Nymphia Wind and Joel Kim Booster Got Real About Drag Race and Asian Representation

John Nacion/Variety via Getty Images and Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for MTV

Nymphia Wind recently made history as the first ever East Asian winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, and she sat down with the similarly groundbreaking comedian Joel Kim Booster to discuss some of the triumphs and challenges of being the first of your kind.

In a conversation for Gay Times, Booster pointed out that Wind (known as Leo Tsao out of drag) is also the first Drag Race winner since BeBe Zahara Benet whose first language is not English — and that was all the way in the first season. When asked whether she worried about the fact that English isn’t her first language, Wind responded, “For sure, especially Snatch Game or writing or anything specific to the English language, because my grammar or the words that I can think of is very limited.”

“Speaking in general is not my strongest suit and I’m pretty shy, but I could always go the Jessica Wild route where I just confidently speak English or, even if it’s not good, be confident in myself,” she added. “I’m shy in nature, so speaking is hard for me in general.”

“And Taiwan, this is for you\!” Wind said in her acceptance speech.

Booster also noted that some people’s standards for Wind were unfair, saying, “Bitch, try writing poetry in a language that you did not grow up speaking. Try doing witty wordplay in a language that is not your own. It’s a completely different thing to just speaking conversationally.”

The two also discussed another tense moment on the show, when Booster himself appeared as a guest judge in the 11th episode of season 16. Referring to it as “the famous powerpoint challenge of 2024,” the comedian offered an apology for not defending her more vigorously, since RuPaul and the judging panel had criticized Wind for using an accent.

“It was weird and strange to be the only other Asian person in that room, and to have to be the deciding factor if it was okay or wasn’t okay,” Booster said. “It’s so strange that the show sometimes encourages queens to lean into a caricature, and then sometimes penalizes a queen for leaning into a caricature, and there’s not always a through line to when they’re happy or mad about it.” Nymphia then pointed out that the following week, Carson Kressley did a European accent, to which Booster remarked that there were “a lot of examples of it.”

When asked if it was scary to be the only Asian person in the werkroom, Wind responded that when she walked in, she realized, “Oh, I’m the diversity hire of the season.” The two shared, though, that it was mutually relieving to see each other on the show, especially given the “unspoken Asian curse,” as Booster put it, on Drag Race, where Asian competitors will only make it to a certain point of the show. In fact, Booster pointed out that Wind is the first East Asian queen to make it to the finale since Kim Chi finished as a runner up on season eight in 2016.

Though Wind admitted that there was “an added pressure” to being the only East Asian on the show, she also said that the experience “has been so great, so fulfilling.”

“All sorts of Asians come up to me, every Asian skin tone saying, ‘Thank you for representing us.’ Us, you know?” she said. “It’s so heartwarming to see that I, as Nymphia, was able to provide this representation for them.”

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Originally Appeared on them.