The Snatch Game is always the true equalizer of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and this time, Mia Starr was the unfortunate casualty of Season 18. However, should she have been saved by her lip sync against Kenya Pleaser?

Starr spoke with Blavity about the feedback she’s received about her lip sync. She said she was surprised to hear how many people felt she should have been declared the winner.

“Honestly, speaking to everybody [for press], that has been such a common response,” she said. “[It] makes me feel so good, even though I love my sister Kenya. I love her down, but that makes me feel really good — the fact that I put up a good fight.”

Snatch Game nerves and second-guessing

This season, the Snatch Game was redesigned as The Snatch Game of Love Island. The switch-up threw a lot of the queens off, including Starr, whose caricature choice was urban legend Bloody Mary. Starr said she was “so nervous” going into the challenge.

“My friends who know me were like, ‘Oh, you’re gonna kill Snatch Game.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know,'” she said. “If I start off good with the banter, maybe, but it didn’t feel like it was going to be my strongest category, you know? So I was super nervous, and I stopped having fun in that moment because I took it too seriously. I knew once that happened, I was like, ‘Oh, you in danger, girl!’ I was like, ‘Oh, shit.'”

“I did not like how I felt. I didn’t feel like my performance was doing good at all, so I just kind of closed up, which I shouldn’t have,” she continued. “I mean, it’s Drag Race. It’s funny. It should be fun, you know? So I took it too seriously, and I just did not like the way that I felt in that moment.”

Starr described RuPaul as the only person who can make her “fold so fiercely.”

“I don’t get starstruck from people at all, ’cause I’ve worked with a lot of artists around the world in my career. But for whatever reason, RuPaul has the ability to make me fold,” she said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, my God.’ So yeah, it was definitely a challenge. I was like, ‘Oh God, you’re too in your head.’ …The people watching at home, they don’t realize how tough Snatch Game is. Even for the funny girls. They’re like, ‘No, this is hard!'”

Facing Kenya Pleaser in the Bottom 2

Starr said she knew she would be in the bottom two, but going against one of the queens she had grown the closest to in the competition was the bigger hurdle to come to terms with. She also wasn’t a fan of the song choice, “Head Over Heels” by The Go-Go’s.

“It wasn’t something that I was even excited to perform,” she said. “I remember telling production, ‘Damn it, I know I’m gonna be at the bottom and I don’t even like this damn song.’ You know what I mean? I mean, the song is a classic, but it’s just not my style. I was just like, ‘You know what, it is what it is.’ I’d accepted the fact that, girl, you might be going home, so you just perform, give it your all. You’re still not done, but be okay with what the outcome is if that means you have to go home.”

“I was like, ‘I don’t see dancey-dancey on this, so let me just lip sync,’ you know?” she added. “But s**t…maybe I should have danced.”

Finding strength in her Florida drag family

An advantage she had over other queens who have landed in the bottom two was having a built-in support system with her Florida drag family. Between Athena Dion and Juicy Love Dion, Starr said that she felt “at home” and “so safe.”

“We’re already gonna gravitate towards each other, and we are gonna have each other’s backs no matter what, you know?” she said. “I felt amazing. I would not have had it any other way.”

“The fact that I was able to share this experience with family — it was just the best feeling in the world,” she added. “Even if there’s a low moment, we were there to snap ourselves out of it [and tell each other], ‘Shut the hell up,’ you know what I mean? [We said], ‘Remember who you are, remember where you come from.’ We had that genuine sisterhood that the other girls had to grow into.”

She added that she and her Florida family still had that same growing process, which resulted in Mia’s close relationship with Pleaser and Vita VonTesse Starr, as well as her good relationships with the rest of the cast.

What’s next after ‘Drag Race’

As for life after Drag Race, Starr said that she would love to join RuPaul’s Drag Race Live in Las Vegas.

“I did the Britney Spears Vegas residency, so to be able to do my own residency for Drag Race would be so full circle and so amazing,” she said, adding that her EP of new music is now available for streaming.

“I definitely want to be able to sell out venues when fans come to see me for my art,” she said. “That would be the dream.”

RuPaul’s Drag Race airs Fridays at 8 p.m. on MTV.