The Drag Race Iceberg Explained (PART 1)

foreign [Music] VPN hello and welcome back to the drag detective where today we are going to be doing something a little bit different but something very fun and something that I've been working on now for a little while so if you are not aware of what an iceberg is I actually looked up the Urban Dictionary definition of it and it says that an iceberg is a chart that sorts facts slash theories from a piece of media by obscurity usually the most commonly known subjects near the tip of the iceberg and the lesser-known subjects being near the abyss so if you have not seen any of these Iceberg videos there's icebergs about lost media about conspiracy theories about like everything under the entire Sun someone has made an iceberg for and it's basically just looking at some like lesser known information about a topic with the very top of the iceberg being stuff that's more commonly known and then the stuff at the bottom of the iceberg being more like secretive not many people know about it it's very hush hush so if you see a red dot appear on my forehead in this video we all know what's going on but someone on Reddit made a drag race Iceberg specifically I want to shout out the specific icebergs there's a couple of them I'll be using the one made by Reddit user my hat rules so thank you so much for making this Iceberg I can't wait to dive into all of it and in this video we are going to go topic by topic I will give you the T behind all of these weird drag race anomalies and facts and little events that have happened throughout the time of the show and as we get deeper and deeper it will get weirder and weirder but first now solving internet Mysteries is a lot easier with a VPN so I'm especially grateful to today's video sponsor surfsharkvpn surfshark is a VPN which keeps your online identity safe by encrypting all the information that travels between your device and the internet it also allows for you to travel anywhere in the world virtually you can swap your location with anywhere else you want in the entire world now this is very good for watching drag race which I have to do a lot obviously for this Channel and all of you other us fans know that it is basically impossible to find all of drag race on streaming services here in the US so I can very easily just change my location to somewhere else in the world in order to find Drag Race episodes a lot easier and I can do that without being worried about my personal information being spread across the internet because surfshark gives you an alert whenever any any of your personal information is in danger if you want to try surfsharkvpn for yourself you can use the code drag detective and get 83 off plus three months free plus surf shark has a 30 day money back guarantee so you can try it out without any risk at all to try out for yourself check the link in the description below thank you so much to surfsharkvpn and now back to the video now there will be a couple topics I'm not going to talk on just because they're just kind of in bad taste in my personal opinion things I'm not comfortable discussing um there's only a couple of them and it's really nothing that I think anyone doesn't already know so I will link the image and the Reddit post in the description below so if you notice a couple things on the iceberg that you're like Oh Derek didn't mention this it's because I just kind of was like it's self-explanatory I don't want to get into Queen's like personal traumas and things like that so that is the only thing we'll be skipping so at the very tippy top of the iceberg we're gonna start with every Queen is filmed getting crowned so this is pretty much well known by now ever since season four specifically after season three where up until that point they'd only just filmed a single crowning whichever Queen won the season they filmed that and they moved on with their lives well Perez Hilton leaked that Raja won season three and it kind of spread all over the Internet spoiled the season for a lot of people so then once they started doing the live finales on season four they record each of the finalists getting their crowning moment so that the Queens don't know who won the audience doesn't know who won at that point maybe the producers don't even know who won the only time that they'll know who won is when it airs on television that way there's no way to spoil it there's no way that the winner of the Season can get leaked nothing like that so Queens like peppermint Queens like Eureka O'Hara and Cameron Michaels they've all had crown things filmed and actually a couple of these images have leaked to the internet from people who were at the live finale tapings of Queens who didn't end up winning their season still getting their moment with the crown and the scepter and walking down the runway prance Queen up next we have the show is filmed a year in advance the show is filmed here in advance it takes time to edit and and to map out how the story lines are going to go and what confessionals they're going to choose what story lines are going to ditch like obviously this is what happens with all television so yeah villain edits is I think referring to how specifically Queens like Roxy and Fifi who