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Correction: Irene the Alien competed on RuPaul’s Drag Race season 15. She is currently on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 10.
Monique So how many wigs do you have?
Irene Styled wigs. Probably 50. And then I have drawers of unstyled wigs as well that are just for tossing around.
Monique Can I ask how much something like that cost?
Irene Yes. But this wig was, if I remember correctly, $700.
Monique So how many different outfits do you have?
Irene Oh, an uncountable, at least 100.
Monique Where do you keep everything?
Irene I have a three bedroom apartment and one of the bedrooms is my drag room. laughs
IRENE THE ALIEN TRAVELS WITH A LOT OF LUGGAGE –
NOT BAGGAGE. THERE IS A BIG DIFFERENCE.
THE LUGGAGE IS ESSENTIAL – BECAUSE BECOMING ‘IRENE’ IS A JOURNEY—
AND I’M GETTING INVITED ALONG.
FIRST, BY IAN HILL.
Monique tell me who Ian Hill was as a child.
Irene Ian Hill was a weird kid, and was very creative. My mom was really, my mom put a lot of emphasis on making sure I had an extracurricular activity that I was sort of really interested in, and we tried everything. We did karate and baseball and swim team, and none of that really stuck. And then we tried Shakespeare camp. And from that point on, I was addicted to the stage.
Monique Do you remember what that was like when you discovered that?
Irene I do, and you know, what is so crazy is the very first play I did at Shakespeare camp was a midsummer Night’s Dream. Yeah. And I was cast as flute. Who in the play is in a play where he plays a woman? So my very first time on stage, I was in drag, and I guess I got a taste for it.
Monique And you knew you were home. I was like, this is it.
Irene We’re gonna take this all the way to the bank.
Monique So how did you go from performing arts to drag?
Irene It was interesting. When I was, in high school, I found myself really interested in things like heels and makeup and wigs, and I didn’t really have a way to connect all of that. And then when I was 17 years old, I saw Drag Race for the first time and something. It’s like all the gears in my brain clicked into place and I was like, oh, that is everything that I want to do. And from that point on, it was sort of this, secret moving my life in that direction. Every choice I made, it was in service of this is going to get me closer to being a professional drag queen, even if that wasn’t what I was advertising to the world.
Monique That’s not necessarily a mainstream realization for anybody, let alone someone who grew up in Houston.
Irene 100 percent
Monique So how did you how did you get from performing and dabbling in heels and makeup and everything like you’re talking about? Did you have to be secretive about that? Were you open about it?
Irene I did, at the time, Drag Race was still in its infancy, and the ceiling for what a drag queen could become was still relatively low. You know, wanting to be a professional drag queen meant I wanted to work in bars and lip-sync for a living. And there there weren’t brand deals and stuff like that, but it was still very important to me that I, you know, learned the craft. So I was practicing makeup before every shower that I took so that I could wipe it off afterwards. And when I was in college, I took a costuming class where I learned to sew. Oh, wow. So it was just and going to thrift stores and buying things that sort of had sequins and stuff like that, just to sort of begin my journey. It was a lot of bedroom drag for a long time.
Monique Were you scared someone would find out?
Irene Yeah. At the time, there wasn’t really someone that I could point to and say, but look, I could become this. So, the expectation was that I was going to become an actor and probably moved to L.A. or New York and try to make a career that way. And there was this sense that if I went into drag, I was abandoning the sort of prospects for success, to follow this dream. So I definitely kept it a secret for a long time.
Monique Let’s go back to seeing Drag Race. Yeah. Tell me how you discovered it. And what, like what you saw that made you go.
Irene It was just watching people come in in drag. I had never seen anything like that before. You know, there weren’t drag queens on TV yet, and, it just, I don’t know, it was so magical.
Monique Do you remember exactly what you saw?
Irene I do it’s it’s vivid. It’s burned into my brain. I remember the first time I saw Raven walk into the workroom. And she walked in, and she had really already started elevating the art form. And she had taken makeup to a place it had not gone yet. And, it was just this, this sense of. I was enamored. I was blown away. Had never seen anything like it. And I knew I was looking at something special.
Monique Would you describe it for me?
Irene Well, she. She was doing more than just wearing makeup. She had used makeup to create up to recreate her bone structure. And and she was painting something almost otherworldly. And I knew I loved it. I knew I’d never seen anything like it, and I knew I wanted it for myself.
