With Seattle’s former “RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Irene “The Alien” Dubois as her drag mother and drag queen Bosco, another “Drag Race” alum, as her aunt, one might think Seattle’s latest “Drag Race” contestant eagerly drank whatever tea the two had to spill about being on the show.
But that’s not what Seattle’s Luis Luviano, aka Arrietty the Elf, wanted.
“The funny thing is, Irene wanted to help me — and she did give me some advice: She and Bosco said, ‘Save your money, just be yourself, be in the moment and enjoy it’ — but I did not want Irene to help me, which is crazy because I should have,” Luviano says. “It’s better to know and prepare mentally, but I just wanted the experience to be my experience and not have it influenced by anyone else’s.”
Luviano performs drag shows regularly at Capitol Hill’s Queer/Bar and Fremont’s Dreamland and is the latest Seattle drag performer to land a starring role on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” returning for its 17th season Jan. 3 on MTV.
“I hope to make Seattle proud,” Luviano says. “To be the first [person of color] from Seattle to make it on is pretty wild.”
In her “Meet the Queens” video, Arrietty says she’s “air-headed” and “artsy.”
“I have a different eye for drag,” Arrietty says in the video. “These girls can’t touch it. I’m into myself a lot. That might come off as ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ but it’s true, I don’t want to talk to you.”
In an interview, Luviano says he’s usually a reserved and quieter individual.
“It did push me to get out of that mindset and that way of living, so that was the most challenging part for me,” Luviano, 28, says. “Everything else, I was so ready. … I wanted to have fun and let myself be myself, and however that may come off, we’ll see.”
In the “Meet the Queens” video, Arrietty says she’s not very sisterly, but Luviano says the connections he made with the other contestants was the best part of his “Drag Race” experience.
“I like to make fun of things,” he says. “I like to joke around a little too much.”
Nicholas Fry of Pittsburgh, who appears on this season of “Drag Race” as Lydia B. Kollins, says Arrietty had been on his radar before Lydia and Arrietty met on “Drag Race.”
“While getting ready for the season, I had this folder on my phone with all these pictures saved of inspirations and different makeups I enjoyed, and Arrietty had been in that folder a few times before we even met on the show,” Fry says. “I have been a fan of hers. She is so twisted, so polished and just the worst person I’ve ever met in my life … in the best way.”
Luviano describes Arrietty, named after the title character in the Hayao Miyazaki film “The Secret World of Arrietty,” as a “fantastical being — she is everything and anything she wants to be.
“I get very bored with drag,” Luviano adds. “I don’t like the typical. I don’t really go for the womanly aesthetic when it comes to looks. It’s more maybe a creature — it’s still feminine, but it’s also a little off the rail.”
Originally from Hesperia, Calif., and now calling Capitol Hill home, Luviano moved to Seattle about seven years ago with a now ex-boyfriend.
“He was in a band and I heard drag was very big here, so I thought, I’m going to go and see a show, and I’m very happy that I did,” Luviano says.
Before taking to any Seattle stage, Luviano started doing drag in his bedroom, “just dabbling, but nothing to the extent of when I came to Seattle.”
“I was always an artistic child,” Luviano says. “I would make this and that. I would build things. I loved creating with my hands. Then I saw ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ and they’re doing everything I like to do. Over time, I just found so much joy in the art of drag, and I decided, this is definitely for me.”
When Luviano started to do drag shows, he worked as a dishwasher and later at Target. Now drag is his full-time job.
On Jan. 3, Luviano will perform after the “Drag Race” season premiere at Queer/Bar and the next day at Dreamland’s Saturday brunch.
Luviano describes Seattle’s drag scene as a sisterhood that taught him how to get along with people he doesn’t see eye to eye with, helpful preparation for competing on “Drag Race.”
“A lot of drag queens have a lot of opinions, so it did mentally prepare me to be stronger and just not to care because everyone’s doing their own thing, and that’s what I love about Seattle,” Luviano says. “There are so many talented queens in Seattle, and I need people to look at them and admire their craft. They don’t get the recognition they deserve.”
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