“We Connect a Divide in Families”

Some public imagine one’s self assurance will have to be moderated—appearing extra pleasure may also be delusional at easiest and cocky at worst. However Valentina, the 32-year-old drag queen who first rose to popularity on Season 9 of RuPaul’s Drag Race sees it in a different way: “I call that being a star,” she says.

Her ascent (and the eventual Oscar, Grammy, and Met Gala appearances she sees in her life) will have to come as incorrect amaze when you’re in any respect regular along with her run on Drag Race in 2017, or in 2018 upon her return for All Stars. She’s truth TV gold, churning out quotable strains—“Sending me home doesn’t make sense with my fantasy”—and gaining enthusiasts who have been attracted to the melodrama of her telenovela-tinged personality, in conjunction with the antique Mexican glamour of her runway appears. Following her first look at the pageant display, the drag queen added singer and actress to her checklist of accomplishments, starring in Fox’s Hire: Are living as Angel, logging cameo performances in Within the Heights and L. a. Casa de las Flores, and shedding her first solo singles.

This yr, she made her go back to the Drag Race universe—no longer as a contestant, however because the co-host of the extremely expected spin-off, Drag Race: Mexico, these days the one Latin American installment of RPDR’s 13 global editions. It’s a milestone that, as with maximum issues in Valentina’s month, she owes to the powers of manifestation. “I was waiting for this,” she says. “Even if I wasn’t a part of it, I’d be the number-one fan.”

Valentina sees Drag Race: Mexico as greater than a possibility to percentage Mexico’s range with the extra of the arena. The line could also be a probability to struggle misconceptions about Mexican machismo and Latin American homophobia. “It’s not often that queer people get to tell their stories, and be highlighted as protagonists,” she says. “We can connect a divide in so many families and provide understanding for people who don’t know much about us.”

Born and raised in southeast L.A., Valentina—born James Levya—used to be raised in a bicultural family. Her oldsters each immigrated from Mexico, suffusing Valentina’s earliest reminiscences with reruns of vintage Mexican movies and TV displays, and the song of Juan Gabriel, Rocío Dúrcal, Thalía, and Paulina Rubio.

Valentina used to be all the time destined for a profession within the arts; it used to be a big a part of her lineage. “I grew up in a family with dancers, musicians, and painters,” she says. Looking at good looks pageants like Pass over Universe and staring at the rage possible choices of her favourite Mexican performers have been the catalysts to rouse her creativity. “The brown lip liner, the burgundy lips, the matte supermodel look, were big influences on me,” she says. It wasn’t lengthy prior to Valentina made a ritual of turning into her mom’s private stylist, mendacity on her mattress and serving to her make a selection the proper earrings or the very best blush. The queen’s florid creativeness used to be withered to shake—and may flip even a easy tub towel into a possible conduit for good looks. “I would come out from the bath, and when no one was looking, it became a turban, it became a cape, it became a dress—whatever I could do to express my femininity and my creativity. That was the beginning.”

Valentina used to be in a position in order her perceptible to month in center faculty, when she attended a appearing arts faculty. Being solid in her first performs have been obese milestones, and so they got here with one main get advantages: get right of entry to to degree make-up. It could be a couple of years prior to she mastered the artwork of contouring, or perfected the Maria Félix arch to her brows, however the easy equipment Valentina’s mom gave her used to be the beginning of all of it.

Valentina fell in love with drag upcoming attending native displays round Hollywood when she grew to become 21. And in 2016, the celebrities aligned: the casting name for season 9 of RPDR went out simply as Valentina used to be laid off from her process on the Prada boutique on Rodeo Power. She worn the slight financial savings she had from retail paintings and put all of it towards her audition tape.

All that used to be left to do used to be inform her public. On her twenty fifth birthday, Valentina invited her mom and her aunts to Membership Pace—a queer Latin nightclub on Santa Monica Side road the place she felt they’d be comfy. She lip-synced Juan Gabriel’s emotional ballad “Asi Fue” occasion they watched from the target market. “Getting to introduce them to Valentina was a beautiful moment,” she remembers. The moniker used to be technically a public title, one the queen first heard when her cousin used to be going over names for her personal kid. “I put it in my pocket and when it was time to name myself, to come forward and show myself the way I wanted to be seen, it was perfect.”

On Drag Race, Valentina were given the chance to introduce herself and her heritage to the arena. Her style sense and comedic references have been a love letter to her Mexican-American upbringing, and despite the fact that it on occasion landed her in sizzling H2O along with her castmates, her confident self assurance used to be an operate of cultural pleasure, too. Her drag personality, which she describes as “a melting pot of Old Hollywood with a little Rita Hayworth and Maria Felix, some ditziness and charisma, and a bit of that unhinged Latina character where you never know what she might say,” used to be a bit of extra slow upon her go back to All Stars—however there used to be incorrect dubiousness she used to be nonetheless a magnetic diva.

“There’s been a lot of criticism of my confidence, that I think very highly of myself,” Valentina tells me. “I do. I deserve to feel proud of where I come from and who I am.”

“Valentina means brave,” she provides. “I stand by that. If I’m going to be in this world, in this system, I’m going to shine, and no one is going to dim my light.”

Drag Race: Mexico airs on WOW Gifts Plus on Thursdays at 2am ET, with native airing in Mexico on Paramount+.