I had been bullied in Texas for being a flamboyant, feminine person. And to watch these men and women, trans women who had taken that aspect of themselves that I also had, that I had been bullied for, and to turn it into a strength, to turn it into the thing that they used as their power in the world. It was very empowering to me and I think that is what attracted me to it is I still had that femininity and I still had that flamboyance, and I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. And drag gave me a place to put that and a way to use that to empower myself.
Monique You could flex it.
Irene I could flex and I could use it to make money. I could use it for social connections. I could use it to move through the world instead of masking it.
I didn’t even come out of the closet until I was 19.
Monique And that was after your RuPaul experience?
Irene 100%. Yeah. So I had already started messing around with drag. I had already started doing, makeup in secret. So here I am doing makeup, taking it off in the shower, leaving and going, yeah, I’m straight.
Monique Tell me about coming out to your parents
Irene There was a certain, uncertainty that I had before coming out as both gay and a drag queen. You know, I, I felt like my parents were supportive, accepting people, but I didn’t know until I actually put them to the test. And luckily they passed with flying colors. But, yeah, it was sort of that fear came from watching other people and hearing on Drag Race, people talk about their experiences of, you know, coming out and their their families completely abandoning them.
There comes a time when the desire to bloom outweighs the desire to be safe. And I just I had to bloom.
Monique And then did they say, well, we want to see you?
Irene Absolutely.
Monique And what was their feedback?
Irene Wow, you look amazing. That’s you. Oh my gosh, I can’t even believe it. Which you know, is what every drag queen wants to hear.
Monique Do you know many other performers who had such a positive experience with you coming out to their family?
IAN THINKS FOR A COUPLE BEATS, THEN SLOWLY SHAKES HIS HEAD.
Irene I’m very lucky to have a mom who is actually very enthusiastic.
Monique Yeah. Yeah.
Irene Comes and tips everybody. LAUGHS
IAN GOT A BACHELOR OF FINE ARTS FROM SOUTHERN METHODIST UNIVERSITY.
BUT NO CAP AND GOWN PICS OF IAN.
BECAUSE GRADUATION WEEKEND IRENE WENT TO L-A INSTEAD FOR DRAG CON – AND MET RUPAUL.
AND SHORTLY AFTER …
PACKED THE LUGGAGE – LEFT THE BAGGAGE—
AND MOVED TO SEATTLE.
IRENE GOT ESTABLISHED IN THE LOCAL DRAG SCENE.
AND KEPT EVOLVING-
LAYER AFTER LAYER …
HAIRSPRAY…
GLAMOUR…
GUMPTION….
SHE INVITED ME TO WITNESS THE EVOLUTION IN REAL TIME.
Irene It starts with wiping away all of my natural features, hiding the man. And, then I’ll use contours and highlights to, emphasize the parts of my face that are more feminine.
Monique tell me what you’re hiding right now.
Irene Yeah. So I’m going to use this to sort of hide how wide my jawline is. And I’m going to make my nose look thinner and make my cheeks look lower.
Monique Your look. Yeah. Was there anyone you had in mind or just looking at your face and imagining different.
Irene And I’ve sort of settled on this, really intense, angled, cat like alien situation.
Monique Do you start feeling different as you’re getting ready?
Irene You know, I think at the beginning I did, at the beginning there was this, this thing inside me that had lived inside me all along. And drag helped me unlock that. The version of me that is unapologetic, the version of me that is confident enough to say what I mean and mean what I say 1
Monique So how is Irene … distinctive?
Irene In the way that my performances are cohesive. The costume and the mix and everything tells a story and it all goes together. And it is one succinct piece.
OR RATHER … A LOT OF PIECES COME TOGETHER TO MAKE THIS PUZZLE WORK-- THIS OUT OF THIS WORLD ALIEN.
THE MAKEUP, THE WIGS, THE OUTFITS, THE BODY PARTS, THE ATTITUDE …
SHE’S GOT TO DO THE WORK TO WORK IT.
Irene You know, I’m doing right now five shows a week and, doing multiple shows at the same venue every week where we have regulars and members of the audience who have seen everything that I do, and there’s the pressure to give them something new
Monique The successful level of, of performers like people who have really made it. What? How much are they making?
