All Hail The Queen

RuPaul’s empire is a modern cultural phenomenon. THE EMMY AWARD-WINNING superstar has pulled drag queens out of nightclubs and into millions of living rooms, celebrating the courageous, the creative and the downright cool 

- Helen Clemson

Fame was always written in Ru Paul’s stars. According to Entertainment Weekly, a psychic told his pregnant mother two things: that the baby would be a boy, and that he would be famous. And the medium was right. Even RuPaul knew, from a young age, that he’d one day be a household name.

‘I knew that I would be famous, but also that I couldn’t go directly to LA. From reading Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, I knew that I would have to go to New York, become a downtown superstar, and that would be the way I could transfer into mainstream stardom and get into Hollywood,’ he told Marc Snetiker in an interview for Entertainment Weekly.

Born in San Diego, California on 17 November 1960, RuPaul had a tumultuous childhood, which he’s been very vocal about over the years.

In an interview with Billboard.com, he describes his mother and father’s relationship as a ‘psychodrama’.

‘My parents were these hillbillies from Louisiana who were wrapped up in this wild psychodrama with each other,’ he says. ‘So us kids – me being the middle child – had to be diplomats, and had to read the situation to figure out what was needed at that time.’

Rolling Stone reported that RuPaul’s mother, Ernestine Charles, would often try to get her philandering husband’s attention in extreme ways – like, you know, by ‘dousing his car in gasoline and taunting him with a book of matches.’ RuPaul said his mother ‘was a bad bitch’, who split from his father when he was just a kid. ‘Everyone in the neighbourhood called her Mean Miss Charles and I said, “No, she’s not mean, she’s just direct.”’