As a South Florida performer, Suzie Toot came into RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 17 with equal parts talent and tenacity, so much so, she rose to Top 5 of the entire season! While she did not get to the much sought-after finale, Toot has the bright lights of Broadway and beyond ahead of her. I sat down with one of Fort Lauderdale’s favorite dolls to speak about her Drag Race journey, the Broadway roles she would love to inhabit, and how working in the South Florida scene has influenced her career, on and off the Drag Race main stage.
Michael Cook: Everyone in South Florida and beyond is beyond proud of you and your achievements this year on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 17! What was the experience like for you?
Suzie Toot: It’s been crazy. You can only compare it to Charlie and The Chocolate Factory and getting the Golden Ticket….
MC: So many fans have been asking this question all season long; so many of your Season 17 competitors were very intimidated by you, but track record wise, Onya Nurve had definitely moved ahead of you. Why do you think they were finding themselves so shook by you?
Suzi Toot: I am a very confident person as you can see on the show. Jewels (Sparkles) explained to me once that I had never had a moment of being flapped. I had never been below safe and it is a sucky thing to get bad critiques. You look at the girl who is just smiling and excited for every single challenge and you probably think that there are reasons that she could get knocked by the judges. I think that’s sort of where that feeling lived in; but I was asking the same thing (laughs)! The roast, I felt like I was put on so much of a pedestal, that no matter what I said I wasn’t going to be good enough for what they thought I was going to do. I felt it was a hinderance in the second half.
MC: What do you think your rose and thorn are of your entire Drag Race experience?
ST: The rose was frankly working on television, i loved the backstage of it, getting to know the PA’s, figuring out how to work with cameras. As a nerd for acting, theater and television, that was the coolest part of the experience for me. I love working in television.
The thorn was just the gravity of it. It was so exhausting, it is the hardest thing that anyone can do, running the full marathon on Drag Race. Making it to every single episode. As soon as we wrapped that last day, just the weight….everything catches up to you mentally and physically, it was so tiring, but I would do it again in a second.
MC: In your final episode, Michelle Visage stated that she had no doubt that we would see you on Broadway in the future. Let’s manifest; what show would you want to be in or what role would you want to inhabit?
SS: For shows that are on Broadway right now, I am obsessed with Cabaret, I always have been. The MC would be fabulous, but really by dream is Sally (Bowles). The way she’s dressed in this production is so Suzie Toot. Those songs, I sing “Cabaret” and “Maybe This Time” those are my go-to’s, I sing her whole songbook. Roles in general though, not on Broadway, Suzie Toot as Charity Valentine in Sweet Charity…I am a huge Fosse nerd, i have so much love and reverence for that character. It fits so much in the world of Suzie, I would love to make that happen one day.
MC: Orville Peck in the current run of Cabaret as the MC is an absolute revelation; a brand new Broadway star has been born!
ST: I am such an Orville fan, as soon as that was announced, i knew I had to make sure I saw that.
MC: Being a South Florida queen, you know that there is such a stacked drag scene, from Miami to Ft Lauderdale/Wilton Manors and everywhere in between. What about being from South Florida has informed your drag and made you into the performer you are?
ST:I feel like I would be such a different queen if I came up in a place that was a little more typical for me, like New York. Obviously there is a huge pageant scene and not that everyone sees me as some polished creature, but I think that a lot of my drag going into the show was informed by that. Especially my ability to protect myself and defend who I am and what I do.
Because the backstages in Florida, that is the real battle. You have to know how to be quick and you’ve got to be able to say “No I belong here and I deserve to be here”. That is how I got where I was at before Drag Race. I think it’s so funny, people expected me to be some wallower theater queen who couldn’t stand up for themselves. They are so surprised that I stood up for myself, I’m like “Baby I’m from Florida, we throw hands in Florida”!
MC: I think that some of the best challenges we got to see this season was the makeover challenge. The reaction between each of you and your makeover subjects was beyond emotional and each subject looked like the had a great time.What did you and Mama Toot think of the experience both during and then getting to watch it?
ST: Something that people don’t know is that my mom was very sick just before filming, just a normal flu. When she walked through the door and was so soft spoken and so spooked, a lot of it was because she was recovering from being sick. I want America to know that my mother is a loud & bubbly character, but was in a different state of mind at the time. Otherwise she really loved it.
That was the scariest challenge of all to me, made even scarier when my mom walked in (laughs)! I am so proud of her, especially, how she did and seeing her on stage doing all the little motions..she ate it up!
MC: You cracked the Top 5 on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 17. So what do you think you want to do now?
ST: I’ve got the world ahead of me baby! There is so much that I want to do. In just the next few years, I’ve got a one woman show that I’m building, we have a film coming out that we want to tour film festivals with, I’ve got a YouTube channel with tons of content yet to be seen, but more than anything, I want be seen and perform at the highest level that I can. I fucking love Suzie Toot and I think that she can do so many things.
MC: What is the best piece of career advice you’ve gotten that has led you to where you are now?
ST: I had the absolutely privilege of meeting Chita Rivera a couple of years before she passed, she came and spoke to my college. She was talking about learning, she was a performer and was in big shows, but just starting out doing cabarets and learning how to do that style of show. The biggest thing she said was “trust your audience and look them in the eyes. You have to trust them and trust that they will be looking back”. That really shifted how I perform entirely.
MC: Speaking of Broadway and performance icons, you got to sit on the same stage as Liza Minnelli when she was honored with the RuPaul’s Drag Race Giving Us Lifetime Achievement Award at the Season 18 finale. What was that like?
ST: Oh my God. I died, melted, came back to life, & died again. It was insane.
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