Irene I mean, the ceiling is high. There are millionaire drag queens out there are multi-millionaire drag queens out with, makeup businesses, their own television shows.
Monique You know, at the same time, it seems like the political atmosphere over the last big handful of years now, the whole like, drag, you know, reading sessions at libraries have become vilified. Have you has. Did that take the genre backwards at all, or just in certain places? It’s gotten more, demonized.
Irene For sure. Yeah.
So the the knee jerk reaction to drag that is that we’re seeing on the right. I don’t think it’s. Necessarily about drag as much as it is about, reaction to the, the world opening up to trans people, and to, people who exist outside of the gender binary. We as drag performers have a responsibility to lead the fight against that response. It’s really important that we recognize that a lot of opportunities that exist for drag performers today exist because of trans women, and specifically trans women of color, who fought when it wasn’t as easy to fight and when it was much riskier to fight. And so, now it’s our turn.
Monique Do you think it has gotten any more or less dangerous over the last?
Irene It’s definitely gotten more dangerous. I know queens who’ve had their personal lives doxed on the internet because of drag. Because of people trying to ruin them or whatever. And. People who don’t feel comfortable walking to their cars alone because they’re afraid someone will jump them or something like that. And it is. It’s a it’s a fear campaign, and, it’s hard not to let it work. It’s hard not to be afraid because it’s a very real threat. And. You know, violence is always on the horizon.
Monique Have you ever experienced it?
Irene I have, I have experienced violence. It’s not something that I. I got very lucky. In in what I experienced because it didn’t escalate to something, but I had an incident.
I’ve been out in drag and had someone try to force his way into my car. And I had to fight him off with a hat pin.
Monique A hat pin?!
Irene I did pull a hat pin out of my hat. It was a long needle. And I had to sort of, you know, threatened to shank him to get him out of my car. And it was terrifying I didn’t want to have to shank him. Yeah, it’s not my desire to hurt anybody, but it was just really scary.
IT IS THE COST OF FINDING YOURSELF WHEN OTHERS WANT YOU TO GET LOST.
BUT SHE OWNS IT.
SHE IS PROUDLY IRENE THE ALIEN – NOT THE ALIENATED.
Monique What is the most challenging part of getting ready?
Irene You know, I think makeup is probably it’s one of the bigger barriers to entry for drag. I’ve seen eyebrows in all dimensional planes of the face. They’re got different starting points. Different ending points. I’ve seen eyebrows who are not related. Never met each other before. Gluing down your eyebrows is really hard. I think if you. Especially if you’ve got some more difficult to tame eyebrows, some bushy ones. But, the technique of gluing down your eyebrows took a really long time for me to master.
Monique What is your favorite feature of yourself? Natural. And then created. Oh.
Irene That’s a really good question. I really like my legs. I think I got blessed with some really good stems. Some nice gams. And I love the way I control my nose.
MAKEUP AND HAIR MASTERED.
Irene Ta-Da!
PADS COMPLETE THE POMP—
THEN THE FINAL LAYER JUST NEEDS SOME CINCHING.
A FIRST FOR ME.
Monique I do not want to hurt you.
Irene Clearly. Oh, honey. Don’t worry. The organs just go over.
And look at that. Look at that. Tiny little waist You nailed it.
SHE LOOKS FLAWLESS.
IT’S TAKEN HER LESS THAN AN HOUR AND A HALF TODAY.
TEN YEARS IN TOTAL.
TIME SPENT IN FRONT OF MIRRORS, CAMERAS, AUDIENCES…
IMPROVING AND REFINING.
INCLUDING FIVE AUDITION TAPES FOR DRAG RACE.
((DEMO REEL I’m a bad banana with a greasy black peel.))
THE SIXTH FINALLY DID THE TRICK.
((DEMO REEL and now for the piece de resistance … there she is. Boys, there she is world.))
SHE GOT INVITED TO COMPETE ON THE SHOW THAT CHANGED HER LIFE.
SHE HOPED IT WOULD CHANGE IT AGAIN.
Monique Tell me about when you found out that you were going to be on the show.
Irene this sigh of relief that I never have to wonder if I’m going to be on the show again. Now I know I get to be on Drag Race no matter what happens. I did it, I made it there. I never have to worry about trying to get on again.
Monique I’m surprised you say relief, not excitement. Not really.
