RuPaul’s Drag Race star Blu Hydrangea has said she hopes to use the platform given to her by the show to highlight the fight for LGBTQ rights in Northern Ireland.
Blu is based in Belfast, where same-sex couples are still not legally allowed to marry, more than five years after such unions were legalised in England, Scotland and Wales.
When asked about representing a place “where LGBTQ rights aren’t where they should be”, Blu told HuffPost UK and other reporters: “I feel like I bring a point of view that no one else on the cast had.”
She said the show allowed her to “open up to the rest of the UK to be like ’we’re back over here, still in black and white, please remember us while you’re living your rainbow fantasies”.
“I have a boyfriend of five years, and I want to be the first gay person to get married in Northern Ireland, you know?” she continued. “It was crazy, everyone else comes from cities, I came [representing] a whole island, I was the only one from Ireland or Northern Ireland, so it felt like a lot of pressure. But it was nice to have a voice, to talk about something that is meaningful and that matters.”
She joked: “Some people just talk shite, but I talked about getting equal marriage in Northern Ireland, which is important.”
On being a Belfast queen, Blu revealed: “We have two drag bars, and they’re opposite each other.
“I’m one of the queens who has a regular night, but it’s hard to get into because there’s such a little opportunity. I had to build a platform on social media first, and then from there you can only go so far, so I wanted to break onto another platform to show my art and talk about things.”
She added: “I don’t want anyone to grow up and see all the oppression in Northern Ireland and think ‘I can’t do anything with my life, I can’t be gay, I can’t come out because of the place I was born in’.
“I want people to see me on the show and think ‘he’s living his best life, he’s living his full drag fantasy on TV, and I can do that too if I want to’.
“It opens up so many doors, and so many opportunities, not only for me, but for people in Northern Ireland, which is great.”
RuPaul’s Drag Race debuts on BBC Three at 8pm on Thursday 3 October.