Santino Rice

Santino Quinto Rice (born August 20, 1974) is an American fashion designer and television personality. He is best known for his appearances on the reality television programs Project Runway, RuPaul's Drag Race, and On the Road with Austin and Santino.

Early life

Rice was born and raised in St. Charles, Missouri. His parents were both multiracial, and his background includes African-American, Italian, Jewish, and Native American. In high school, Rice earned a scholarship to the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles. After attending school there, he reportedly found work in the film industry, including extra roles, voice acting, and costume design.

Career

In 2005, Rice participated as a contestant on the second season of the Bravo reality show Project Runway, in which fashion designers compete against each other in various design-related challenges, judged by a panel of industry experts. Rice's designs produced mixed results on the show. He won two challenges, including one in which the designers created red carpet dresses for Nicky Hilton, and on three other occasions, his designs scored among the top three. However, there were also four challenges in which Rice received low scores, landing in the bottom two. Ultimately, he lasted throughout the season and was one of three finalists selected to show at Olympus Fashion Week in New York City. He finished in third place behind Daniel Vosovic and Chloe Dao respectively.

Michelle Visage

Michelle Lynn Shupack (born September 20, 1968), professionally known by her stage name Michelle Visage, is an American singer, television host, radio DJ, and television personality. She began her career as a member of the female vocal trio, Seduction. After the band's separation, Visage became the lead singer for The S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. in 1992. She also featured as a guest vocalist on the single "Crash" for TKA.

Visage later became a co-host for the VH1 talk show, The RuPaul Show opposite RuPaul. She also hosted red carpet coverages for the 1998 Grammy Awards and the 25-year anniversary re-release party for Grease. Since January 2011 Visage has been a judge on the Logo TV reality competition RuPaul's Drag Race.

Visage became a housemate on the fifteenth series of Celebrity Big Brother in January 2015.

Early and personal life

Michelle Visage was born Michelle Lynn Shupack and went to an arts high school in South Plainfield, New Jersey. Afterwards, she attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Manhattan. When Visage was 16 she won a Madonna look-alike competition. Shortly after finishing her studies she headed to New York City to pursue a career as an actress. Visage now resides in California with her husband and her two daughters.

RuPaul's Drag Race

RuPaul's Drag Race is an American reality competition television series produced by World of Wonder for Logo TV. The show documents RuPaul in his search for "America's next drag superstar." RuPaul plays the roles of host, mentor, and source of inspiration for this series, as contestants are given different challenges each week. RuPaul's Drag Race employs a panel of judges, including RuPaul, Michelle Visage and a host of other guest judges, who critique contestants' progress throughout the competition. The title of the show is a play on drag queen and drag racing, and the title sequence and song "Drag Race" both have a drag-racing theme.

RuPaul's Drag Race has spanned seven seasons and inspired the spin-off shows RuPaul's Drag U and RuPaul's All Stars Drag Race. The show has become the highest-rated television programme on Logo TV, and airs internationally, including in Australia, Canada and the UK. The show won Outstanding Reality Program at the 21st GLAAD Media Awards, has been nominated for 4 Critics' Choice Television Award including Best Reality Series – Competition and Best Reality Show Host for RuPaul, and was nominated for a Creative Arts Emmy Award for Outstanding Make-up for a Multi-Camera Series or Special (Non-Prosthetic). In 2015, RuPaul's Drag Race was renewed for an eighth season and RuPaul's All Stars Drag Race was renewed for a second season.

RuPaul's Drag Race (season 5)

The fifth season of RuPaul's Drag Race began airing on January 28, 2013, with a 90-minute premiere episode. It had the most contestants since the creation of the show with fourteen. The winner of this season was Jinkx Monsoon.

As this season's winner, Jinkx Monsoon walked away with the title of "America's Next Drag Superstar" along with a lifetime supply of Colorevolution Cosmetics, a one-of-a-kind trip courtesy of AlandChuck.travel, a headlining spot on Logo's Drag Race Tour featuring Absolut Vodka and a cash prize of $100 000. Santino Rice and Michelle Visage were back as judges at the panel. The theme song playing during the runway every episode is "I Bring the Beat", while the song playing during the credits is "The Beginning", both songs are from RuPaul's album Glamazon.

Contestants

The drag queens who competed to be "America's Next Drag Superstar" for season five of RuPaul's Drag Race are:

(Ages and names stated are at time of contest)

Lip-syncs

Notes

RuPaul's Drag Race (season 6)

The sixth season of RuPaul's Drag Race began airing February 24, 2014. Like the fifth season, the season featured 14 contestants competing for the title of "America's Next Drag Superstar". For the first time in the show's history, the season premiere was split into two episodes; the fourteen queens are split into two groups and the seven queens into each group compete against each other before being united as one group for the third episode. The winner of this season was Bianca Del Rio.

Santino Rice and Michelle Visage are back as judges at the panel. Two new pit crew members, Miles Moody and Simon Sherry-Wood, joined Jason Carter and Shawn Morales. The winner of this season won a prize package that included a supply from Colorevolution Cosmetics and a cash prize of $100,000. This was also the first season where Absolut Vodka and Interior Illusions, Inc. were not sponsors for the show, more specifically for the Untucked episodes. The Interior Illusions Lounge is now simply known as the Silver Lounge or FormDecor Lounge. The theme song played during the runway segment every episode was "Sissy That Walk" while the song playing during the credits is "Dance With U", both from the album Born Naked.

RuPaul

RuPaul Andre Charles (born November 17, 1960), best known mononymously as RuPaul, is an American actor, drag queen, model, author, and recording artist. RuPaul was born and raised in San Diego and later moved to Atlanta to study performing arts. He settled in New York City where he became a popular fixture on the nightclub scene.

RuPaul achieved international fame as a drag queen with the hit song "Supermodel (You Better Work)" from her album Supermodel of the World (1993) and later dueted with Elton John on the song "Don't Go Breaking My Heart". In 1996, she became a spokesperson for MAC Cosmetics, raising money for the Mac AIDS Fund and becoming the first drag queen supermodel. The same year, she landed her own talk show The RuPaul Show which ran for two years on VH1 before co-hosting the morning radio show on WKTU with Michelle Visage. She has since released the albums Foxy Lady (1996), Ho, Ho, Ho (1997), Red Hot (2004), Champion (2009), Glamazon (2011), Born Naked (2014), Realness (2015) and Slay Belles (2015), and made appearances in films including Crooklyn (1994), The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar (1995) and But I'm a Cheerleader (1999). RuPaul has also published two books: Lettin' It All Hang Out (1995) and Workin' It (2010). His reality television series RuPaul's Drag Race, which follows RuPaul in his search for the next drag superstar, has produced seven series on LGBTQ network Logo TV. She is also a host on television shows Skin Wars and Good Work.