How has your life changed? What's been different in the past two months? Obviously, you just won Drag Race, major congratulations. I'm coming up there to celebrate Pride with the East Coast divas. I'm going to New York tomorrow or actually, I'm leaving tonight on a red-eye. That's me, baby! The one and only! Today I'm good. That duality - half diva, half inner child - is what separates Symone from winners before her and what makes her so freakin' likeable. When I ask Symone to list some of the female stars she looks up to (Whitney Houston, Tina Turner, Diana Ross and Madonna), I don't hear the magnetism of a queen made for TV, one unafraid to drop lines like, "Don't let the smooth taste fool ya, baby!" Instead, her octave softens into a warm demeanor, a wide-eyed inner Reggie, a sweet-as-humble-pie optimist with big dreams and - finally - a big chance.
She's also standing up for her community, and starring in SKYY® Vodka's Coming Out (Again) campaign, which supports LGBTQ+ nightlife venues hit hard by the pandemic. Like so many of us, Symone was broke not long ago, and she's now relishing in the fruits of her labor (ahem: that $100,000 prize). Ultimately, honing that self-love (and the confidence that comes with it) is what helped her score the Drag Race golden ticket it's the reason she comes across as really rich, bitch, despite just recently getting her financial bearings in order. Going on the show, for me, was a way of showing love to myself." "I was a very shy, very quiet, very self-loathing kid. "My path on the show was very much a kind of love letter to my Blackness, and to the kid that I was," she tells me on the phone, reflecting on her childhood in Arkansas, where, as Reggie Gavin, she often struggled to accept the complexities of her Black and LGBTQ+ identity. Symone's ridiculously silly skits garnered praise and her glamorous runway looks left fans tweeting things like, "It's the du-rag for me." At one point in the competition, the judges were rendered speechless after she honored Black Lives Matter and the victims of police killings such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor with a white blood-stained look that read, "Say Their Names." Symone, who undeniably earned the title of America's Next Drag Superstar, became immediately relatable not by trying to adopt some froufrou persona, but instead by looking within and drawing inspiration from all that gives her life: the beauty of being unapologetically Black and queer bombastic divas in music her House of Avalon chosen family high fashion foxes. Things have changed.įrom day one in the Season 13 werkroom of RuPaul's Drag Race, she distinctively possessed the one quality so many contestants fail to hold onto throughout the competition: a point of view. Yes, Symone already introduced us to Sweet Toof.
In other words, she's e-x-p-e-n-s-i-v-e and in demand - every single person, regardless of their creed or income or honest thoughts about Santino Rice, wants a piece of the Symone experience. If it were possible to bottle the essence of her delectable personality into a product - a mystical formula named something like, say, Ebony Enchantress - it'd likely retail for $190 yet somehow retain a perpetually long waiting list.
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