'RuPaul’s Drag Race' star Mirage on her shocking elimination & those shady ‘Untucked’ moments

PRIDE: I’ve enjoyed watching you so much this season. You have made such a huge splash, your song is an absolute bop, and watching your journey has been amazing. So that’s my opinion on how you did this season. I’m curious how do you feel about your time on Drag Race?

MIRAGE: Honestly, overall, it’s been very positive. A pleasant surprise, but surprisingly positive. The reception of the song and the talent show were so unexpected. I didn’t feel like I got that reception when I was there. So I didn’t know how it was gonna be received by everybody.

That is so hard. You put yourself out there and then you just have to wait and see how it goes. But the fans are living for you, are you feeling that love?

Absolutely and I could not be more grateful. I just was like, ‘I’m gonna leave it up to the universe for now. You can’t worry about it.’ And the universe got my back this time.

I have to say I am completely obsessed with your heel-clacking talent show. What I want to know is are we getting a heel-clacking shoe line? A heel-clacking tour? What’s next?

There is a tour on the way. We just have to keep asking for it. We just have to keep bugging about it. I’m all in.

This season has been so much fun and so shady, Plane Jane and Amanda Tori Meating have been keeping Untucked very spicy, and one of my favorite moments was actually when you got up and booty-bumped the shade button! For someone who was right there, was the tension in the room as thick as it seemed on screen?

I was living. It was not directed towards me so I thought it was so funny. I didn’t think there was a lot of tension. Maybe that’s because I’m just not as self-aware as some of the other girls, but I was living for it. I didn’t feel tense at all.

It mostly felt like fun shade to me, but what do you think? What was Plane’s intent? And how do you feel about the fan reaction to the Untucked of it all?

I feel like it is television at the end of the day. The girls are fine now and that’s all that matters. Whether the intent was malicious or not. They figured it out and now we’re just laughing at it.

That’s good, besides I remember the old school Untucked and these kids these days couldn’t handle the shade!

Right! She definitely caught us off guard. But at the end of the day, we’re talking about it!

So true! I want to talk about another one of my favorite moments this week which was your mirror chat when you were opening up about indigenous representation and your journey with that.

Not that I’m not proud of my heritage of course but drag was more of a departure for me. So I’d never really combined the two in my head.

Now that you’ve made that connection mentally do you feel like it’s having more of an influence?

I do definitely see it expanding now. I would like to have more connections and more involvement in the community. I just never thought of those two worlds colliding, but why not, right?

Absolutely! So, let’s talk a little bit about this episode. You seemed at first to be excited about being host but then seemed to get cold feet, what happened there?

I’m not exactly sure. I don’t remember it completely. But I do remember when [Sapphira Cristál] changed her mind and said, ‘Okay, do it.’ Then I was like, ‘Wait a minute, whyyyy?’ That was suspicious to me. So that kind of like got me thinking a little bit. And I was like, ‘What do you have up your sleeve?’ I was just very suspicious of everybody. Because I didn’t know anybody I knew was a competition and maybe I overthought it but that got me very, in my head very suspicious. I think I just started overthinking from there.

I imagine Drag Race has to be a really intense pressure cooker. So I don’t blame you at all for getting in your head. I do have to know though when it came to the lip sync why didn’t you run straight for the MP3 player when you suspected you would be lipsyncing?

Well, I mean, they do want to have us like all on the couch for a part of it. Also, I knew I wasn’t gonna learn it in five minutes. So I said, I’m gonna get my little House of Love cocktail together, and I’m gonna enjoy my last day Drag Race. I was feeling very defeated. Once I found out I was in the bottom, I knew I was leaving because I didn’t know the song. I didn’t give up in the performance aspect, but mentally I knew I was going home.

Honestly, that’s super relatable I think I would probably do the same. Why not just embrace the moment while you’re there? Ok, let’s end on a fun one. Who do you think is the trade of the season – and before you answer, have you seen the photos of Amanda Tori Meating from college?

Oh my god, literally I just saw those like yesterday I was screaming. Yes, I forgot to bring that up to her, I’m going to do it on stage tonight at Roscoe’s! Oh, yes, we will be talking about that later. I would say the other trade for me personally [Xunami Muse]. As long as she doesn’t move or talk.

The shade [laughs].

Like if you just saw a picture of her and be like, ‘Oh. Fierce.’

You are so funny!

[EDITOR’S NOTE: This interview was conducted prior to Amanda Tori Meeting coming out as transgender.]