SPECIAL THANKS TO JASON WOODLEY AND MATT LAHBIBI AT PREMIER

Kerri Colby may have sashayed away from RuPaul’s Drag Race, but she will always be our viral obsession. This week, the House of Colby alum lost her place in the competition after failing to impress with her performance in the 60s-inspired girl group The RuPremes, which the panel deemed too “gospel”. (It gave us life, tbh.) For the second time, Kerri later lip-synced for her life against lip-sync assassin Jasmine Kennedie to the beat of Toni Braxton’s Unbreak My Heart (Remix), with the latter (emotionally) emerging supreme.

Although Kerri admits she “came to terms” with her elimination “pretty immediately”, the bodacious contestant calls the smackdown “heartbreaking, literally and figuratively” due to her powerful bond with Jasmine. During last week’s episode of Untucked, the 22-year-old dancer memorably came out as trans to her season 14 sisters; citing Kerri’s unabashed confidence as a reason for feeling comfortable in her identity. “Just in living authentically, I was able to be an example that made things more comfortable for my sisters to either open up about their journey, find their journey or dig deeper and start to search into their journey,” Kerri tells GAY TIMES.

“And that’s just the truth we needed. Trans women have been around for eons and eons, but many times in recent history, we have not been given the opportunity to speak or be spoken to correctly. And once you give us the opportunity and the floor, that’s all we ask for. If we get the opportunity to share, it’s amazing what you’ll usually find happens when you allow someone to exist in a space.”

After Jasmine and fellow contestant Bosco came out publicly as trans in Untucked and on social media, respectively, Drag Race season 14 made herstory for the franchise as the first season to feature four openly trans contestants. (Kornbread “The Snack” Jete, who was forced to exit the competition in week five due to an injury, also identifies as a trans woman.) Following her exit, we spoke with Kerri about the “power” of season 14’s trans sisterhood, how the show has allowed her to reach trans and non-binary youth all around the world and her plans to “educate, uplift and build awareness around” the trans community.

Kerri, I’m so sad to see you go so soon. How long did it take you to come to terms with your elimination?

I came to terms with things pretty immediately. I’m not someone that holds onto expectations when they don’t meet up with reality. So for me, when I knew that unfortunately my time had come to a close, I was surprised – I definitely saw myself at the very top – but I was also okay with it.

Throughout the course of the series, you grew close with Jasmine Kennedie, particularly after she credited you with feeling brave enough to come out as trans in Untucked. With that in mind, what was it like lip-syncing against one of your closest sisters?

It was heartbreaking, literally and figuratively, because the song was Unbreak My Heart. But, it was really sad because that was not what I would have wanted to see from us. I wanted to be able to be with her and around her while she grew into herself and found those next steps. Because once you realise the truth, there’s usually a process that you go through where it’s like… You know the truth now and you figure out how to get a game plan going. I was looking forward to doing that with her on the show but unfortunately that wasn’t in the cards. But, it was so special to be able to have a moment so raw and so real with her, also a record-breaking moment too in the history of Drag Race.

Since competing on Drag Race, how has your relationship developed with Jasmine?

Beautifully. She literally is a little sister to me. Each time I saw our moment, whether it was me reading her notes after I was eliminated or me watching our moment together with Bosco and us just sharing in our transness, I got emotional. But it wasn’t emotional for me – it was emotional because I’ve seen, specifically with Jasmine, her come out and say what she wanted to do. And now to watch her actually doing it and achieving it, it’s so beautiful. Because I’ve seen the progress and it’s heartwarming.