are regarded as like the greatest villains of all time in Drag Race definitely had some things taken out of context in their edit or you know maybe a two-sided rivalry like between Jinx and Roxy all of jinx's nasty remarks towards Roxy get cut and Jinx ends up looking like the poor victim while Roxy looks like she's bullying Jinx basically it's just showing that there's more behind the scenes to a villain edit than what we see there might just be nastiness but sometimes there is more context that we are missing Queens get a list of outfits when they get cast for the show so obviously these Queens don't just have all of these Runway categories sitting our closets so when they get cast on the show they get a couple of weeks beforehand a list of everything they're going to need from challenge performances to just regular things for like mini challenges or like you should bring this many boy outfits plus all of the runway categories for the season that way they have like sometimes it's two weeks or three weeks to get all of those things together to talk to designers confessionals are filmed at the end of every day so this specific Iceberg was put out two years ago which means that some of this stuff might be different now I know from watching Jan's kind of series that she did on her Tick Tock that on her Seasons they filmed the confessionals in the morning so they would get to set at like six or seven record confessionals until maybe like 11 or 10 or whatever and then they would record the challenge or the eliminations or whatever it may be that day and that's why in more recent Seasons you'll see a lot of Queens with a coffee cup in their confessionals like chatting with their coffee because they're filming them in the morning so past Seasons I guess they filmed them at night now they film them in the warnings we are reaching the next level of the iceberg this stuff is a little I guess you would say less obvious you might have to do a little bit of digging to figure out what is going on the first one is willem's disqualification and I mean Willem has talked about this a lot now on Race Chaser on Twitter on you know interviews with people like Joseph Shepard but the gist of it is that Willem had a show that she really wanted to do and knew that the season was going to be filming overlapping with that show she wanted to do so she knew she needed to go at like around sixth or seventh place based on when filming would go and she was gonna do as well as she could beforehand and then she was gonna ditch and make good TV and that's what she did so she started breaking a lot of rules you know stealing stuff or what have you and they basically were like yeah you're done and she's like okay perfect because I didn't want to be here anyway I got to go do this thing where I'm gonna get paid a lot more than I am per episode of this show and she left that doesn't look good or sound like a good story necessarily which is why they did the conjugal visit thing for the finale when RuPaul's like why did Willem get disqualified that just makes sense from I guess willem's perspective and from the shows because it makes both of them look not that bad because I mean Willem was also calling out things like the girl's not getting good food or enough food or food options that like for the vegan contestants like there was just a lot of like nastiness going on on both ends behind the scenes so this was a good story that paints both parties in a good light and you know now years later we know the truth but at the time it was kind of more hush hush secret the Queens are taped into their hotel rooms I don't know if any of y'all had this but when we went on a DC trip in middle school they taped our hotel room doors so that they could tell if we left because like the tape would rip that's what they do for the girls in their hotel rooms they put a thing of masking tape or whatever have you on their doors so that they know that no one is leaving you know in the middle of the night or sneaking out especially in more recent Seasons where they're definitely more stringent on like who the Queens are allowed to talk to and who they're allowed to see and when and what and where they're allowed to go and things like that ndas it's pretty self-explanatory the Queens have to sign an NDA before they go on the show just like basically any other show and it's basically just saying you can't leak [ __ ] things that we aren't discussing on the show should stay behind closed doors and you know depending on who the Queens are they might be a little more or a little less lenient on the NDA process but I mean there's videos on YouTube about the specifically the drag race NDA so if you want more information on that it is out there Elliot's racism and transphobia on set I see there's things like when you're really deep in the fandom you think every everyone knows this but then constantly like people will be like why does everyone hate Elliot or what's wrong with Elliot so I guess there are a lot of people that don't just know these like more behind the scenes stuff basically Elliot said some transphobic remarks some racist remarks uh on set of season 13 and was called out by candy Muse specifically and you can kind of see you know in this