MICHELLE VISAGE:
It's Michelle Visage.
And welcome to another episode of "Whatcha Packin."
And today I have Eureka O'Hara.
EUREKA O'HARA: Wow.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Hi, Eureka.
EUREKA O'HARA: Hi, Michelle.
I'm just happy to be here.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Oh, yes, of course.
We were just kicking about how deflated
your outfits look back there.
EUREKA O'HARA: Yeah, I know just Macy's day parade the day
after.
MICHELLE VISAGE: We need to get some
plus size mannequins, girl.
Condragulations to you.
EUREKA O'HARA: Oh, my goodness.
It's so exciting.
MICHELLE VISAGE: I could tell when
you were up there, final four.
EUREKA O'HARA: Oh, my goodness, it was hard to hold it back.
You know, you just want to jump up and down.
You want to cry. You want to scream.
You want to--
MICHELLE VISAGE: I think you did all of that.
EUREKA O'HARA: I think I did too, actually, home run.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Yeah, yeah.
You kind of hit me in the soft spot
when you were talking about your mama
and what she's been going through
and how hard that's been.
Have you talked to her?
EUREKA O'HARA: I have.
And she's so excited.
She's talking again.
Her voice valve is finally working.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Because she is a throat cancer survivor.
EUREKA O'HARA: Yes, she's coming,
she's slowly coming into remission.
When I got a video on "Untucked,"
it was actually the first time I'd heard her talk in months.
And when I left, she wasn't able to say goodbye.
But I knew what she was saying to me kind of.
But just hearing it, that was the moment
that I was like, oh, no ma'am.
I've got to get in this game.
I know why I'm here, you know what I mean?
And it really turned me around. I needed it.
MICHELLE VISAGE: You know what?
You're a beautiful thing for her.
EUREKA O'HARA: Yeah, thank you.
MICHELLE VISAGE: For a mother to be that proud of her kid
doing this the way that you are.
EUREKA O'HARA: Thank you.
MICHELLE VISAGE: You were probably never that boy
that the world thinks a boy should be.
EUREKA O'HARA: Right.
MICHELLE VISAGE: And from the sounds of it,
your mom was the one who said, that's OK,
I love you for who you are.
You are extra special, extra amazing.
And a final four in RuPaul's Drag Race.
EUREKA O'HARA: I can't believe it.
MICHELLE VISAGE: You had a little bit of an advantage
and a little bit of a disadvantage.
EUREKA O'HARA: I definitely felt like I had a good chance,
but I had a lot of self-doubt, more than I even realized.
I remember wearing this cat suit here.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Uh huh, which is lovely.
EUREKA O'HARA: This two-toned-- lovely cat suit.
But the hair I wore with it, that wasn't Eureka.
That was hair that I thought you all
would be like, oh, this is something
new and different on Eureka.
This is a whole new best drag Eureka.
No, that's not who Eureka is, you know?
MICHELLE VISAGE: It's also not your best drag.
EUREKA O'HARA: Well, and I should have had the biggest
piece of hair in the world on because that's
what Eureka would have done.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Yeah.
EUREKA O'HARA: I could have made this cat suit my best drag,
if it was Eureka. MICHELLE VISAGE: Right.
EUREKA O'HARA: You know?
MICHELLE VISAGE: We have your Eureka look
for the finale, which wowed us.
EUREKA O'HARA: You loved it?
MICHELLE VISAGE: Oh, my god, it was amazing.
EUREKA O'HARA: Oh, I'm so glad. MICHELLE VISAGE: It was amazing.
EUREKA O'HARA: What I wanted to do
was I wanted to touch on the fact that when I left,
I said Eureka, you found out and you'll find it again.
And a lot of the fans were unclear on what that meant.
So I said, well, let me just spell it out for the world.
MICHELLE VISAGE: I love that.
Talk about this, one this prehistoric kind
of moment behind us.
EUREKA O'HARA: Yeah, so this is very inspired, very Flintstone.
And it's latex.
And it's just something fun and sexy.
That I try to push the boundaries with size
and fashion because I think you can show your different shapes
and sexiness and latex is something
you don't imagine a big old heifer like me rolling up in.
So why not wear it?
MICHELLE VISAGE: No, anybody can wear latex, honey.
But it's it's best, in my opinion,
if you're going to do that, to give a body, give us a figure.
EUREKA O'HARA: Yeah, of course.
MICHELLE VISAGE: So it makes sense.
EUREKA O'HARA: Shape it up.
MICHELLE VISAGE: So people can't say [bleep] about it.
EUREKA O'HARA: Right.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Right?
Because you were on season nine.
And you were very loved.
I had told you right from the beginning,
you got something special for me, kid, and I'm watching.
And I loved everything you did.
And then the tragic thing of having your knee surgery.
EUREKA O'HARA: Yeah.
MICHELLE VISAGE: And you had to leave, doctor's orders.
EUREKA O'HARA: Yeah, crazy.
MICHELLE VISAGE: And you've since had this surgery.
You came back.
And I called it an advantage and a disadvantage.
Because you knew what it was like.
You've been standing on that mainstage before.
You knew the kind of amount of time
that you have to get ready for a challenge or lack thereof.
EUREKA O'HARA: Yeah.
MICHELLE VISAGE: And there was that.
But the disadvantage is, you had too
much time to think about it.
EUREKA O'HARA: Exactly.
MICHELLE VISAGE: You had too much time to get in your head.
EUREKA O'HARA: So right.
MICHELLE VISAGE: You had too much time
to think, oh, I'm the [bleep].
They asked me back for a reason.
EUREKA O'HARA: Yeah.
MICHELLE VISAGE: But you were there with a vengeance.
And I think it just needed to be [pssh pssh] knocked
down a little bit.
