Nini Coco made it all the way to the end of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 18, ending her run as the season’s runner-up. Blavity was on hand to speak with her about her time on the show and what she made of her final lip sync and that “catty” edit.
Coco said that she’s “relieved” and “overjoyed” at where she placed in the competition.
“I feel content,” she said. “I feel proud, and I feel I got closure that’s gonna allow me to completely focus my energy forward. I don’t have to look back anymore. I don’t have to keep questioning whether or not I’m gonna win this whole thing or not. I’ve got answers. I’ve got my plan and drive looking ahead and I’m ready.”
She admitted that while her final lip sync against Myki Meeks may have looked polished on the surface, she was anything but behind the scenes.
“To be so honest, I was thinking, since I had not seen the other girls’ performances, we didn’t get to watch each other perform, [and] I really had no idea what the other girls were gonna do. But based on how the season went on, how the end of the competition went on, I was assuming I was going to take the third place spot,” she said. “So I was ready to blow my kisses and wave and just say my thank-yous. So I was actually so surprised when Ru called me first to be in the final two, which I took as my sign of winning the performance challenge, I will say.”
“I wasn’t as prepared,” she continued. “So that was just me kind of winging it in the finale. I hate to say that because it’s probably what cost me, maybe potentially a $200,000 win. But, it was just winging it. It was trying to feel the song, trying to let the energy of that moment just excite me and take over. I remember being worried it was gonna be too chaotic, but I was really proud with how it looked. And I feel like Myki and I attacked it in two different ways. But they did complement each other and they had the same tenacity.”
Coco is the fourth Colorado queen to make it to the final two, joining Willow Pill, Yvie Oddly and Nina Flowers. Coco described the Denver scene as being experimental and creative. As she jokingly put it, “We’re a mile above sea level, so there’s no oxygen here, so our brains are starving for oxygen, and it makes us have the audacity and tenacity to do crazy sh-t on RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
“The Denver scene is really a healthy place to experiment and try new things and audiences are receptive to that,” she continued. “I think that like gives you this courage to just go for anything. So I tried to bring that energy into the competition that like experimental, and I think that’s what drag is about, is pushing those boundaries, pulling inspiration from so many people around you. I feel like that’s what I love about drag, is pulling inspiration, pulling references, and then putting my own twist on it and my own stamp on it and trying to level it up in my own way. And that’s how I was able to surprise myself over and over again. I think that’s how Denver girls succeed, is they are just unexpected and low on oxygen.”
The biggest narrative dominating Coco’s time on the show was if she was mean or catty to the other queens. According to the edit, Coco had to learn how to inject more humor into her reads. There were several points in her season where she’s shown as having to learn to read the temperature of the room. But, Coco told Blavity that the storyline isn’t completely true.
”You know, I hate to be a ‘Blame it on the edit’ queen, but a little bit is ‘Blame it on the edit,'” she said. “I do think I would’ve never expected to have communication issues being one of the things that like derailed me from the competition. I would’ve thought it was Snatch Game and I ended up winning that. So…everything that I thought would happen didn’t happen. Everything that I didn’t think would happen happened.”
One of the things she didn’t know would happen would be her losing her voice, which was the inciting incident surrounding her edit.
“I think when I lost my voice at the beginning of the competition, it was actually this moment of first impressions where I physically couldn’t speak or like get to know girls as well, and I think I just got off on the wrong foot,” she said. “I wasn’t vocalizing the respect and love that I had for these other performers because I was genuinely rooting for everyone a hundred percent. I wanted everybody to do their best because I love to watch good drag. But I wasn’t establishing that norm before reading the girls and attacking their insecurities. So it was just like I did things out of order. I couldn’t really speak in the ways I wanted to at first, and it was just this perfect storm of moments that just got off on the wrong foot, and the cliques had already kind of started to form by the time girls started getting wiped out. So by the time the competition was in full fire mode, you’re already kind of on an island and that’s a hard place to be.”
She added that what we didn’t get to see on camera were the moments when the queens would spend time outside of filming. Coco said, “I think we were able to form these genuine connections that maybe didn’t make it to camera. But then what you saw on camera didn’t really translate to what the storylines were or what was being set up. So it was kind of confusing. I was even confused sometimes, like, ‘I don’t think that’s how it really happened.'”
The narrative, however, didn’t stop Coco’s talent and skill from shining through. During the Tic-Tac Chit-Chat, RuPaul asked Coco about how her past as a mechanical engineer might have helped her through the competition. We also asked Coco that, and she said that one thing she learned was how her engineering skill was all part of her creative process.
“I used to think my left brain and right brain selves were always compartmentalized and separated, but the competition made me realize that it is just this circle that feeds itself,” she said. “The artist feeds the technical thinker, which feeds the artist again. It’s like all of those parts of me are doing this dance in unison.”
“I used to think they were just two separate selves. It felt very like Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus. Turns out it was just Miley all along, you know?” she continued. “But yeah, I do think it helped me attack every challenge in a very specific way because how I work is I have a vision and I create things to bring that vision to life very exactly and very specifically. It is all just one, and that’s where your power comes from, when you don’t compartmentalize the selves and it’s like there is one complete self that just can do all of those things. Multidimensional people, you know what I mean?”
What’s next on Coco’s list after Drag Race is rest, then tackling the world.
“Oh my God, I will be sleeping for a week straight, unplugging my phone. Today is 4/20, so you know, in Denver we’re gonna celebrate a moment. And then I think it’s the world tour,” she said. “We’re going international–Australia, Europe, Latin America. It’s going to be an amazing year.”
“It’s such a privilege to be able to tour and have people around the world interested in seeing me perform and I just achieved a dream with Drag Race,” she said. “So I think this year is going to be unpacking what the next dream is gonna be and like rediscovering what my life looks like as a full-time artist, stepping away from the corporate bureaucracy of it all and just following my heart and I already have so many ideas. I already have so much of my community in Denver that I want to celebrate on a bigger platform. So I’m trying to figure out ways to do that. It’s gonna be really exciting.”
The full season of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 18 is currently available to watch on demand through your TV provider at MTV.com