New York has long served as a backdrop for our pop culture obsessions, like a third character; Blair Waldorf ascending the steps of the Met in pink Oscar de la Renta, Taylor Swift’s 2010 Gyllenhaal era, and all the bloody kills as Ghostface takes Manhattan. For drag superstars Trixie Mattel and Katya, the only backdrop needed is a green screen and the magic of editing to create their webseries UNHhhh, which recently celebrated 200 episodes.
Trixie and Katya launched UNHhhh with World of Wonder in March 2016, a year after their appearance on the seventh season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. The show, where they talk about whatever they want (because it’s their show, not ours), has since taken us from stark white backgrounds to stock footage to a courtroom with Bianca Del Rio’s Judge Judy presiding.
When the drag duo joins Teen Vogue on a video call, it’s the penultimate day of the Trixie and Katya LIVE tour, which has delivered them to Charlotte, North Carolina — “the cultural capital of North America,” Katya says from her nondescript hotel room. She’s happy to be quoted on that. Trixie, on the other hand, is lying in the sun, enjoying a modicum of peace before the day begins, panning her phone camera across to take in her surroundings: “It’s almost like the Wendy’s in Charlotte was the third character.”
The pair never imagined UNHhhh becoming what it is today. “We didn’t really know what we were making. We didn’t really know what we were doing,” Trixie says. “This show has made it possible for us to travel around the world like ten times” and “is probably the most watched, lowest budget show on YouTube.” Much of the show’s appeal stems from the editing style of Ron Hill and Jeff Maccubbin, but also Trixie and Katya’s own enjoyment of making it. “We’re not Helen Mirren and f*cking Judi Dench, you know? We can’t fake it, so if it’s not fun, it will come through,” Katya says. “The joyful spontaneity of it is something that people really hook on to, and that's the key ingredient.”
Trixie and Katya, as a twosome, are always booked and busy. Every gig they have requires them on set at a certain time, or in the city on a certain day, or on the Netflix sofa ready to watch Heartstopper, or Wednesday. Outside of the calendar clash, they’ll find the perfect time to shoot UNHhhh. “World of Wonder, they work around our schedule. Mostly,” Trixie says (and that “mostly” is doing a lot of heavy lifting). “They allow it to be something that we choose to do for fun at the time when we want to do it. That's what makes it enjoyable… Once it becomes too like a real show, it becomes too demanding.” (Katya weighs in: “And life’s too hard, you know?”) “We’re putting on wigs and talking to each other, like it’s not even that important,” Trixie says. “We’re not like, President of the United States.”
At one point in our interview, I ask if it’s true that Katya found drag in college. “We’re still waiting for her to find drag,” Trixie replies, which earns a hearty “shut the f*ck up” from Katya. But when she considers the question, Katya traces her drag origins back to her childhood, age four: “I guess we can maybe accuse my father of grooming, because he did.” (Trixie cackles). “He allowed me to buy a cheerleader’s pom pom that I cut bangs into and used as a wig, so I guess I was groomed from a very early age to be a, you know, devil worshiping crossdresser,” Katya says. “I dressed up as a girl when I was little, so it's always been there.” (Trixie: “For some reason she refuses to dress up as a convincing girl now.”).
Trixie started doing drag in The Rocky Horror Show, age eighteen. “It was an environment of like, fake blood and Frankenstein masks and fishnets,” she says. “So it wasn’t, you know, it was drag but more it was like Halloween spooky, cartoony, you know? It wasn’t like glamour.” Trixie grew up in a small town in Wisconsin, so small that the people she went to kindergarten with were the people she graduated high school with. “Everybody was gradually exposed to how gay I was, so I wasn’t really bullied or anything.” In many ways, what Trixie experienced at school was better than what she experienced at home.
Katya rates her guest stint on Ziwe as one of the most fun things she’s ever done. Fans list her and fellow artist Bob the Drag Queen as some of the only guests who could shock Ziwe. “It’s funny, I was supposed to be on with Bob that day, and he tested positive for COVID in the dressing room so he had to leave,” Katya says. “I was so happy because he’s such a steamroller in interviews, I would have gotten crushed.” Trixie interrupts: “So you think Bob is loud? So you think a person of color is loud? Wow.”