EUREKA O'HARA: I held on to so much
resentment from my experience with my knee and my--
MICHELLE VISAGE: Resentment?
EUREKA O'HARA: I do want to call it resentment to myself.
I resented my body, in a way.
I felt like when it happened that my body gave out on me,
that it was something I had done and that I ruined my chance,
you know?
So it took me a lot to get through
that emotional experience, through the healing
and things like that.
And I worked so hard to heal myself.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Are you being proactive
about making sure that things like this don't happen again?
EUREKA O'HARA: It weirdly made me a better person to myself.
It helped me take better care of myself.
Because now I am a little less on the overly eating.
And I do diet--
I don't diet as much probably could
or exercise as much as I could.
Because I'm still holding all this.
But I think I'm just built big.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Well, you're tall.
EUREKA O'HARA: I am tall.
MICHELLE VISAGE: How tall are you?
EUREKA O'HARA: I'm 64.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Yeah, that's frickin' tall.
That's RuPaul height.
EUREKA O'HARA: Yeah.
MICHELLE VISAGE: You are not ever
going to be a waif, darling.
EUREKA O'HARA: Right, right.
MICHELLE VISAGE: And it's not about diet.
I think I love you the way you are.
You love you the way you are.
For health for that leg--
EUREKA O'HARA: You know, I listen to my body
more than I used to.
I was very careless with myself before.
And once you have something like that happen,
it reminds you, oh, well maybe those pains and those twitches
and things like that or when you feel
fluid coming in to your joints, pay attention to it.
I actually had some PTSD from my experience
where I was afraid to dance as hard as I used to because I
was worried about injuring.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Fair enough.
EUREKA O'HARA: And that lip sync with me and Cameron
was the moment that I let my guard down finally.
Because you all were telling me those things like
don't feed off of these nerves.
Like you're getting off on being nervous so
that you can do well.
Like, oh, I'm so nervous, I'm so nervous,
I have to fight through this.
But you can use love and other things to be able to--
MICHELLE VISAGE: Does that work for you?
Because that does not work for me.
I fight with him about this all the time.
EUREKA O'HARA: The love?
Yeah, before I knew I was going to be lip
syncing I was in "Untucked."
And I had a picture of my family.
And I was like, you know what?
I'm going to do this for you all.
I'm putting this in my cat suit.
I had it over my heart.
You have to prove for yourself.
You have to prove for as much love and appreciation
as they've had for me to tell me what
I need to fix and to even bring me back and all these things.
I need to deserve this is what I felt. So I
threw it all out there on the floor, you know?
And that brought me back to life and my dancing too.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Have you always danced?
EUREKA O'HARA: Dancing is why I started performing in a way.
When I was growing up, I always wanted to be a dancer.
I wanted to be a female dancer, to be particular.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Well, you can be.
There's still time for that.
EUREKA O'HARA: Well, now I can, yeah.
So when I found drag, I was like,
it was an outlet for me to dance and feel empowered.
And then also with my size, it became an empowerment for me.
MICHELLE VISAGE: I love that you're body positive, as am I.
And I represent for bigger girls too.
But don't make your life about that.
EUREKA O'HARA: Right.
You know, there are so many other things
that are fun about you.
It's not just because, oh, you're this big girl that's
funny and you talk about being fat
and it's so funny and this food and this and that.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Yeah, but you're funny anyway.
EUREKA O'HARA: Right.
And I needed to see that, you know,
that I can be funny by just smiling really big
and being who I am and being positive and fun.
And there's so many other things that are good about Eureka.
And I learned that in this season.
That's what was amazing for me.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Before we wrap this up,
I want to just touch a little briefly on the words,
the message you had for your younger self.
It was very impactful for me.
It was very beautiful.
EUREKA O'HARA: Thank you.
MICHELLE VISAGE: And I felt every word
that you were saying to David.
EUREKA O'HARA: I just had to be honest and vulnerable.
I had these speeches that I've probably prepared for months.
So I was like, oh, I know exactly what I need to say,
exactly what I need.
But that still rang true in my head where I was like,
no, you just need to be authentically yourself.
And I wanted to be open and honest with you, truly.
MICHELLE VISAGE: But that's what we fell in love with you about.
We fell in love with you in season
nine because of your honesty.
If we don't know who you are and we don't fall in love with you
or we don't cry with you, we don't laugh with you,
we don't really care. EUREKA O'HARA: Yeah.
MICHELLE VISAGE: You want to root for somebody.
You cut it deep.
You let us in.
And we all fell in love.
EUREKA O'HARA: I'm so glad.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Yeah, and condragulations to you.
EUREKA O'HARA: Thank you very much, very much.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Top four, season 10, this was no season
to mess around, honey.
EUREKA O'HARA: Oh, honey, when I tell you--
MICHELLE VISAGE: These bitches came to slay.
EUREKA O'HARA: Girl, I have never worked so
hard for anything in my life.
And I'm so glad that I did it, honestly.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Well, this was just the beginning of what's
waiting out there for you.
I can't wait for people to see you perform.
I can't wait for you to do your shows, to do the tours.
I can't wait to perform with you.
EUREKA O'HARA: Yeah, I look forward to getting to know you.
I know you have so much to give.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Aw, same here and I know you do as well.
EUREKA O'HARA: You give so much.
MICHELLE VISAGE: It was just an incredible experience
to see you blossom. EUREKA O'HARA: Thank you.
MICHELLE VISAGE: And you really, really did, Eureka.
So I'm really, really proud of you.
EUREKA O'HARA: That means more than anything
you could even imagine, honestly.
MICHELLE VISAGE: Thank you guys for watching another episode
of "Whatcha Packin."
I will see you next time.
Bye.