After ten years, Ginger Minj finally got the crown, gal!
Following two runner-up stints on season seven and All Stars 6, plus a murky [redacted] placement on All Stars 2, the self-described “Glamour Toad” returned to the werkroom earlier this year with a drag vengeance. Throughout All Stars 10’s pageant-style tournament format, Ginger won four consecutive challenges — including a historic third Snatch Game victory, a first for any queen across the franchise — avoided any bottom or “low” placements, and was ranked the number-one lip-sync assassin by her peers.
Ultimately, she proved the legitimacy of the Rate-A-Queen system by defeating Kerri Colby, Bosco and lip-sync juggernaut Jorgeous in three electrifying smackdowns for the crown, culminating in RuPaul’s official declaration of her victory. “I’m in my winning era, and not just because of the crown,” Ginger tells Gay Times. “I just genuinely feel healthy, happy, well-adjusted, and ready to take on the world, which is definitely a first for me in my entire life.”
Read ahead for our full interview with the Minj, where she reflects on her long-awaited induction into the Drag Race Hall of Fame, how past champions like Trixie Mattel and Tia Kofi helped her amid fan backlash, and the well-deserved Broadway opportunities coming her way.
Ginger, major condragulations babe.
Thank you! It just took me 10 years…
Perseverance…
You know what – I’ve never wanted anything that I didn’t have to earn. So I don’t think I would’ve been as excited or ready for the crown then as I am now.
Having wanted it for such a long time – as you said, 10 years! – how does it feel to finally be crowned?
It’s surreal. I don’t think it’s really sunk in yet. It happened, and then the weekend was so crazy and busy. It wasn’t until this morning — after I finally got to sleep in — that I woke up, saw the crown and sceptre on the shelf, and thought, ‘Oh my god. I did that. I finally did it. I won.’
As is the case with each and every season of Drag Race, however, the reaction online has been… interesting. This is your fourth time around the block, so has navigating the internet become easier for you? If not, how do you deal with that side of the fandom?
Well, if I had won 10 years ago, I don’t think that I would’ve been able to deal with the backlash – I wasn’t mentally in the right state of mind to do that. But having been through it in the trenches with these fans for a decade now, I knew what to expect. I knew it was coming, and I knew that whether I won or lost, there were going to be people happy, people sad and people that are angry – because it’s happened every single time. I’ve sat back and watched over the years, queens like Trixie Mattel or Alyssa Edwards or Jinkx Monsoon – who are just so spectacular – win and deserve to win, and then get all this kind of weird double standard backlash thrown at them as well. So I knew it was coming, and I was fully prepared.
It was very much the same for Tia Kofi when she won Drag Race UK vs World season two.
I was literally just talking to Tia maybe an hour ago, and I’m such a fan of hers anyway. Our paths have met a few times at DragCon or whatever, but she was the first one to reach out to me after my first bracket episode of the season, just to say, ‘There’s so many of us who respect you and love you and have been rooting for you for so long. I’ve been there — just focus on it.’ And then, of course, after I won, she sent me another message. I was sifting through everything late last night or this morning, and she’s like, ‘I just want to talk to you because I know exactly how you feel.’ Trixie Mattel called me yesterday and was saying, ‘I know exactly what you’re going through, but just know it’s so cool to win. It’s so cool, and nobody can ever take that from you.’
You can’t let trolls get in the way of one of the best moments of your life…
No, and I am in such a great space right now — personally, professionally, everything has just seemed to come together this past year. I know where I’m at and what I’m supposed to be doing, and it feels right. It really, truly feels right for the first time.
Also, can I just say that the debate over whether queens can return for a third or fourth time is so silly to me. I’m here for queens returning for a fifth, sixth, seventh time and so forth…
The only downside to winning — because I always said, ‘As long as I don’t win, I guess I can keep going back.’ And now that I’ve won I’m like, ‘Oh, well, hopefully there’s another All Winners sometime and I can go and do that.’ But I love competition. I love Drag Race, and I love creating queer art on a global platform — especially at a time right now where it’s not as protected or celebrated as it has been in the past. And it’s really such a shame that those of us in the community who actually need this outlet — I mean, I’m talking about the trolls and the toxic fanbase as well — we all need this, and we’re going to ruin it for ourselves.
