Tom Campbell interview: ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ executive producer

The fact that such a seemingly niche concept as “RuPaul’s Drag Race” that began its life on the unsung, queer-targeted Logo service in 2009 would still be thriving in its 16th season on its third network (MTV) is something its executive producer Tom Campbell never tales for granted. “I feel like ‘Drag Race’ is the tree that grew out of the crack in the sidewalk,” he says. “We still have so much fun making the show. We laugh every day. It’s filled with joy and I think that shows. From a production point of view, we try to outdo ourselves every year, and we try to keep it fresh. We’re constantly trying to improve it. There’s a variety to our show, unlike others that are the same every week. We’re doing a ‘Match Game’ parody. We’re doing a musical. We’re doing a fashion show. But it really comes down to the queens and their stories. As much as we’d like to take credit for creating the canvas and the frame, the queens are the ones who bring their unique talent, their charisma, their magic and their stories.”

Campbell spoke to Gold Derby as part of our PGA Awards “Meet the Nominees” producers roundtable. Watch our exclusive video interview above.

Certainly, however, few could have predicted at the start that “Drag Race” would still be around 15 years later, or that it would become an awards juggernaut without compare in the game and competition show world. It has now won as astounding 29 Emmy Awards over the course of its life, and Campbell himself has taken home four PGA Awards and going for his fifth this month. It just earned three more Emmys, including Best Reality Competition Program, last month. Campbell himself has no sage insight into what’s behind the ongoing gold rush that consistently venerates the show. He marvels that when the show was originally being pitched, friends in television would tell him, “Sorry, we can’t bring this to our ad sales guys.” And then they wound up on Logo, a network few had heard of at the time.

“It turns out Logo was the best place we could be,” Campbell recalls. “It was like an estuary. We were the biggest show on the smallest network. Brian Graden, who was the head of MTV for a long time and wielded a lot of power, was able 15, 20 years ago to convince cable operators – who are some of the most conservative human beings on the face of the earth – to carry a lesbian and gay cable channel. It cracked open the door and ‘Drag Race’ came out before streaming came, and people found out about it. The show bubbled up and became the secret that people found…It’s generations of queens (we’ve featured) now, and they come to us from the clubs, from the street, from different economic backgrounds and racial backgrounds, and they bring an authenticity and a drive that is just, I think, irresistible.”

Campbell compares “Drag Race” to something you’d see on TikTok “because every two minutes, something changes. The mood changes, It’s incredibly dramatic. It’s incredibly ridiculous. You can’t believe you’re seeing it. It’s aesthetically beautiful. It blows you away. It’s dirty. It’s funny. We started off with (me thinking), ‘It’s ‘Project Runway’ meets ‘Top Model’,’ but it’s become, and continues to be, so much more. And again, it’s all about what the queens bring.”

But there are always obstacles in one form or another, particularly when we’re living in a perilous time where drag queens are held up as political pawns by one party as symbols somehow of moral decay in America. Campbell, however, remains unfazed. “It’s just the same old thing,” he stresses. “When ‘Drag Queen’ started to catch on, (Barack) Obama was in office (and the discussion was about marriage equality), and you thought, ‘Oh my God, we’re past this.’ But it’s a never-ending battle. I don’t want to be whiny about it, but drag queens are bright and shiny objects and they’re easy to put down. But it’s bull.”

Asked to name the best thing about working with drag icon RuPaul, Campbell replies, “Laughter. Making RuPaul laugh is our job. I think the reason why Ru wins (awards) so often is, he’s not just mentoring, he’s not just hosting, he’s not just wearing amazing gowns, he’s not just writing songs every season and dancing. He’s in the trenches with those queens. He knows what they’ve been through. Ru has his own demons. So what the contestants are going through at 25 or whatever age they are, RuPaul has been through that and come out the other side.”

“RuPaul’s Drag Race” airs on MTV and streams over Philo.

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