RuPaul’s Drag Race fan favourite and season nine runner-up Peppermint has revealed that the production team behind the show ‘hated’ her – because she outsmarted them in this specific way.
We know what you’re thinking: How could anyone hate Peppermint, the iconic runner up on the ninth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race? The same one that could have easily won Miss Congeniality, was the first queen to enter the Werk Room as an openly trans woman and has since appeared on The Traitors US?
Well, it turns out, because when Peppermint was filming season nine of Drag Race in late 2016 before its 2017 premiere, she managed to find a way to outsmart the show’s production crew and accurately tell the time while competing – something that contestants are forbidden to do.
Speaking on the Exes and O’s with Shannon Beveridge podcast, Peppermint didn’t name Drag Race, but referred to the “first time [she] did a reality competition show,” – which was indeed the World of Wonder mega-machine.
“Not only did they take our phones and things, but they hid the notion of time from us. Once we got up and were in the studio, where there weren’t even windows and they control the lighting, you have no idea,” she explained.
For a show like RuPaul’s Drag Race, which often tells competitors that they have ‘X’ hours to complete a task, cynics might see how production could take advantage of their cast.
“I found a way to tell time, cause I’m quite resourceful. I’m an innovator,” Peppermint revealed.
“There was something that they had to supply us that we had to have, in order for us to do what they wanted us to do some of the time,” she continued, heavily hinting towards iPods given to the cast of Drag Race with the season’s lip-sync songs on. “I was able to use that to tell time.”
“[Production] would be like, ‘Ok, you’ve got three hours for [this] thing,’ and they’d come in and they’d be like, ‘Ok, you’re done.’
“And I was like, ‘No, it’s actually only been two hours and fifteen minutes.’ I was like [telling the rest of the cast], ‘Y’all, it’s only been two hours and fifteen minutes. Don’t go!’ They hated me. They hated me!”
Unlike the rest of her season nine top four sisters, Peppermint has yet to return for (and win) a series of All Stars – but that doesn’t mean she’s not booked and busy. She recently became the first trans woman to appear on The Traitors US, has appeared in the American political arena and even had a turn on Netflix’s Survival of the Thickest.
New episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race season 17 air on Fridays on MTV in the US and WOWPresents Plus internationally.