Well, Ginger, I’m excited for you to make history as the first queen in history to appear five times when All Winners 2 comes around.
Hey, I would never say never! That’s the thing. A lot of the people who were upset about me or Jorgeous or any of the girls coming back were like, ‘Oh, they shouldn’t have accepted the call. They took a spot from somebody else.’ Well, no — I mean, the spot was offered to us, so it wasn’t for anybody else. It was for us. And we’ve worked so hard to get to the level that we’re at so that we can have opportunities like this. So why would we turn it down? Nobody in their right mind would turn down such a wonderful opportunity.
You’re one of the only queens in Drag Race herstory to compete across four different formats. Do you have a favourite? And which one pushed you the most?
I liked All Stars 6 the most, simply because I’ve never been closer to a group of girls. We filmed it at the height of COVID, so we had been all shut up in our houses for so long that when we finally got on set and we got to do drag for the first time in a while, it was just such a release. Everybody was just so happy to be there and to be working and to be around people that we never took any moment for granted. It was really, really fun the whole time, and there was a lot of camaraderie.
My favourite season to do would probably be [Drag Race] season seven, simply because I didn’t know what to expect, and I just kind of took each day as it came, thinking, ‘Oh, well, tomorrow’s the day I go home. Oh, I didn’t — okay, well, maybe tomorrow’s the day I go home.’ And then I just kind of accidentally made it to the end and almost won. So that one was just so new for me because it was the first one.
And then my favourite format was probably the tournament because I’m such a pageant girl at heart, and it really felt like a pageant to me. Because for the national pageants, you have to earn your spot at a preliminary pageant before you go to the big final national pageant. And that’s what the brackets felt like to me — prelims to the final national. And I really liked that. I also liked that the time commitment was not quite as crazy as a typical season.
On a personal level, what does it mean to you to come back each time and have the opportunity to share your talents with the world?
I have, I would say, the luxury — but also the horror — of growing up and maturing and becoming who I am in front of the world for the last 10 years. They’ve seen everything. I call myself the “glamour toad”, but they’ve definitely seen warts and all from me! And I think that’s also something that’s so satisfying, because I may not have the biggest fanbase of the entire franchise, but I probably have one of the most loyal — who have been with me from the beginning and have seen me not hide the awful, terrible things I’ve had to go through in order to grow and become a better person. So even though the growing pains were really rough sometimes, I would never trade it because I feel like the things that I have gone through have really helped a lot of other people.
You’ve been open in the past about your personal and professional struggles. Where are you at now? What era of Ginger Minj are we in — aside from your winning era, of course?
I think that’s exactly it — it is the winning era, and not just because of the crown. I’m winning at life. I’m finally so sure of who I am. I’m finally comfortable in my own skin — and no, that’s not because I’ve lost weight or anything like that. I just genuinely feel healthy, happy, well-adjusted, and ready to take on the world, which is definitely a first for me in my entire life.
How can we expect you to slay this next era of your career? Besides Broadway, of course, because “Ginger Minj to star on Broadway” is a headline I’m confident we’ll see in the coming months…
And it’s happening! I can’t share any details, but I have gotten a couple of offers that we’re fuelling right now. I’m very excited to make that Broadway debut, but my book is out. I released my book about a year and a half ago. It’s been doing very well. It’s my memoir mixed with a cookbook, so it really says a lot about who I am as a person. There’s also some Drag Race tea in there if anybody wants it. Plus, Jujubee, Sapphira Cristál, Landon Cider and myself are doing our Hocus Pocus live tour, which kicks off at the beginning of September and goes into spooky season.
Do you have plans to bring this to the UK? We *love* Hocus Pocus over here.
Yes, there are plans to expand it and take it to other places, but this is kind of our trial run — to make sure we get all the kinks worked out before we really invest in taking it everywhere. There are plans to expand it and take it to other places, but this is kind of our trial run to make sure we get all the kinks worked out before we really invest in taking it everywhere.
I need to see Ginger Minj with Winifred’s teeth in person.
I’ve got three sets of them: one are my singing teeth, one are my talking teeth, and the others are just for pictures.
Now that is drag.
It is so drag.
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 10 is available to stream on WOW Presents Plus in the UK.
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