Irene You see the end of the rainbow, and you have to get on the show to get there. And, it was the relief was knowing that I made it to the end of the rainbow. And I guess I was also excited, you know, because on the other end of that is everything that potentially comes after the show. Sure.
Monique And where did you where did your mind go, what the potential was? What did you see for yourself?
Irene The fantasy that I had built up in my head of what going on in that show was like. I was going to get to meet RuPaul, who’s a hero of mine. I was going to get to see behind the scenes of this show that I’ve been watching for a decade, and just sort of be a part of the history that has shaped me.
FIRST SHE HAD TO INVENT MORE THAN A DOZEN LOOKS
AND FACE 15 COMPETITORS.
EVERY QUEEN WANTING THE CROWN.
Monique I imagine there’s camaraderie for sure. So what is that like to be kind of like a little catty, but with the people that you’re trying to kind of help out as well?
Irene Definitely. I mean, I’ve got a fast mouth on me. Sometimes my mouth works faster than my brain and I would say things that I was like, oh, I hope that doesn’t make it to er.
(READS RIPPING OTHER CONTESTANTS 15 Marsha, Marsha, Marsha, you have a real eye for fashion. Too bad you don’t have the clothes for it.)
Irene Hopefully there’s an understanding with the people there that we’re all making a TV show together. And that we say things on camera sometimes for entertainment purposes rather than because we mean them.
(READS RIPPING OTHER CONTESTANTS 112 I know you’re a construction worker, so it would be really easy to do a joke or a pun about how your face is a brick, but I want to go in a completely different direction … you’re a whore.)
Monique Just take me through your performance on the show.
Irene So the very first day I’m there, I won the very first challenge.
Irene We we were posing in front of an old car while, the pit crew washed the car and then sprayed us with the hose as well. And we had to do our best to pose and model and be glamorous while covered in water. And I guess I did the best job at that and also had a good time doing it and made Ru laugh. And so hearing my name get called as the very first winner of the very first mini challenge. It was very exciting and I felt very confident. And it was sort of this like this wave of, okay, I do belong here. I’m in the right place at the right time.
BUT RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT TIME, CHANGED ON A DIME.
((ICE WATER VIDEO welcome back to cosmic cooking with Irene))
WITH THIS ACT–
((ICE WATER VIDEO today we’re going to be making one of my favorite recipes from a small planet in the milky way galaxy called earth))
A COMEDY BIT THAT HAD KILLED IN THE CLUBS FOR YEARS.
A RECIPE FOR:
((ICE WATER VIDEO a glass of ice water, and it’s so easy to make))
SHE ADAPTED IT FOR THE TALENT CHALLENGE.
THE *SAFE CHOICE IS A MUSIC NUMBER.
IRENE TOOK A CHANCE.
Monique Tell me about how that how you got that act together.
Irene For the show, it was about shrinking it beforehand. It was just this sort of parody of a YouTube tutorial and the parody of YouTube tutorial culture. And the concept was essentially what is the stupidest, most simple thing that I could do. But, you know, give it my all to teach people how to do it. Comedy comes from the juxtaposition there.
((ICE WATER VIDEO the next step is we’re just going to add a little bit of ice))
And then when I shrunk it for the show, I think, you know, hindsight’s 2020. I think I eliminated a lot of the beats that were responsible for making it funny. On Drag Race, we filmed everything twice to make sure that we get it for camera, and so I had to do the talent show twice, and the first time I did it, obviously I didn’t know how people were going to react. So as I was performing it, I was watching the judges and everyone sort of not ever get on board with what I was doing and sort of crack a pity smile or something. Then I had to do it again.
Monique Oh.
Irene Already knowing that it didn’t go over well.
Monique I mean, how do you deal with, even just after your first eye contact and you’re seeing it’s not landing.
Irene It’s doing comedy, and it not landing is one of the most painful experiences as a performer. I can’t even watch someone do bad comedy. It makes me cringe so much. And I feel so bad for them. So to have to do it myself. I mean, obviously I. I think for the second one, I just had an out-of-body experience. I sort of astral projected to the judges panel and was watching myself like, ha ha ha ha, I’ll clap for you. You know, Ariana Grande sitting there watching me and I she’s the one who’s kind of like, oh,--but it’s I’ve performed in clubs before for audiences as small as two people. I’ve performed for crowds that were not in a good mood. I’ve done monologues where the joke didn’t land. We, as drag queens, sometimes will come backstage and say, you’re going to be doing it for yourself tonight, girls, because the audience doesn’t care. And the second one was for me. Because I already knew that nobody else wanted to see it.
