Daya Betty reveals 'crazier, more inappropriate' jokes she cut from Drag Race roast of Ross Mathews

The RuPaul's Drag Race season 14 star tells EW that Michelle Visage also roasted Mathews after the girls, and tells a joke she cut from her own set.

By

Joey Nolfi

Published on April 5, 2022 01:51PM EDT

Daya Betty's roast of Ross Mathews might've landed with lukewarm reception from the RuPaul's Drag Race judges, but that doesn't mean she didn't at least try to turn up the heat with her originally planned set of jokes.

Appearing on the latest episode of EW's BINGE podcast, Daya reveals that she cut a few jokes from her routine during the comedy challenge, but promises that some of them remain too controversial to tell.

"I had a whole list of 'Ross Mathews is so gay' jokes. One I had that didn't make the cut was: Ross Mathews is so gay, his favorite moisturizer was Astroglide," Daya recalls, adding with a laugh that others didn't make it past the initial screening process for far more hilarious reasons. "The people in the room that were ok'ing [the jokes] were like, 'Nope, you can't stay that!' I'm not even going to say it here because it's probably way too inappropriate. There was plenty [of] crazier, more inappropriate jokes. I'll just say it was severely inappropriate and there was a reason it was not aired."

She says the challenge also wrapped with an impromptu set from Michelle Visage, which she says the queens thoroughly enjoyed. But, for most of them — including eliminated queen DeJa Skye, who left alongside Jorgeous after they lost a three-way lip-sync against Daya — the roast actually began in the Werk Room as the queens workshopped their material among the sisterhood.

"We kind of used each other as practice dummies. Especially DeJa. DeJa was the best at it. She'd sit down in her little corner and she'd yell out a joke randomly, and we'd all be like, thumbs up, thumbs down, and, let's be honest, they were pretty much all thumbs down," Daya remembers. "You saw the episode, I had some thumbs down myself. It turned into a collaborative effort. I personally was working on my jokes even after makeup. I was still finessing jokes."

Listen to Daya's full interview above, in which she also touches on discovering that nearly half of the cast brought similar wigs for various challenges, why she purposely walked super slow down the runway in her "giant 11-inch heels," and why she stands by the comments — not their delivery — that landed her in hot water throughout Untucked. Tune in to the next live episode of Quick Drag Friday at 10:05 p.m. ET on the @EW Twitter handle.

Subscribe toEW's BINGE podcast for full recaps of RuPaul's Drag Race, including weekly season 14 recaps with the cast, adapted from our new Quick Drag series airing Fridays at 10:05 p.m. ET/7:05 p.m. PT on the @EW Twitter account.

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