was certainly the beginning of a wild ride, it’s just that: the beginning. We can’t wait to see what they do next when RuPaul’s Drag Race UK season six premieres on WOWPresents Plus on September 26, 2024.
To watch PRIDE’s full interview with Actavia, Marmalade, and Kyran Thrax — where they read their sisters, share moments of Drag Race herstory that lives in their heads rent-free, give us their best American meow, and open up about why humility is OVERRATED — check out the video at the top of the page!
