Victoria drag artist Jimbo and winner of the eighth season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, attends Susanne Bartsch's crowning extravaganza dance party in New York, on July 21.SantiagoFelipe.com/Getty Images
Victoria-based drag artist Jimbo is a winner, baby.
The 40-year-old performer has become the first Canadian and international queen to win an American season of the juggernaut reality show franchise, RuPaul’s Drag Race, which has won more than two dozen Emmys and spawned spinoffs around the world.
Jimbo took the crown and the US$200,000 cash prize on Friday, when he was announced as the winner of the eighth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, a spinoff that brings back popular contestants from previous seasons.
Hearing host RuPaul announce his name at the finale was something Jimbo says he had been dreaming about his whole adult life.
“I was just flooded with this overcome release of all of this anticipation, all of this joy. It feels like all of my hard work paid off and I’m just over the moon,” Jimbo told The Globe and Mail in an interview Monday. (He spoke to The Globe out of drag, a time in which he uses he/him pronouns.)
Speaking with Robyn Doolittle via Zoom, Jimbo hopes a rise in anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric will be overcome by more love and unity.
The Globe and Mail
This was Jimbo’s third appearance on the franchise. He made his debut on the first season of the Canadian edition of the franchise, Canada’s Drag Race, in 2020. He finished fourth overall, but broke through to the wider global fan base, becoming an instant favourite.
In that show’s first episode, the Canadian queens were challenged to a windy photo shoot on top of a faux Rocky Mountain. While many of his competitors did their best to pose and pout through powerful blasts of snow, Jimbo – dressed in black and white clown makeup, his signature oversized fake breasts and thigh-high platform boots – shrieked in hilarious terror while shuffling around on a tiny platform.
It was an example of Jimbo’s unique style of drag, which is rooted in clowning.
“Clowning is a method of performance that is basically this feedback loop. It’s a conversation through an audience and a performer where the performer is a conduit for the audience,” Jimbo said. “You basically listen to an audience and you don’t second guess yourself. You take your worst idea and you just go with it.”
As a child, Jimbo said he always loved feminine things, but in the eighties and nineties, this wasn’t necessarily a time that embraced gayness or exploration of traits that didn’t conform to one’s assigned gender. Jimbo said he has used his clowning to explore this side of himself and to celebrate all the things that others in his life had framed as wrong or bad.
Having competed on the Drag Race franchise in three countries, Jimbo has had a chance to reflect on different styles. He said the geographic size of Canada and its smaller population likely impacts how performers in the country approach the art form.
“Canada is filled with all sorts of lovable weirdos in their various places. America has this amazing network of cities and clubs and a far greater amount of places to perform and really showcase drag,” he said. “I feel like Canada, we have to really find places and make spaces to perform and that sort of lends to this cool DIY vibe.”
Lemon – a drag artist who competed against Jimbo in the first season of Canada’s Drag Race as well as RuPaul’s Drag Race: UK vs. the World in 2022 – said Jimbo is so captivating because he is unique, although not everyone gets it right away.
Lemon recalled the UK vs. the World talent show episode when Jimbo appeared on stage in a shiny white ghost costume with a conehead and bulging belly and behind. Jimbo then proceeded to birth pieces of bologna and toss slices into the crowd, famously asking, “Mama, you hungry?” to RuPaul, who gleefully accepted.
“I’ve been there for so many times when Jimbo begins something. At the start, everyone is looking over and everyone’s, ‘Oh, this is going to go horribly.’ But trust that Jimbo has the vision,” Lemon told The Globe. “Then you see the genius come through.”
(Jimbo’s ghost character also made an appearance in the latest All Stars season during a lip sync competition, which helped Jimbo win that particular faceoff.)
Priyanka, the winner of the first season of Canada’s Drag Race, says the first time he met Jimbo, he didn’t get it. It wasn’t until Priyanka saw Jimbo’s impression of Joan Rivers in the “Snatch Game” episode – a fan-favourite comedy improv challenge – that things clicked.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god. Oh my god. This is brilliant.’ I felt lucky to be in a Snatch Game that Jimbo was in,” said Priyanka, who spoke to The Globe from Tennessee.
Earlier this year, that state became the first in the U.S. to explicitly ban drag shows in public spaces. Last month, a federal judge ruled this law an “unconstitutional restriction on the freedom of speech.”
Priyanka said that the current attacks on drag, particularly from the religious right who are using it as a way to stir up division, are disappointing. He said the antidote is to come together and continue to celebrate the joy that drag creates – something that Jimbo does effortlessly.
“What Jimbo does is why drag is so popular. It makes everyone escape,” Priyanka said. “There’s nobody like Jimbo. It’s inspiring as another queen.”