Geneva Karr might be the latest eliminated queen from RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 16, she’ll always be La Diva Más Latina!
Karr talked with Shadow and Act about her time on the show and what it was like to become part of the illustrious drag family. She said that walking in the werkroom was unlike anything she expected.
“So I walked in, in my entrance look, to the work room and I was so excited. I had all these good feelings, these good emotions, and seeing it there live and everything, I got kind of got like goosebumps,” she said. “I was just like, ‘Oh my God, I am in the workroom on RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
She also said how the split premiere added even more feelings, particularly curiosity about who her competition would be.
“Listen, I love a good split premiere, you know, because you get to focus more on the Queens than having a lot of them to where like, it’s so many to remember,” she said. “So I love split premieres, watching them as a viewer, but experiencing it on the show, I was kind of like, well, damn, I don’t know what these girls have to offer or [what] their strengths and weaknesses [are]. So, you know, it’s kind of like, hmm. So who’s gonna be strong? Who’s not gonna be strong? Who, who should I keep my eye out for?”
However, Karr showed the queens to look out for her with her talent show performance, which made everyone want to say “La Diva Más Latina.” She said she wanted a number that people would remember her by.
“I really loved it,” she said of her song. ” wanted people to remember me, so I was like, what would be more funny than to…say ‘I’m Geneva’ a thousand times and it’ll be stuck in people’s heads, like brainwashing, you know?”
“…Of course when I was like, oh, I’m gonna be La Diva Más Latina, I also didn’t expect for there to be that many Latinas,” she continued, addressing the record number of Latina queens on this season. “And then when I got to see that it’s the season with the most Latinas in there, it just feels so good because [there are] a lot more people that I can identify with faster…I feel like when you’re Latina and then there’s other Latinas, you kind of have that connection to where it’s like easier and faster to like get to know each other [and] get to like each other.”
As a queen who is proud of her heritage, Karr said she was “very excited” to get to know the other Latina queens. She also addressed how the cast’s various diverse backgrounds comes through in their drag.
“There’s different aesthetics, you know, and we all do drag differently, so that’s very exciting,” she said. “…I was just so excited to just get to know everyone and experience drag through their expression.”
Whether she was in the top or in the bottom, Karr spent a lot of time lip-syncing for her life and/or for the win. She said that going through the grind of lip-syncing for her life didn’t get to her psychologically thanks to her pageant background.
“I’ve done many pageants back home and I’ve learned that sometimes when a pageant doesn’t go your way, it’s not that you’re a bad entertainer or a bad drag queen, it just happens that what the judges were looking for, you just weren’t delivering,” she said, adding that during the last lip sync, she talked herself through it by reminding herself of her talents.
“The way I was calming myself down was reminding myself. ‘You made it on the show, you’re part of the cast. You’re a sick, sickening entertainer. You’re a fierce queen. You’ve been doing this for almost 12 years. You just had a bad week. You took a risk, it didn’t pay off,'” she said. “And you just try to stay here and fight and you know, hopefully, you’re here the following week…In untucked, I would kind of like separate myself a little bit because I was kind of giving myself my own pep talk and just focusing on what was gonna be the lip sync.”
As for life after Drag Race, Karr said that she wants to grow her social media fanbase and hopefully make it to Vegas.
“Of course, I’m gonna try to really work my social media and become more of like a social media queen. You know, maybe…a YouTube channel or continue with TikTok or on Instagram,” she said. “I would also love to see opportunities…One of my biggest dreams outside from being on Drag Race would also be kind of either do [Drag Race Live in Las Vegas]. Mm-Hmm. I would love to be part of the show. If I could do maybe some Netflix series or some movies or whatever it is, I just know that whatever it is I’m gonna do, it’s gonna involve drag and it’s gonna come at the right time…I’m still gonna go like one day or one week at a time and see what happens.”
Could Karr take her leg hair-styling talents to Vegas? Karr laughed, saying, “I don’t know if [the styled hair will] allow me to perform without it making my legs be in pain, but I can for sure walk and be maybe in like a, a hair runway or something.”
RuPaul’s Drag Race airs Fridays at 8/7c on MTV.
