Jaida Essence Hall, Priyanka, and Sasha Velour also visit the Tennessee governor’s office “under threat of being arrested.”
A dark cloud of hatred tried to dampen a trio of RuPaul’s Drag Race franchise winners’ colorful sashay to Tennessee on HBO’s shocking We’re Here season 4 premiere.
The Emmy-winning docuseries’ new cohosts Sasha Velour (season 9), Jaida Essence Hall (season 12), and Priyanka (Canada’s Drag Race) descend upon the conservative town of Shelbyville, Tenn., on Friday’s episode to give drag makeovers to select residents. They receive a less than warm welcome as a woman at a makeup store bluntly tells them she doesn’t like drag queens and two others bolt in the opposite direction when Sasha asks if they’d come to a drag show.
Later, as Sasha and Priyanka walk down a city street, someone in a passing white truck shouts at them. Sasha gestures to the vehicle and smiles, but a man inside yells “f—-ts” back at her.
“He did say f–. Thank you, I love that word,” Sasha says. She adds in a later confessional: “The fact that within 24 hours of being in Tennessee, we are called f—-ts, feels like a warning, like a reminder to stay in your place. They don’t want you there, they don’t want to see you. There is a threat of violence that feels a little more palpable than maybe I’m used to.”
The town’s reaction seems practically inevitable, seeing as Tennessee lawmakers caused a firestorm (including a staunch response from RuPaul) in 2023, after proposing legislation that sought to ban public displays of drag and targeted transgender people’s right to appear in public as their authentic selves.
“Right now in the world, unfortunately, queer people, people of color, trans people, and people who are different are being extremely targeted,” Jaida says at the top of the episode, before the queens stumble upon one of the area’s monuments to the confederacy that was erected in 2011.
“What does this tell you about this place?” Jaida asks. “Who in this town, in 2011, knows any f—ing person that was in this war to be like, ‘You know what, I really miss my cousin. Let’s make sure we honor him.'”
The episode marks the We’re Here debuts of Sasha, Priyanka, and Jaida, taking the reins from season 1-3 cohosts Bob the Drag Queen, Eureka, and Shangela, the last of whom has been accused of sexual assault by multiple people following a judge’s dismissal of a lawsuit accusing her of rape by a former We’re Here production assistant. (Shangela’s lawyer has called all of the allegations “false and unsupported by any evidence or reliable witness testimony.”)
All three original hosts can be heard in a voicemail at the top of the season 4 premiere episode, warning their successors that “it might get a little crazy because they’re doing everything they can out there to try to ban drag” while encouraging the new trio “to show them that a real queen cannot be stopped.”
Though she doesn’t appear in the first episode, Drag Race fan-favorite Latrice Royale (season 4’s Miss Congeniality, who competed on All Stars 1 and 4) will make appearances throughout We’re Here season 4, swapping out with Jaida as the queens travel between Tennessee and Oklahoma.
“I completely enjoyed the work that I did while I was shooting for the show, and I don’t think that it’s over, honey, for the haters,” Jaida told EW in February. “But Latrice came in and she also brought an incredible energy that the show needed. There’s nothing wrong with making sure that when you see the show, the more queens that are there, the more stories that we can tell, the better the show will be. I’m so glad Latrice was able to be there to make sure we had a great season.”
We’re Here season 4 continues Fridays at 9 p.m. ET / PT on HBO and Max.