“In recent days I have heard stories repeated about my past; rumours that I would like the opportunity to address directly and honestly,” she wrote. “Despite this being a story I am deeply ashamed of, and something I had tried to forget. I’ve come to realise in recent years that taking responsibility and admitting my mistakes is an important learning experience, and something that has helped shape me as a performer, and mature as a person. “There is no way to sugar-coat it, when I was a teenager roughly eight years ago I performed in blackface/cultural appropriation. I was young and I was ignorant. I am no longer that person,” Adams said.
Michelle Visage has addressed a
Drag Race
Scarlet Adams, who is part of the first cast of the Australian and New Zealand
Drag Race spin-off, apologised in March for performing in Blackface and engaging in cultural appropriation after being called out on social media.
Adams said she was “deeply ashamed” of her mistakes, which she said took place when she was “young” and “ignorant”.
Visage said in an interview with
Metro that she was unaware of Adams’ old photos, but she thought “apologies were necessary”. She said she knew that Adams “apologised and that’s it”.
“I say this to my own children, you have to think about why you do things and what you do, and I think it’s important for people to take responsibility,” Visage said. “So I think that apologies were made, apologies were necessary.”
RuPaul’s Drag Race Down Under will premiere on Stan this Saturday. The Australian-New Zealand version of the global reality TV juggernaut will share an Antipodean mode of drag with audiences around the world.
Veteran drag star RuPaul created Drag Race in 2009 for niche US cable channel Logo TV. It parodies reality TV competitions such as America’s Next Top Model, with a group of drag queens competing across various performance-related challenges to be (literally) crowned the next “Drag Superstar”.
RuPaul has since built up a media empire. The show, which moved to the mainstream US channel VH1 in 2017, has had successful spin offs in the UK, Canada, Thailand and Holland.
Last modified on Thu 29 Apr 2021 13.33 EDT
When RuPaulâs Drag Race premiered in 2009, with all the budget of your local drag night and a filter so blurry you could be watching on from the smokerâs section, it hardly seemed destined for greatness.
But with 13 seasons under its belt, 19 Emmy awards, a whole batch of spin-offs and legions of fans, itâs become a legitimate media empire.
And with this weekâs premiere of local iteration, RuPaulâs Drag Race Down Under, itâs now Australia and New Zealandâs turn.
How Drag Race works
Each season, a crop of drag artists compete in a variety of challenges to be crowned the ânext drag superstarâ. They have to be able to act, strut the runway, paint their faces beautifully, lip-sync, improvise, perform standup and sew â although thereâs guaranteed to be one queen who has never touched a sewing machine and has to do their best with a hot-glue gun.
Drag Race Down Under reveals Kylie and more as guest judges digitalspy.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from digitalspy.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.