Crystal Envy was surprised like the rest of us were when she landed in the bottom two during RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 17’s Snatch Game episode, despite having never placed below safe so far in the competition.

“It was honestly hard. When you’re doing very well in the competition setting, and you’re excelling at challenges, and you’re showcasing exactly what you do really, really well…then you falter once, you’re like, ‘Damn, I wish my track record could have kept me out of this position,'” she said to Blavity’s Shadow and Act in our exit interview with her. “So it was a little hard. It definitely was a little hard on my feelings.”

The Snatch Game was particularly hard this season, and Envy’s Nicole Richie impersonation didn’t seem as bad as other queens’ performances. But clearly, it wasn’t enough to keep her out of the bottom. Envy said that she was always nervous about the Snatch Game.

“I would say that with almost every other challenge on RuPaul’s Drag Race, I was like, ‘Oh, when I go there, I’m gonna do this, and I’m gonna kill it. When I do this, I’m gonna kill it.’ And I was doing that. I never said that about Snatch Game before going because that was the one challenge that I knew was either gonna give me the boot, or I was gonna skate on by, like by the hairs on my chin with it,” she said. “One, celebrity impersonation is not something I do at all, like, ever. I love to make characters, and I’ll do accents and things, but being a celebrity impersonator is a totally different aspect. And then, on top of that, you have to be comedic—and not just comedic, but RuPaul comedic, which is a very specific comedy to make Ru laugh.”

“You have to be really, really fast ’cause it’s also an improv challenge,” Envy continued. “The questions are asked to you, and you have like 60 seconds to write that answer down and think of something funny and unique and make sure it’s not something that another one of the girls sitting next to you was going to write.”

Envy said that she felt like she might have skated by when assessing her own feelings about her performance and the other queens’ opinions.

“When we finished, uh, the Snatch Game and you’re back with the other girls, I asked a lot of the girls, ‘Do you think I’m going to be safe? Do you think I’m going to be in the bottom?’ And a lot of them told me they thought I was going to be safe. So I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to be OK. My runway is really, really sickening too. My runway will help me get out of the bottom. If I’m low, it’ll help me get out of the bottom because I’m dressed up as a whole wolf. I have four-inch toenails on my toes, a brow bone prosthetic.’ I was like, ‘Oh, my runway is gonna literally get me out of the bottom with the hairs on my wolfy chin chin chin.'”

She also felt like she had a chance since other queens were in clear danger, like Lexi Love, whose Gilbert Gottfried impersonation became so bad it was good again.

“You see the other girls, and you’re like, ‘OK, the other girl is doing a little bit worse than I am.’ So even Lexi, she was flubbing her jokes and breaking character, but she ended up in the top because it was so bad, she 360’d and became funny, which to me is like, that’s crazy. That’s a crazy critique, girl,” Envy said. “Then, when you get the realization you’re in the bottom three… now you’re gonna have to lip sync for your life, and you’re not only lip-syncing for your life, but you’re gonna have to lip-sync for your life against one of the best lip-syncers in the competition as well. Because one thing Miss Lana Ja’Rae does is she performs.”

Envy’s arc on the show seemed to center around her penchant for perfectionism. As she described, “I think my main critique this episode was to let that perfect and poised facade that I have down a little bit. But what’s so wrong with striving for perfection?”

With that said, Envy did admit that perfectionism can have its drawbacks, especially if it’s part of a trauma response.

“I’m not only a perfectionist in drag… I’ve been a perfectionist just my whole life,” she said. “Just as a queer individual, we’re told whatever we do is wrong. So I’ve always just strived for perfection so no one can tell me whatever I’m doing is wrong, I guess. And that’s just something that comes with trauma and growing up queer and something you have to let down a little bit. Sometimes you have to let the wall down just a bit to let people see that outside of the perfect, polished, poised doll, there is a real-life person behind there, and there is. I feel my emotions very much so.”

Despite the ongoing discussion fans have about how the show judges perfectionism versus “versatility,” Envy did show various aspects of her talents, including her performance of “Unprofessional” during the “Bitch, I’m a Drag Queen” singing challenge. She said that being able to channel Latrice Royale from Season 4 was one of her favorite moments of the show.

“I really got to showcase exactly what I love to do, and that was so much fun,” she said. “And then I got to do an iconic moment like Latrice Royale’s [speech]. That is sickening.”

Envy fans have a lot to look forward to as Envy starts her post-Drag Race career.

“I have a lot of personality that I’m excited to showcase via the fans when they come to my shows. And on my social media, I have so much great YouTube content coming out on social media that they really want to dive in and see who I am as a person,” she said. “I encourage them to come to a show, buy a ticket for a show, meet me. And if you can’t come to a show, enjoy my social media content and push for more. Tell RuPaul that you want Crystal Envy on All Stars.”

RuPaul’s Drag Race airs Fridays at 8/7c on MTV.