Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman Talks About The Hate He Received While Hosting “Canada’s Drag Race”

September 17, 2021 / Posted by:

The RuPaul’s Drag Race spin-off, Canada’s Drag Race, is going into its second season. And when the second season was announced, we learned that season 1 judge, Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman would not be back. The official reason given was that Jeffrey was too busy filming the Disney+ Doogie Howser, M.D. reboot, Doogie Kameāloha, M.D., and added he’d be very missed. But it sounds like even if his schedule was free, he’d pass on doing a second season. While promoting the Doogie reboot, Jeffrey talked to The Hollywood Reporter and said that he was absolutely shocked about the amount of hate he got from Drag Race fans. And I mean hate hate – Jeffrey says a lot of it was dripping in racism.

The first season of CDR included judges Brooke Lynn Hytes, Stacey McKenzie, and Jeffrey. Brooke Lynn is the only original judge who is coming back. Stacey is also out due to “COVID challenges.” During the first season, it wasn’t a queen who was on the receiving end of a villain edit and got the most hate online, it was Jeffrey. And that led to a lot of toxic abuse from fans. via THR:

The amount of times that I was called a stupid n—er in my inbox from white, gay men was shocking – specifically because we were in the midst of a racial justice awakening,” Bowyer-Chapman tells THR in a raw and emotional conversation. “I think that with me receiving all of the hate, and racism, and harassment, and death threats – it’s shone a light on the insanity of it. It really did show a lot of people how dark and how toxic the Drag Race trolls have become over the past couple of years and how unacceptable it is.”

At the suggestion of RuPaul, Jeffrey deleted his Twitter account. But it wasn’t just the toxic fans who made his experience on CDR shitty. He also doesn’t have great feelings for the producers.

According to him, the fault lies not solely with the fandom but within the show itself. “As gay men, we unfortunately have grown accustomed to experiencing hate and vitriol and homophobia,” says Bowyer-Chapman. “I guess I had just never experienced it from my own community. That was the part that was most heartbreaking.”

“I came into Canada’s Drag Race with a false sense of security because I had built that trust with the producers of the American show,” he says. “But this was a different set of producers. And I think they were trying to create something impactful and prove themselves along the way. As so, there are many instances where looking back I should have paid attention to my intuition and spoken up. And I didn’t.”

Jeffrey says that one white showrunner pulled him aside at one point and told him that his job was to be “man candy for the contestants to drool over,” and that his job was to be the “sassy one.” Jeffrey says he knew that the use of the word “sassy” was a dog whistle to imply that his job was to be the “hot-headed one” that doesn’t “give a shit” if people don’t like them. He added that that’s not who he is. He also accused the majority of the crew of CDR of being white, and that there “really was no Black talent” behind the camera, despite what one showrunner assured him. Here’s a picture of the crew, and I’ll let you have your own feelings on that.

One of the major criticisms lobbied against Jeffrey was that he was being a hateful, critical meanie for no reason. Jeffrey blames producers for that and said he was pushed to be mean.

“Even if we didn’t have anything negative to say, you had to come up with something negative,” he explains.

In postproduction, the showrunner handed him a list of pre-written negative critiques to recite into a microphone. “Very naively, I thought, they must just be doing this because they gave me the bubblegum edit,” he says. “Because there was endless footage of me connecting with the queens and being loving and kind and guiding them.” The edit proved to be far from bubblegum, however, with one outlet going so far as to describe Bowyer-Chapman as bringing “Simon Cowell-with-eye-glitter energy” to the proceedings.

Jeffrey says he watched the first episode of Canada’s Drag Race and felt like trash because he knew he was going to get the villain edit. But a source claims that Jeffrey signed off on the first three episodes before they aired and that the ADR session was “not a list of negative comments.” Crave (the streaming service that airs CDR) only had good things to say about Jeffrey and added that he’ll always be a part of the CDR family.

Jeffrey is still cool with the producers of the American version because he’s already filmed an appearance on an upcoming episode.

It sounds like Jeffrey had a bad time filming CDR, and clearly, he’s more comfortable and feels more supported back in the USA with RuPaul and the American crew. And if Jeffrey is telling the truth about the producers, then maybe this will serve as a learning lesson for them. For example, just let the judges judge. And if you need to meddle in the name of improving the show, work on that Werk Room set. It looks like it was put together in two days on a $100 budget!

Pic: Crave

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