Katya responds: “I think he's incredibly loud. Yes, I do. It would have been two Black women against [me], it would have been a race war. I would have been absolutely left out to dry. It would have been horrifying. But I really like [Ziwe] a lot, and I was really excited to get to do it… I thought it was like a gift from God that I could do it alone.” Is she saying that Bob catching COVID was a blessing? “Not a gift from God, a gift from me when I planted COVID in his dressing room,” she laughs.
Trixie, meanwhile, has managed to find space for her music career to thrive, amidst her cosmetic brand and her pink paradise motel. “I just go through spells where I get really into it and I write a bunch of music and then I stop for like six months,” she says. “The great thing about drag is you can just do something, and they get sick of it, and then pivot and do something else.” Writing music was Trixie’s drag even before she started dressing up.
Watching UNHhhh for 12-or-so minutes every week is a small pocket of escapism, something that Katya calls “portion control.” But what the green screen and editing magic can’t distract from is the surge of anti-drag legislation and full-frontal attacks on trans lives — and boy do Trixie and Katya have words to say about it.
“I want everybody to think about the fact that the government officials who you pay their bills, their taxes, this is what they’re using the time and money for,” Trixie says. “I'm just gonna say what the truth is. Something like 3500 kids a year get killed by gun violence, zero get killed by drag. Give me a f*cking break. Not to mention like, men put on dresses and f*ck children at churches, not at drag shows… I mean, not all shows are kid appropriate. I don't want children at my shows. Not at all. But there shouldn't be a law about it.”
“These people are profoundly stupid, and so I think that in a lawmaking context, that is extremely dangerous,” Katya says. “You have stupid people trying to make new laws that are profoundly stupid, not grounded in any kind of consensus reality… It’s the tired cliche of the person who’s doing the finger pointing is the person who is the most suspect. Like Trixie said, the people who are doing grooming behaviors are the church folk and the pastors and the religious people.” Katya adds, “Drag queens don’t care about anything other than themselves, like come on.”
“I don't want to generalize but these conservatives are going home and googling porn with people crossdressing in it,” Trixie notes. “Like I'm sorry, these are people attracted to many of us.” She brands it all a witch hunt: “You point a finger so people go, oh good, that’s the witch not me. It’s just not even interesting, though. I mean, we’re talking about a group of people where it’s never been about facts, so it’s not worth arguing because data, studies, none of that matters. Because at the end of the day, ‘but God, but this make-believe man.’ Okay b*tch, like whatever.” Nobody is trying to indoctrinate people into drag, Trixie says: “I don’t want more drag queens. In fact, I want most of them to stop.”
But there’s a caveat to all this. Rage is real, valid, necessary. But who is it for? Who will read these words? Who will listen? “I’m just shy to talk about it because it becomes the headline of every single interview we do,” Trixie admits. “There’s nothing new to say. Nobody conservative is going to read this interview. And if they do, they’re not going to change their mind. So what are we talking about?” The answer is, of course, because every decibel builds to a cacophony. The words become so loud, so bold, so in-front-of-your-office that they demand to be heard.
As for young people aspiring to a future in drag, they have some pointed advice. Trixie wants young people to know that “we don’t need more drag queens.” Alternatively, Katya says “stop right now and go into law. Stop right now, put the wig down and pick up the gavel… We don’t need you at the club. We need you in this at the state house, in the Senate, and in the House of Representatives. Put the wig down and pick up the letter opener or whatever.”
Ultimately, when you buy a ticket to a Trixie and Katya show, or you press play on an episode of UNHhhh, you know what you’re in for. “We look great. We’re hilarious. We’re relatable,” Trixie says. “There's some integrity but we don't take it that seriously.” 200 episodes down, and it still feels like the beginning. “Maybe I’m shallow,” Katya says. “But I just figured everybody came back for the long legs, big boobs and blonde hair. Maybe I’m just simple like that, though. Isn’t that enough?”
UNHhhh season 8 is streaming now on WOW Presents Plus.
