Drag Race season 14 star Maddy Morphosis responds to controversial casting backlash. (YouTube/WOWPresents)
The cast of Drag Race season 14 have defended the show’s first straight, cis male contestant, Maddy Morphosis.
News that the Arkansas queen would be competing in season 14 sparked fierce debate about people from outside the queer community entering drag spaces.
Maddy Morphosis explained that she has been doing drag for “about five years”, even doing pageants and shows “all over the place”. But she’d never “encountered any like resistance against me” until she was cast on Drag Race.
“I really thought I was just gonna take a little blip at the bottom of some news articles,” she told Entertainment Weekly.
“I did not expect it to be like so much of a huge reaction.”
Amid the negativity, Morphosis said there has also been “so much overwhelming positivity” from the cast and fans online. She said that this support is what’s helped her “get through this craziness right now”.
Speaking to EW, season 14 queen Jasmine Kennedie described Morphosis as “one of the most educated people” that she knows from “a straight perspective” on intricacies of the drag and the LGBT+ communities.
“He knows in terms of pronouns, he knows what to address people specifically and not to overstep those lines and he came in with such open arms with us,” Jasmine explained.
She continued: “And it was very much: ‘So hey, I’m straight.’
“We all said: ‘Oh cool, awesome’, and it was not even a factor in that because you didn’t make us feel as if it was like we weren’t in a safe space.”
Angeria Paris VanMicheals denounced any commenters who claimed that drag is solely a queer space. Instead, she said drag is an “artistic space”.
“Drag is an art, and it’s all valid,” she said.
She said she was “so proud” to be on such an “iconic” season with Morphosis because it showed the world that the drag community is “all about inclusion period”.
Several queens – including trans icon Gottmik and Canada’s Drag Race host Brooke Lynn Hytes – have supported Morphosis’ casting on Drag Race season 14.
Maddy Morphosis also addressed becoming a meme because of the way she “manspread” on her chair during her official “Meet the Queen” video, explaining that there was good reason behind it.
She recalled being “very ladylike” and crossing her legs when she first arrived to film her segment – but a problem with the chair that meant she had to change her posture.
“My chair kept moving so I had to spread my legs and kind of brace myself,” she explained.
The first episode of Drag Race season 14 premieres on VH1 in the US on 7 January, and fans in the UK can watch the new series on streaming service WOW Presents Plus.