famous clip now where the final four are reacting to Elliot in the finale they are like come on foreign [Music] on Twitter a couple of them have said things specifically candy Muse kind of detailing what Elliot said and you know I don't really want to get into all of that you can look it up if you want but basically Elliot was just not very conscious of of the things they were saying and um hopefully they've changed and you know learned to be more cognizant of the words that they're using and the the language that they're using um but yeah it's not anywhere in the edit on season 13 you would never know that that happened but you know it became very apparent afterwards Max's unflattering edit is referring to Max's elimination episode and you know Max is a very interesting person in Drag Race lore because they were doing so well they had two challenge wins in five episodes and then suddenly they were cut at snatch game and gone and have never come back to the show literally not even for an appearance like never seen on the show again and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that Max got kind of a weird edit on their elimination episode that was I guess kind of meant to to show like hey she should go home because she's a weirdo where she is having a panic attack in her corset she asked if they can pause filming for a second so she can loosen it and just catch her breath and then she sits at the end of the stage RuPaul asks her hey why don't you sing a little bit of a song for me just to kind of you know get Max into a better space get her mind out of what's going on Max sings for RuPaul and RuPaul's like oh that was lovely are you okay go back to filming let's go back and film now on the show all we see is Max being like Oh I need to take my corset off I'm gonna sit at the end of the stage and start singing and then everyone's like weirdo but that is not what happened Max is you know gone on to say this is exactly what happened and they edited me to look like a crazy person to justify me going home which checks out for what we know about production in the show but it's definitely sad for Max and I think has really led to them not really having a great relationship with Wow and maybe why we haven't seen them come back in any capacity on the show candy hoes invisible edit I looked around the internet a lot for this like maybe if there was like a reason for it or like a secret reason or whatever I really couldn't find anything so if you guys can you know suss out why this is on the iceberg or if it's just you know hey did you know Candy was on season seven you can put it in the comments below and um I'll pin it if you know I see something that's like oh okay that's what I was missing because yeah some of these are kind of vague and hard to just like look up runways are filmed twice the first time they do it with music so that they can kind of like you know Bop around and have some you know uh Ambiance to like strut to and then the second time they do it it is completely silent and that is when the judges do their jokes so I'm imagining it's kind of awkward because you're just like walking it's kind of like those edits where you just hear the footsteps they have to film everything twice so that they can get both the judge's comments and enough footage to make sure they can put together the perfect like package for the runways copywritten characters are not allowed for snatch game because if let's say Bianca Del Rio doing Dora the Explorer in her audition tape if she were to bring that to the show the producers of Dora could potentially sue and say hey this is like a kids cartoon that you're now painting in a raunchy light that's why like even on SNL and things like if they're gonna like directly make fun of something or parody something they have to change the name and on something like snatch game like let's say she calls herself uh Isadora like it just is kind of weird because like the name is right there on the like they're supposed to be playing someone so it just kind of gets rid of all of the the weirdness Miranda Sings hasn't been allowed to be used there's a couple other characters where like production shuts it down but we also have seen a couple times where they are playing a copywritten character but instead they'll just play as the actor behind it to kind of get around that rule Queens get an iPod with Lip Sync songs on it they're not allowed to have Electronics or phones or whatever like if they want to use their phone it needs to be for a very specific purpose and they are monitored the entire time so they get those little like iPod Nanos that don't even have like access to Internet or like a screen uh and they load it with the lip sync songs they load it with like musical numbers or girl group songs and things that they need to learn ahead of time and they get that at the beginning of the season so they can learn the lip syncs ahead of time but as we know there are plenty of Lip Sync songs that they put on those iPods that they end up not using Queens go into debt spending money for Runway categories I mean we've seen plenty of Queens say how much they've spent and you know some of them like Raja O'Hara are like yeah I didn't spend that much and then you have