Monique Did you know before you did that that you were taking a big risk?
Irene Of course. You know, I think obviously the talent show has been around for several seasons, and I’ve watched it enough times to know that the most successful acts are someone doing an original song that they wrote and then lip syncing to that. That’s the go to and that had been established. So my first instinct was, well, that’s what everybody’s going to do. So let me go in the complete opposite direction to set myself apart. You know, I’m a Seattle drag queen. And in the Seattle drag scene, it’s really important to set yourself apart. One of the things that makes this scene so special is that being unique is celebrated here. And, I thought that that would be my strength going in is even if I swing and miss, I will receive extra credit for taking a risk. And I missed so astronomically that that extra credit still didn’t bump me up to a high enough grade.
Monique When you were walking off the stage, what did that feel like?
Irene It was very much like, okay, that didn’t work. You need to prepare for what comes next.
Monique And what came next.
Irene it was like PTSD that night. I every dream I had was replaying that every moment awake was replaying that. And I mean, I have vivid memories of the whole thing. It’s also helpful for remembering that it is filmed and on television and everyone else is seen it too, so everyone else has a memory of it as well.
WHAT A LOT OF PEOPLE REMEMBER:
IRENE HAD THE STUFF TO GO DEEPER –
BUT TOOK A RISK THAT TANKED.
SHE WAS THE FIRST PERSON KICKED OFF.
Monique Your career so far post show? How does that compare with what you had imagined it would be your show?
Irene It’s definitely not. There aren’t as many opportunities. The show we all play roles in the show. You know, the show is casting characters, and 1 14 49 my role right now is first out and the first out role, for the most part, sees a little bit of travel opportunity post show 1 14 59 First show. But it’s, it’s not as unless you have like a crazy viral moment like Miss Vanjie did on season ten. 1 15 09 The opportunities don’t just, effortlessly roll in. It takes a lot more work to create opportunities for yourself. And, I definitely don’t want to think of myself as getting the short end of the stick. But the tools that I have to work with maybe aren’t as sharp as the tools that are given to the finalists.
Monique You sound like you’ve been to therapy about this.
Irene That’s very sweet. Thank you.
I think the hardest part was after it aired and watching everybody else on my season sort of skyrocket and elevate and get all these opportunities, and to see myself not necessarily have them come effortlessly as they as I was perceiving them to come to other people
THE WINNER GOT 200-THOUSAND DOLLARS.
THAT’S JUST THE START.
PEOPLE WHO MAKE IT DEEP CAN MAKE MILLIONS –
LOTS OF TRAVEL – SPONSORSHIPS …
APPEARANCE FEES BALLOON.
Monique So making the decision to, distinguish yourself and be yourself. Cost you a little bit, at least on the show.
Irene Definitely.
Monique Did it pay off in other ways?
Irene I’m fortunate enough that when we have events like Drag Con, I had a line at my booth the whole weekend and it wasn’t the longest line, but I have a line. People did connect with what I did because I took the risk and showed maybe the riskier part of my sense of humor, but I showed my sense of humor, and I, I would rather be connected with the audience who gets me, then connected with an audience who just sort of likes me because the show told them to.
SHE KNOWS WHO SHE IS – IRENE THE ALIEN.
COMFORTABLE IN HER PAINTED SKIN-- THAT’S NOW GROWN THICKER.
SHE’S THE DRAG QUEEN WHO’S BEEN DRAGGED – BUT GOTTEN BACK UP.
SHE WILL NOT SASHAY AWAY
Irene definitely had a breakdown post-show. And. Just coping with the loss of the, the dream, you know, dealing with the the expectations versus reality. It was hard, for sure, but now I look at it as an opportunity to humble myself, to grow as a person. And to to realize that you can fail so astronomically. And it’s okay. I’m okay. I’m actually doing very, very well. And I am a lot less afraid of failure now. A lot of time growing up, my mom always used to say to me, I think you’re afraid of success. I don’t think I’m afraid of success. I’m terrified of failure, and I failed. You know, I face my fear. And here I am on the other side of it. And I’m. I’m doing great. So I, I failed, but I am not a failure.
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