A fan favorite every time she hits the screen, Aja returned to RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 10 more fully realized than ever before. Her appearance on the premiere episode was an absolute sensation, and following the first bracket of the Tournament of Champions, Aja has propelled herself to the semi-finals! I sat down with Aja to talk about her return to the Drag Race main stage, the impact of ballroom on her career, and the lip sync long known to New York fans that RuPaul is also a fan of!
Michael Cook: You are back for RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 10; welcome back to one of the most dynamic and layered performers that we have seen on RuPaul’s Drag Race in recent memory!
AJA: I am so happy to be back. I feel like people needed to see a little bit more me!
MC: Everyone is probably asking you what it’s like to be back, but I want to know this; why was right now the right time to return to All Stars?
A: Baby let me tell you something. I was praying on some change in my life and I was ready for the next transformation and the next step. I really did pray on it and when I got that call, I thought “This is it, this is a sign, I would be ridiculous if i don’t say yes”. Me agreeing to do this awakened something so deep inside of me where I realized that I have not even hit my final evolution. Even watching the season, I realize this was the next evolution, but bitch-I don’t even think that’s the final evolution!
One thing about Aja that is undeniable is that I am consistently changing. Not everybody is gonna like every phase of me, but I am always open to just kind of morphing myself until I find the perfect mix. I think that what I got to show on this season of All Stars is definitely a perfect mix that I was ready for this time.
MC: You have gone through so many changes publicly, both professionally and personally. Have you always been the type of person who could just roll with the punches?
A: You know, as much as I want to sit here and say no…. I’m not gonna lie, I acclimate very well. I don’t know if it’s because of how I grew up and because of all of the things that I had to sort through in my life. I don’t know, I’ve been through so many situations in my life where I hit sort of a stop sign, and it took me a while to learn that in driving, a stop sign doesn’t necessarily mean “Stop”, it means pause real quick and figure shit out.
I feel like that is exactly what happened to me many times in my life so this was nothing new. It was like let me stop, let me think about it, and let me just make it a yes! Just because life is telling you no it does not mean that there’s not a yes, and that there is not a door there that is going to you fulfill what you need to fulfill at the moment.
MC Once you entered the Werk Room for All Stars 10, was it overwhelming to see that the format would be a Tournament of All Stars format complete with points?
A: Baby, it was not overwhelming at all, let me tell you something; I was in calculus as a junior in high school, math is nothing to me. I’m all about the algorithm, the arithmetic, and the arrhythmia; and I know that’s a heart condition and not mathematics (laughs)! Let me tell you something baby when it comes to the numbers, that is not what is important. What is important is making sure that the judges like you and that Ru likes you. If the judges and Ru like you, those numbers are gonna go up!
MC: Right off the bat, you came out of the gate and showed everyone that Aja is back on All Stars and has come to play!
A: I’ve been saying it all day and I’m gonna say it again; if you want your premiere episode on Drag Race to go fab, you put Aja on the premiere episode! I will turn it, whether you want me to be a human piñata or you want me to go 200 (mph) down a 55, baby I will come and I will make that shit poppin’! I feel like that is what I wanted to do, I wanted to make sure that All Stars 10 got started off with a bang. There is no bigger bang than me coming back when everyone had thought that I had quit drag and winning that first episode!
MC: There was much made about you quitting drag in the press, so coming back and showing your fans, detractors and yourself that you still could had that magic must have been so gratifying.
A: Oh absolutely. Like I was saying about the different phases, people are going to receive different things in different ways. People have been like “I love that you’re being yourself” and that is really what I came to do. To show the world who I really am. No code switching, no changing things up, just raw honest, on the grill, cooking it up for you bitches. I definitely was ready to show who I had become. There were a few naysayers, people who say they don’t like my fashion, of course people who don’t know anything about fashion. People commenting on my look or my makeup calling it a downgrade, but at the end of the day for me, its all an upgrade.
I know who I am and I know what I’m capable of. I know the struggle that I’ve had to go through and navigating being trans and doing drag, especially on such a public level. It is a sacrifice that I make and being visible is very important for me. I don’t have a choice; me being on Drag Race and showing everybody who I am allows people all around the world to know who I am. They know that I’m trans, they know I’m a drag queen. To me, especially right now and what is going on politically, that is such a protest. It’s such an act of resistance.
MC: When you took that pause from drag and you quieted your world a little bit, what did you discover?
A: You know, there was a lot of internal struggle. I would look at myself in the mirror and I always felt like this ugly duckling and I would just keep picking myself apart. I was never good enough for myself and I could never understand why. It wasn’t until I started to physically and medically affirmed my transition that I started to realize that my problem is not that I think I’m this, that, or the other or that I’m ugly, its always been I’m not the boy that I see in the mirror.
Once I learned that, it allowed me to go crazy! I felt like I got the star in Mario Kart that makes you invincible! When I put that first hormone shot into my body I said “BOOM” and I was the star! It really allowed me to reach my full potential and just be a baddie, just by myself. I would not have wanted to come back to All Stars any other way than being authentic to who I am right now.
MC: What does it mean for you to represent ballroom, your own experience, and the history of ballroom onto the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars?
A: I feel like ballroom is such an important part of the culture, especially for a black and brown person. Especially because there are not a lot of accessible safe spaces for specifically black and brown people and ballroom was one of the first places to create that. I think its important for people start to be exposed to ballroom and what it really is because maybe there are people who need that space.
I know that there are a lot of different fans from different denominations that watch Drag Race. I want people to feel represented so I love to show my culture on that stage. One thing that I did this season is to bring every piece of me, my culture, and my interest to the stage. Whether it was a cultural reference, some sort of nerdy gamer reference, or just a performative thing, I made sure that I left it all on the floor.
MC: You truly did drop a nugget of yourself into each and every episode, whether it was a gaming reference or a ballroom reference or phrasing that was quintessential Aja!
A: Baby that is how you have to do it! Drag Race is a platform. Let me tell you, the reason that I got cast in the first place is because they wanted to see me, they wanted to see who I was, what I liked, my aesthetic. They didn’t want to see who I think they wanted me to be, they wanted to see the raw me. This time around, I felt it was important to not just give them Aja one hundred percent, I thought it was important to give them Aja one thousand percent. It was important for me to be unapologetically myself. I really feel like judges saw that and I feel like Ru really enjoyed that. That made me happy.
MC: New Yorkers knew Aja was a force of nature before the world did. That “Give Me Tonight” lip sync still is the gold standard!
A: You know it’s funny because in the first episode walk through you don’t get to see a lot of it, we do record a lot and only so much makes it into the final program. RuPaul actually brings up that lip sync to me. He told me he really enjoyed that particular performance and it made me realize in that moment that I am being watched. Even when I am not on here, I’m being watched. That was really awesome and it was really cool to know that RuPaul keeps up with me, that was a shocker to me.
MC: What is the best advice you’ve gotten since you started the Drag Race journey?
A: Its funny because I did not get this advice from a person, I got it from life itself. The best advice was to remain humble. I feel like one thing I try to do is remain with my feet planted on the ground at all times and know that everything is not in my control. What is in my control is how I react to things. I feel like I have grown from being such a reactive person to being a slightly less reactive person. For me it is just time and place and I try my best to be on my best behavior, be on my p’s and q’s and that has helped me out a lot. I’ve realized that a lot of situations and people don’t deserve my energy. Now having more energy allows me to pour it into positivity and things that I like.
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