- I was going to beg Ru Paul to feed me, be like,
"Can we eat now master?"
Hi, I'm Sasha Velour.
I've got as many onions as I could find
on the floor of the closet
and I'm gonna show off my knife skills.
First I'm gonna (knives sing) I don't know how to do this.
- [Man] Beautiful!
(upbeat music)
- [Man] How often do you chop onions?
- I chop onions as rarely as possible.
I actually detest the experience and I would prefer
to not have them in my meal at all.
I'm quite bad at it actually.
(laughs)
I've already peeled these onions in advance,
which I have heard is the first step
because it requires that you take your gloves off,
which you do not get to see.
I've been in quarantine for three weeks.
My nails do not look great.
- [Man] What part of NightGowns
are you most excited for people to see?
- Nothing feels more alive than NightGowns.
I think I'm most excited for people to see
that drag is a space for, I should be chopping,
for queer artists of all kinds,
without restrictions on gender or gender expression.
And that even though drag is so much about entertaining
our queer family, it's also, look at this,
it's also about expression and self-expression.
That is how we can heal through drag and work through pain
and turn it into power and beauty, no restrictions.
- [Man] What's your favorite episode of NightGowns?
- My favorite episode is the final one.
It focuses on my performance of Nina Simone's,
Wild As the Wind, which I perform
on my Smoking Mirrors tour.
(theatrical music)
But this time the camera is right up in my face.
Usually people are like feet and feet away
so I could be sweaty and tired.
(glass clinks)
And then then the story getting to show people
my childhood home, getting to talk about my family
and my father and my young adulthood.
It just felt very vulnerable
and even though that's not always what my drag is about,
sometimes it's about the fantasy.
It has to be a part of it too.
I'm just gonna (knife cracks).
I usually tell people that my first drag performance
was to Marina and the Diamonds, Primadonna girl.
♪ Primadonna girl ♪
Actually, that was my second performance
on my first night of performing.
My very first performance on that same night
was actually to Julie London,
I know life's contemporary music.
Julie London singing, Why don't you do right?
♪ Why don't you do right ♪
(theatrical music)
And I did it as a strip tease
and ended up in just like a bra and panties
crawling on the ground, begging for money.
I think it was winning choice.
- [Man] When did you first realize you were famous Sasha?
- I'm famous?
(giggles)
I realized that something was changing
because every time I would leave my house,
people would recognize me completely out of drag.
I thought, "I'll just change my glasses
and wear a hat and no one will know it was me."
But people are watching
their Ru Paul's Drag Race very carefully
and they started recognizing me.
And yeah, it's been a little different ever since.
The weirdest thing on my Fulbright
was there was an international library
where they would allow foreign scholars
to give lectures on whatever.
And I asked them if I could give a lecture on queer theory.
So in the middle of Moscow in 2009,
I gave a breakdown of all of the American queer theorists
and I used the Fulbright idea
of spreading the idea of mutual understanding
to indicate that America is a place
that is proud of our queer theory
and proud of our queer artists and intellectuals.
That is the message I was sharing
on behalf of our country internationally.
(laughs)
- [Man] What's your favorite Russian word?
- My favorite Russian word is goluboye,
which means sky blue,
but it is also slang for a gay man.
The parallel, rozovyy, pink I've heard does mean lesbian
which is perfect.
- [Man] If you would do snatch again, who would you choose?
- Thank you so much for having me Ru Paul on your drag race.
(laughs)
I would have loved to do Gollum for snatch game.
I had my loincloth prepared.
I was going to beg Ru Paul to feed me
if I got the answer right.
Be like, Can we eat now master?"
So, I still think there's hope for that one.
(laughs)
I am more of a stoner than a drunk,
so my go-to stoner food is cookies and milk like a child.
The worst job I've ever had is the front desk attendant
at Crunch Gym with all the young Broadway hopefuls.
(bell dings)
The most overrated makeup trends is using
too many different colors in your single eye makeup
and paradoxically also a nude lip,
too much color or not enough.
The last person I called was my father
and we talked about how capitalism was to blame
for most of the struggles
that we're having in the world right now.
My favorite food I've ever seen using a drag routine
is actually an onion.
I saw Pearl Harbor perform Macy Gray's cover of Creep.
She does it like it starts with a voiceover from Chopped
and she takes out an onion and on the,
"You're just like an angel, your skin makes me cry,"
she takes a big bite of that raw onion
and lip syncs the rest of the song
as it just like topples out of her mouth
and there's a roasted chicken involved later on.
(giggles)
(sighs)
If I could live in any decade or time,
well, I'm very drawn to the artists of the 20s and 30s
and of the 80s and 90s
but it wasn't a good time for quality of life
for queer people or for Jewish people.
So I think I'm quite content where we are.
Maybe the future holds something appealing.
Definitely the future.
I do not know how many group chats I'm in,
but my favorite is the NightGowns group chat with the cast,
which is mainly Miss Malison, Entitled Queen
sending essay length daily affirmations
to the rest of the cast and all of us
just being like speechless and amazed
at their capacity for language and kindness.
It is a love all the time thread,
all drag performance needs such a thing.
Well Vanya is doing good but we haven't let him
sniff other dogs in a little bit
and he's very, very sad
when we pass them on the street he cries.
In terms of drag, I have put Vanya into drag before
and it looks fantastic
but he really hates clothes of any kind.
So if you hold anything that looks like doggy clothes,
he'll immediately like start wagging his tail
and run around the house and make you chase him.
So similar to me getting into drag.
The craziest rumor I ever heard about myself
is actually a fake tweet of mine
that continues to come around the internet.
It's like a BDSM tweet.
This supposedly written in 2007
from like a WII or something,
and I definitely was not that cool in 2007.
But, damn maybe I shouldn't have said it was fake.
Let the legacy live on.
(laughs)
Three things in my fridge.
We usually have vodka in the freezer.
It's where Russians know to keep it.
Really expensive like homemade dog food
and peanut butter.
Do not eat those at the same time.
- [Man] That's actually the last question.
How many onions is that, Sash?
- I think I got to, how many did we have?
- [Man] I think there was five.
- I think I got through four of them.
That's not very effective.
(laughs)
I'm not getting a job in a restaurant.
(upbeat music)