others like Aquaria who are like yeah I dropped a lot of money it is an expensive decision to make to go on drag Grace and you kind of have to hope that the bookings that you get afterwards if you're not winning the cash prize are going to kind of pay off all of that money that you put into your runways and from what we've heard I think most of the time it does as long as you make any type of impact at all but it still is a very big investment to go on drag race now we are in our third category this stuff is getting definitely more random it's less about production and more just like random things first we have RuPaul's sweatpants Utica obviously makes the joke during the roast hey RuPaul why don't you stand up and RuPaul flicks are off because RuPaul after filming her Runway and you know her part on the main stage she will throw on sweatpants and slippers and sit behind the desk and no one would ever know and can you blame the [ __ ] I can't nothing you say matters unless those cameras are rolling is in reference to a very famous YouTube video from the talk show hey Queen scene where Pearl kind of goes over the story of why she was going to quit why she had that stare off with Rue and she basically went up to Rupaul and was like Hey like you have changed my life like I've looked up to you for so long like just thank you so much for having me here and RuPaul says nothing you say matters unless those cameras are rolling now from RuPaul's perspective you know she is making a show she knows that these kind of moments are things you want to capture on camera from Pearl's perspective her you know lifelong Idol just said don't talk to me unless we're rolling and so I can see both perspectives could RuPaul be nicer about it yes could Pearl maybe have like understood the bigger picture of what's going on around her yes but it led to what we had you know happen and two pearls really bad relationship with wow where you know I don't think we'll ever see her back and I don't think she would ever want to come back this one let's just say you've got mail gate uh because I don't feel comfortable saying the original uh title of this Courtney Act called it out caused enough controversy around it I think Carmen Carrera also said things about it and the show changed it to like she'd already done had hers is in place of it um but it also led to Courtney Act being kind of blacklisted from the show a little bit her and Rue kind of got into it over this and it kind of is just a moment of the show where it's like sometimes Society progresses faster than television and this was just one of those cases Jinx actually stood up for herself against Roxy I alluded to earlier the fight between Roxy and Jinx was definitely more of a two-sided rivalry where they were both throwing Jabs they were both engaging in nasty Behavior but we only saw Roxy's you know part in that and you know they edited Jinx to look like the helpless victim Jinx has mentioned this Roxy has mentioned this Alaska has mentioned as everyone that was there is like yes it was definitely more of like a two-sided thing that we only saw one side of and you know it is unfortunate because to this day Roxy Andrews is still getting non-stop hate for people who are just watching season five for the first time but it also did make for really good TV so congratulations Raja is alluding to when Mariah Paris Balenciaga Mariah successful is eliminated on season three her mirror message says dragulations Raja and as we know Raja ends up winning That season a lot of people use that as evidence that the show is is scripted or that the elimination order and the winner is kind of decided from the start and while I definitely can see this I think it was more of the fact that it was just very obvious that Raja was doing super well production loved Raja Rupal loved Raja Raja was you know friends with RuPaul for years she was the probably the biggest name on that cast it just kind of made sense that Raja was going to win and in kind of a bitter moment where you're going home and you're like congratulations Raja we all know you're gonna win so it is one of those moments where it's like how much of this is really you know reality and how much of it is scripted I tend to think that it was more of just a clever guess than anything else but other people think it's not the walls of the work room are Fabrics it makes sense it's a really pretty pattern and you know they have those fabric walls so why not just throw that [ __ ] up on the wall the season three queens had extra time to work on their money ball looks this is another one I really really couldn't find any information on uh like whether who said it or why or any of that so if you know any of this information drop it in the comments it all is kind of self-explanatory they got extra time to make the Moneyball looks but um as to why maybe it was because they were using a difficult medium to like create with detox and Ivy helped Jinx with her makeup is pretty self-explanatory jinx's makeup on the early episodes of you know season five was it was rough uh it was definitely rough and as the season progresses it gets better because she got help vivacious entrance flub was planned I definitely could see this happening where