“For the longest time, I never felt like a girl. I also never feel 100% like a man. It’s always been this spectrum of existence,” said Trans drag king Tuna Melt on King of Drag, an original series on the free, Queer-oriented streaming platform Revry.
Released in June and hosted by the self-proclaimed “hardest-working middle-aged man in show business," drag king and comedian Murray Hill, King of Drag is a marvelous, first-of-its-kind competition series dedicated exclusively to drag kings. The contestants represented in its first season cover a wide spectrum of styles and lived experiences from across the US, from the zany Minnesotan Dick Van Dyke, to Atlanta’s Pressure K, to Bellingham’s Big D, just to name a few. Alongside the Queens-based Tuna Melt, several other contestants in season one come from the Trans and Nonbinary community, including: Alexander the Great (Austin, TX), King Perka $exxx (Charlotte, NC), and the winner of the season, King Molasses (Washington, DC).
As part of the grand prize package for winning, King Molasses will be given a headlining spot at the Emerald City Kings Ball in Seattle (September 25–27). Multiple members of the cast will also be present at the event as part of a panel.
The SGN, in preparation for the cast’s visit to Seattle, talked to Damian Pelliccione, CEO of Revry and cocreator of King of Drag, about its successful reception so far.
Revry
Pelliccione told the SGN that, they and three other cofounders — Chris Rodriguez, Alia J. Daniels, and LaShawn McGee — began Revry 10 years ago in Pelliccione’s living room in Echo Park, Los Angeles, then built it into the business that it is now. (As an online streaming platform, Revry offers LGBTQ+ entertainment for free by having advertising during its programming.) Pelliccione reported that Revry currently employees 30 people in New York and Los Angeles, and had 6.8 million monthly active viewers at last tally.
When asked to describe the business philosophy behind Revry as an LGBTQIA+ brand, Pelliccione said that in a US political climate less friendly to social justice causes, “there is an impact, a social-good component to what we do. You know, we always say that in our mission statement: we're here to represent Queer joy, and that kind of takes precedent.”
Pelliccione explained how Revry has a social role to play through exposing the public to LGBTQIA+ perspectives, “I always say Queer is a culture, [because] then it normalizes kind of the experience, the Queer experience, for non-Queer people,” they said. “And I think that's really important. I think media has the power to do that. And I think with Revry, we're able to do that.”
Revry has produced several original shows over the years, and before King of Drag had featured drag kings, like Androgen in House of Pride 2021. But they explained that the network eventually came to the idea for King of Drag because “we've always been a big supporter of the drag king community, and we realized very early on that there [were], you know, drag kings that were not being cast in mainstream shows other than, like, Dragula.”
According the Pelliccione, it became apparent to the Revry team that “this is a whole side of drag artistry that was just not getting a platform.”
Advertisers
King of Drag didn’t come about overnight, Pelliccione said. Revry took three years to finally get the show into production and launch it. One struggle the CEO shared about the project’s development was finding a presenting sponsor. With two weeks left before production, a last-minute ask to Elf Cosmetics ended up being accepted. As Pelliccione explained, “They were a great supporter of the show and … the artistry and put a lot of resources toward this.”
As for the overall withdrawal of Queer-oriented ad campaigns by corporations — and how, in spite of it, Revry is still able to make the case to these profit-driven entities to invest in LGBTQIA+ content — Pelliccione put it in terms of economics and demographics: “Let’s just talk about how powerful the LGBTQ+ dollar is. In the United States, we spend $1.7 trillion in disposable income. That's just our community, and we're the third largest consumer group. First largest consumer group is white, second is Hispanic, third is LGBTQ+, and Black, then AAPI. So if you are a brand, it's good business.”
Pelliccione also pointed out that among younger age groups, LGBTQIA+ people have numbers: “And then we look at Gen Z and millennials, millennials being double the [number] of LGBTQ+ folks [9.8% compared to Gen X’s 4.5% according to Gallup], and Gen Z being triple the [number] of … millennial [people] [22.3%] that are LGBTQ+. So the younger we get, the Queerer we get. So if you are a brand, and you want to exist in the next 5–10 years, you have to address this audience. If not, you're going to be left aside.”
Emerald City Kings Ball
Pellicione, who is excited to travel to Seattle for the Emerald City King’s Ball, told the SGN what the King of Drag cast has planned for the event.
“Thursday, we have our panel with Dick Van Dyke and Perka $exxx and my cocreator, Chris Rodriguez, and then we are crowning King Molasses on Thursday night. We actually have the official crown. It's in my bag right now that I'm taking with me."
Sherwood Ryder, a local drag king and cofounder of the Emerald City Kings Ball, discussed the ball’s history and growth, telling the SGN that back in 2021, the idea “started as an off-the-wall conversation in a green room between Faberg’ee Greg and myself.”
The two performers had noticed that there weren’t any events at the time that celebrated the artistry of drag kings specifically. So in 2022, they decided to create an Atlanta-style players ball for drag kings in a two-day showcase at Factory Lux (now known as Mountain Room Bar) beneath the old Rainer Brewery. Ryder reported that the community response was overwhelmingly positive: “Everybody had a great time, and the feedback was: we want more of this and we want it now.”
Over the next two years, the ball’s organizers moved the event to Skylark and turned it into a three-night affair. Sherwood explained that each night has a (nonmandatory) theme for the attendees, and on the third night, they do their competition, at the end of which, the ball awards titles. As Sherwood explained, “We crown our court. So we have our high king supreme, which is first place, and then second place is our imperial duke, and then our third place is our grand marquis.”
The past two years at Skylark, they have had to turn people away at the door because the event would be so packed, Ryder noted. Ryder also said the event is international: “Most of our international friends are our Canadian boys. They come in from Vancouver and Toronto.”
This momentum of its success is what led the event to move again this year to the Langston Hughes Performing Arts Center, which Ryder pointed out has also sold out. “It’s just a blessing at all that we’re even thriving like this,” Ryder said gratefully.
Regarding how Revry reached out to the Emerald City Kings Ball about King of Drag, Ryder said that the show contacted them after casting and before the season aired about being a part of the winning prize. Ryder explained that “the prize package for the winner was [an all-expenses]-paid trip to Seattle and a headlining performer spot at our festival.” This will be the first time a winner from King of Drag will perform as headliner at the event and be crowned by the show as part of their prize.
The first season of King of Drag can be found at https://www.revry.tv.
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