Jane Don’t, the frontrunner of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 18, was eliminated in a shocking twist to the season.
The consummate performer met her match with the season’s latest improv challenge, based on viral “Karen” videos. The subject matter is what made Jane feel uninspired.
“I mean truthfully, I didn’t like it,” she said. “I think it was easily my least favorite challenge of anything that we were asked to do.”
“Not to be the serious person at a clown show, and I’m not making any kind of excuses about my performance on the challenge, it was what it was regardless of the topic, but I guess to my mind, I just don’t think those Karen videos are fun or funny,” she continued. “I think that they’re symptomatic of a lot of s**t that I really don’t like. I don’t think it’s funny. I don’t think that white people being nasty, racist and underhanded is funny. I just don’t think that white women being entitled and crazy is necessary. I don’t watch them and laugh…they just make me uncomfortable. And so it’s difficult for me to go into the challenge and try to find a lot of humor in it, which is why I took the direction that I did, which was to sort of make her like almost a Christopher Guest kind of character. I don’t know, [Karens are] just not interesting to me. I don’t mean to condescend to the material that we’re given, but it just didn’t resonate with me.”
Reflecting on the cultural weight of “Karen” videos
Jane described how when she first saw those videos, it was during the height of 2020’s racial revolution, spearheaded by the deaths of Black people like George Floyd.
“When you think about how those videos rose to prominence, the first Karen videos I really remember happening were the ones that were surfacing during 2020 and George Floyd and this time of real racial reckoning in the country,” she said. “It just feels so steeped in so much stuff that I don’t know how we make this fun. It just doesn’t feel lighthearted and fun to me to be like, ‘Oh my gosh, this lady’s yelling at these kids who are barbecuing in the park.’ No, that’s f****d up.”
The pressure of a strong track record
Jane’s immaculate track record also added a lot of pressure to her during the competition. She said she started feeling like she was competing against the judges’ expectations.
“To be honest, I think a lot of people have been like, ‘Oh, did your track record make you feel somehow more secure in the idea of getting into the final?’ But the reality is that my track record made me more anxious about my chances of getting into the final,” she said. “I did understand that at some level, I do think that things started to be graded on a curve a little bit.”
“I was listening to the critiques every week and my critiques certainly did start to become a little, ‘Well, for you specifically, it’s X, Y and Z.’ And I think that’s the nature of any subjective competition, so I don’t hold that against the judges. But to me, it was like I felt my track record was obviously impressive and I was very proud of what I was doing. But day to day, it made me nervous because I feel like there’s an expectation of my performance level and if I don’t meet that, it’s going to be much more glaring than somebody who’s been a bit more up and down.”
“I think that doing really, really well was like a blessing and a curse,” she said. “And I’m not trying to be like, ‘Poor little rich girl, Jane has too many wins’ or whatever. But you know, I do think it was just a fact that by the time we got to that Karen challenge, the critique for each individual felt very…I guess the politically correct way to say it would be [that it felt] very tailored to the individual.”
“I felt like there were people who were getting the critique of, ‘We were worried about you, but you actually did pretty good, so you’re safe,’ you know? Whereas I did feel my critiques were a bit more, ‘You know for you, we have a certain expectation and for you, we know that you could have done more,'” she continued. “Again, it’s the name of the game, it’s a subjective competition. But certainly, there’s a level of unease that I feel as a competitor in that situation because not only does it feel like I’m competing with the other four people on stage, it also feels like I’m competing with my entire performance this entire competition. I’m competing against myself [in] every other challenge and it feels like a lot to ask of somebody, but things happen the way they happen. I don’t begrudge the judges. We come to a TV show to get judged, and we know we’re gonna get judged, so they’re doing their jobs.”
What’s next for Jane Don’t
With the stress of competing behind her, Jane said she wants to try out Broadway.
“I am so open to so many things. I want to write a lot more, I want to do bigger, more produced work,” she said. “If we’re manifesting, Broadway, give me a call. Off-Broadway, give me a call. The M&Ms store in Times Square, give me a call. I will take it.”
“I want to do more writing, more comedy, I would love to do TV…and move into a more mainstream kind of comedy space,” she continued. “I’m very heartened by what’s happened with Oh, Mary! in the couple of years, what’s happened with Alex Newell winning the Tony. I think there’s like an appetite for queer work in the public consciousness in a really demonstrable way right now and I would love to be a part of that.”
RuPaul’s Drag Race airs Fridays at 8 p.m. on MTV.