like she practices it you know zipping it down and revealing and the producers are like oh this is kind of a funny gimmick if you're like oh no I can't open it and vivacious is like okay because if the producers tell you to do something you have to do it jujube caused untucked drinks to be limited if you watch Juju these lip sync specifically the Black Velvet and the give me something you can feel she's trashed and so after this after season two they limit how many drinks you're allowed to have and you know some Seasons I think they get a little less stringent on it and sometimes that they're more hardcore on you know like you need to stop I think it just kind of depends on the vibe of the group there is tea from season 15 that they encourage the girls to drink as much as they want uh and looking at some of these untucked we've been getting recently that kind of checks out but for a while there they were only allowed to have like one or two drinks and Jan even mentioned I don't remember if she said all star six they were less lenient or on season 12 they were less lenient but one of her Seasons they could only have one or two and the other they could have more if they wanted as long as they weren't like going crazy another one I could not find anything on it makes me annoyed because like this one sounds juicy and I just can't find any information on it letters under their hotel door what's the T drop it in the comments if you know because this is when I really do want to know the tea on production made Brita and Jan change their drag names brita's full name is Brita filter GM's full name is Jan Sport they're both copy written and you know there's other queens that have names like you know rivalenciaga or a curious Chanel Davenport where like it's fine but in whatever the case for this this was it wasn't so they had to change them producers knew about dayla's white out this I think is very obvious because like when there's cameras going on there's not anything that the producers aren't going to be privy to or aren't going to catch so I think for sure they saw her do it and they're like um okay well damn then we have to make sure she wins the lip sync so that we have this amazing moment and do I think that they paid Bibi to take her wig off and ruin the lip sync where she was very clearly winning I personally do now no one has ever said anything like that has happened but I could kind of just connect the dots in my head and I think that makes sense especially considering that it was thorogi's white out so Ben has to go up to thorogy ask her for the white out door just go get the white out then go give it to Ben and then Ben has to go take it and do like there's no way that that whole thing was not seen by a single producer by a single helper backstage or directors or cameraman like people knew what was going on and they saw the moment that was going to happen and they said let's Let It Go let's Let It Ride Jada was a last minute alternate uh yeah our winner season 12 almost didn't make it someone had to pull out and Jada was then replaced and you know they have alternates on All Seasons but usually they won't be used and in this case Jada had much less time to get ready than everybody else but she still managed to outshine like most of that entire cast this one is one of my favorite like random weird stories Jocelyn Fox had no dark foundation in the makeover challenge so season sixes makeover is the bride one where they're making over Brides Jocelyn has like the worst time ever in history there's so many things that went wrong the guy that she was with was homophobic he cheated on his wife and his revenge she made him do this so he was pissed he didn't want to be there he was a jerk and also because Trinity K Bonet had just been eliminated and she was the last black contestant left on that season they took out all of the foundation and you know makeup for those darker skin tones out of the work room and so Jocelyn then had nothing to work with when she had the only black makeover partner looking at his makeup it is like 10 Shades lighter than it and it should be and he looks like a corpse and that's why and I think it's you know it's clear that they wanted Jocelyn gone Johnson was not going to win that season and she was the only one left that didn't have like a solid storyline or a solid like standing in a competition and you know I think that was just one of their ways of like ensuring that that was going to happen Queen's not receiving prize items I've seen a couple Queens mention this especially in the earlier Seasons when they were winning like trips or like dresses from this or jewels from this like these random small companies sometimes they would never receive it and they were just like okay unused Runway prompts on season 10. this is a thing for every like current season they always ask for more runways than they're going to need because let's say there's one that a lot of people just bring something that's not good they're not going to want that on television so they can kind of look at what everyone brought for all of the categories and say okay we're not going to use this one we're not going to use this one or this one and for season 10 there were three of them and it