No one wants to be the first queen eliminated from RuPaul’s Drag Race, but Hershii LiqCour-Jeté feels she put her “best foot forward” in her limited screen time. She also tells TV Insider that the new Rate-a-Queen system, which allows the competitors rank their favorite performances from the week but they don’t have to play fair, was not a welcome twist.
“I hated it,” she says with a laugh. “I hated that the second [RuPaul] mentioned it.” The voting system is a new feature in Season 16, one that gives the drag queens the power to determine who ends up in the top and bottom two instead of host RuPaul. Mother Ru still decides who gets eliminated, but the results of the queens’ rankings determine who will lip-sync for their lives.
Viewers saw Plane Jane take advantage of the system in a cutthroat way in the premiere. She ranked who she feels performed best — and were therefore her biggest threat — at the bottom, ruining Nymphia Wind’s chances of making it into the top two and winning immunity that week (a feature that has returned in Season 16 for the first time since Season 5). Had the Rate-a-Queen plot twist not been introduced, Hershii isn’t convinced she would have left as early as she did.
“I hated that system because if we lived in a very, very fair world, I’m not sure how far at the bottom I actually would’ve placed,” she tells TV Insider. “I don’t know if some of the girls were how fair they were actually playing. As a matter of fact, I heard some things that some of the girls put some of their friends at the top.”
From the moment the voting system was announced, Hershii decided she would play fair with the power she was given. “I wanted to play the game with some type of integrity in tact,” she says. “I mean, I know it’s TV, so people play it to get the shock value, but for me it’s just like I wanted people to be fair to me, so it was only right that I’d be fair to other people. So I think I voted the best I could based on what I saw as opposed to how I wanted the game to play out.”
Hershii had a gut feeling that some queens weren’t going to play fair. “Everybody had their own little strategy and all little game to play when it came to this particular section of the show,” she says. If she could go back in time and do it all over again, she would ditch her kind strategy. “In retrospect, I should have just been really vicious and just thrown anybody at any number. Just messed it all up,” she reflects.
One of the most talked about queens so far this season is Plane Jane, who on top of secretly using Rate-a-Queen to sabotage her competitors has been the shadiest player in Werk Room interactions by far. The frequency of her audacious comments has made her appear to be the season’s villain, though time will tell how long this continues. Hershii shares her thoughts on Plane Jane’s interactions with the rest of the cast.
“I personally don’t have any issues with how she played the game and how she’s doing on the show because she came in and frankly, she’s doing what drag does,” she says. “We all talk a little smack about each other here and there and a lot of the times it’s not nice. I think she’s giving the people what they want. She’s giving them flat-out TV. Now, I’m a little biased because she called me beautiful, so she didn’t say anything to me about me.”
The Maxi Challenge of Episode 3 was the Mother of All Balls, which required the contestants to prepare three runway looks — the most they’ll have to prepare this season. Hershii ended up in the bottom two with Geneva Karr, and their lip-sync song was “Maybe You’re the Problem” by Ava Max. Despite the unfavorable outcome, Hershii had the time of her life lip-syncing on that iconic stage. She was truly living in the moment.
“I forgot it was a lip-sync, to be completely honest with you,” she shares. “It’s something about the lights and the cameras. I was not concerned about [Geneva]. I was just performing. And then towards the end there I was like, ‘Oh yeah, there’s somebody else here.’”
“My entire drag career has been performance. That’s all I do is perform on stage, so up until that point, I hadn’t really lip-synced or did anything on that stage,” Hershii goes on. “Of course, I didn’t want [her first lip-sync of the season] to be that moment, but it did kind of feel like, ‘Jesus, it’s about time! Let me just kick my legs and do something!’”
She would “absolutely” come back for RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars if given the chance.
“I don’t feel like the world got to see literally anything else from me, but ‘Whiplash,’” her talent show performance in the premiere, she says. “So as sucky as it is to be the pork chop [the first eliminated queen of the season], it’s also great because the world ain’t seen anything from me, so the expectations can stay high. You don’t know what I can do next.”
Speaking of her talent show performance, what was the point of the Amazonian-themed set design in her “Whiplash” performance? Fans (and the queens in the show) were confused about that design, as it didn’t have any narrative connection to her song lyrics (written with her drag housemate and Drag Race alum Kornbread Jeté). Hershii explains the setup.
“[The song is] literally something me and Kornbread came up with together before I left [to film Season 16]. I used to do YouTube videos all the time when I was younger, and I just wanted something silly to open up the show with. I didn’t want to do another bitch track that said, ‘Hey, RuPaul crown me.’ I wanted to be just ridiculous when I first entered the stage.”
“I tell people all the time that I like being absolutely pretty and very stupid, so there is no reason for it,” she says of the jungle theme. “The girls needed new wig glue and I was going through the Amazon forest to find it. Why? I don’t even know. That’s just what I wanted to do. There was literally no reason for it.”
The queen, who has two children at home with her partner, is proud of her performance this season, even though it was a short run.
“I’m the most proud that I got to represent the regular working girls. There’s a lot of performers like myself that might not ever get this chance,” Hershii shares. “I didn’t even think I was going to get the opportunity to do it. It got to the point where I was just sending in [audition] tapes just because. I didn’t expect to get a call this year. So I’m glad I get to represent every regular working girl that’s working these small bars that are making $50 to $75 a booking, if that and are using their tips to pay whatever it is, whatever rent they have. I want every regular girl to feel like they have a chance. Just being in the dive bar is not the end for them. That’s what I wanted to represent, and I’m glad I got to do that.”
RuPaul’s Drag Race, Fridays, 8/7c, MTV
This story originally appeared on TV Insider
