RuPaul Scouted BeBe Zahara Benet For ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ After Watching Her Perform Live
When RuPaul’s Drag Race premiered in 2009, no one — including RuPaul or the competitors — could have imagined it becoming a global empire that it is today. The first season’s winner, BeBe Zahara Benet, ushered in a new era for LGBTQ entertainment, and it was all because RuPaul himself saw something in her long before she graced our TV screens.
BeBe Zahara Benet won the first season of ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’
RuPaul’s Drag Race was originally a little-known show airing on LGBTQ network Logo at the turn of the last decade. The show’s first season was so low-budget that it was filmed with an infamous “season 1 filter” that made everything on camera blurry.
At the time, BeBe Zahara Benet had only been doing drag for two years, and she was competing against longtime pageant queens with decades of experience in the industry, including eventual runner-up Nina Flowers and the beloved first eliminee, Victoria “Porkchop” Parker. Ultimately, BeBe came out on top.
‘Drag Race’ approached BeBe Zahara Benet three times
BeBe looked back on her Drag Race journey in a 2022 interview with Out. She revealed that before the first season started filming, she was approached by the show on three separate occasions about auditioning.
“The show presented itself to me about three times,” she said. “The first time, that’s when MySpace [still existed]. So you had to go on MySpace, put a profile, and then fans had to vote if they wanted you to be on the show. A friend of mine — who was also my photographer at that time — mentioned it to me about it. And I was like, ‘Oh, I’m busy. I’m not going to do it.’”
She went on to recount when Drag Race crew members went and scouted queens for themselves.
“And then the producers actually came to Minneapolis,” she remembered. “They [went] to different cities to scout entertainers for the show, like auditions. When they came to Minneapolis, my name came up a couple of times, so they tried to connect with me to do it. [However,] I was out of town at that time. I was like, ‘Oh yeah, when I get back home, I’m going to send my audition tape,’ but I never did that.”
RuPaul personally scouted BeBe Zahara Benet before casting her on the show
Finally, BeBe was able to perform for the Drag Race team in person. But it wasn’t just for producers: RuPaul himself came to Minneapolis to see her perform.
“And then the third time — which they say three times is the charm, right? — RuPaul was sitting in the audience when I was performing,” she said. “I remember performing ‘Circle of Life’ from The Lion King.”
After the show, Ru tracked BeBe down backstage to talk to her about his new show he was working on.
“When I was done performing and went backstage, I was taking off my makeup or whatever,” BeBe recalled. “Chi Chi LaRue, who at that time [was] with RuPaul, came to my dressing room and said, ‘Hey, have you heard of this show that RuPaul is producing? I think you’d be great for it. And as a matter of fact, RuPaul is here and wants to talk to you.’ I was like, ‘Huh? What?’”
Surprised, the young queen then had a one-on-one conversation with the drag icon. “So RuPaul came to my dressing room and had a conversation with me,” she remembered. “At that time, I was like, ‘Okay, this is serious. I’m going to get my audition tape together and send it out.’ Because I had made a decision to use the art form of drag as my career. Everything I had seen prior to [Drag Race on TV] were people just laughing at the craft — and they were not laughing with us, they were laughing at us. So I was like, ‘Oh, I’m not trying to go on a situation or platform where you will be laughing at me.’ But once I knew that the show was something RuPaul was [associated] with, that gave me a little bit more comfort because I knew it was going to be done in a certain kind of quality.”