was kind of like a thing at the time because I don't know if it was the first time this happened but it was the first time that Queens had been talking about it there was an orange alert Runway there was a French like design Chic Runway and then there was a prehistoric Runway the prehistoric looks were used in the Twin challenge by Cracker and Cameron and Aquarium the French ones were used by Aquaria for sure in that twin Challenge and the orange one was used by Asia and then we saw a couple of other queens post some of these looks uh on Instagram throughout That season since they just did photo shoots with all of the packages you know everything in their package that they made even the ones they ended up not using so then they put those on Instagram and people connected the dots and then people confirmed and now it's just a thing I think it was Aura on this past episode of drag race in the roscos said that there was a monochromatic Runway that they brought that they never ended up using All-Stars one was made for Chad to win this one is is rough because when all stars one was airing Chad was definitely someone at the fandom liked but on that cast was not the fan favorite or close to the fan favorite so when she started winning all these challenges and I think people saw some rigory involved they ended up saying Chad was made to win All-Stars one and like if Chad had won season four then the real winner of season four would come on All Stars and won All-Stars but since Chad didn't win season four he came back on All Stars in one like like it's one of those things we'll never know there's evidence to show that yes just based on rigory that was in Chad's favorite on that season but that whole season is a cons it's a complete mess I could do an entire video on like the rigory not even the rigory the behind the scenes buffoonery of All-Stars one Shangela started the lipstick messages so if you watch season one there's no lipstick messages when people you know are eliminated and then do it on the mirror but Shangela wanted to say goodbye to I think Sahara and production was like you're not allowed to say goodbye to anyone like you have to go so her way of saying goodbye was to write a message on the mirror and production really liked that as like a you know final goodbye so they started implementing it throughout That season and now it is just like a regular thing for the show Shangela and Mimi's fight shut down production for three weeks so this has been said by multiple Queens this definitely happened and definitely the the fight got more intense than what we saw might have gotten more physical than we saw but there there's never been any like cut and dry like this happened this happened this happened this happened and then we shut down like it's just been alluded to so someone should just leak the whole story at some point but I kind of like that it's just this like mystery like well whatever happened was so bad that production shut down for three weeks and with that that brings us to the end of part one I'm going to post production split this into two because this video got really long so for the second half of the iceberg which features a lot more of the like deeper weirder wildest stuff that I didn't even know about I had to look up a lot of these and go you know be the true drag detective that will all be in part two for our bottom four tiers of this Iceberg which will be coming probably on Monday so make sure you are subscribed to the channel so you don't miss it I hope you enjoyed this kind of different video but I just really love watching these Iceberg videos and then when I saw there was a drag race one I was like I mean the drag detective has to do this right but if you are not aware I currently have a podcast going which you can find on all streaming platforms Spotify Apple music Google podcast all of it call the rigged recap where every week I chat with some of my favorite drag race content creating friends about the newest episode of season 15 I've had Jack fat I've head Kayla says I've had Bootsy this upcoming episode will feature Dr Jake I have some really fun guests coming later in the season so I'm just very excited about this new podcast check it out I will put the link in the description below as well as all of the links to my social media where you can follow me on tick tock on Instagram on Twitter I'm kind of in a social media cleanse but I'm still posting as much as I can and thank you once again to surfsharkvpn for sponsoring today's video you can use the code drag detective to get 83 off plus three months free and all of that information is in the description below thank you all so much for watching and I will catch you all in the next one

Channel: The Drag Detective

Views: 231,562

Keywords: drag race, rupaul's drag race, rupaul, drag race all stars, drag race robbed, drag race rigged, gay, lgbt, lgbtq, drag, drag queens, queens, drag detective, rpdr, lip sync for your life, drag race fight, drag race iceberg, drag race behind the scenes, drag race untucked, drag race season 15, sasha colby, mistress vs malaysia, drag race tea, iceberg explained, iceberg

Id: m06jLaL2xwk

Length: 31min 1sec (1861 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 09 2023