Queens of the desert—On the gloriously messy set of The Boulet Brothers' Dragula: Titans
Tensions flared and grievances were aired during the shoot of season two's reunion episode.
The Boulet Brothers (Image: Shudder/AMC+)
One of the charms of Los Angeles is that you never know what’s going on inside of the anonymous-looking soundstages that dot the city like walled fiefdoms. These extend from the heart of Hollywood out into the kind of desert that began to make me nervous as my Uber ride started ticking up from a typical L.A. 30 minutes into 45 minutes and then nearly an hour. “Am I about to face some kind of endurance challenge?,” I thought. “Crawl through a pit of scorpions? Get buried alive and have to claw out, then find my way to set with nothing but a compass and the angle of the sun?”
Such a thing would not be out of the question when visiting the set of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula, which distinguishes itself from other drag competition series by—among other things—challenging contestants to prove their commitment in Fear Factor-style “exterminations” that influence the judges’ decision about who to send home. In the season premiere of Titans (the show’s all-star variant), those who scored low in the main “Halloween House Party” challenge were charged with hiking five miles up the side of a mountain, then bungee jumping into a ravine.
In the end, however, no such trial was necessary to observe the taping of Titans‘ season-two reunion episode (which dropped December 2 on Shudder and AMC+)—although the afternoon would end up becoming a trial of sorts (more on that later). Instead, we eventually took a dusty exit into a sparsely populated desert town, passing street vendors selling cups of fruit to seemingly no one before stopping at the gates of a massive complex full of gigantic white buildings. After wandering around for a while, I spotted a publicist standing outside of a door waving with both arms and stepped into an alternate dimension of drag monsters and glamour ghouls.
One thing you learn when you’ve been to a few sets is that the proportions are always different in real life. Dragula’s main events take place inside of a black void, which makes it difficult to expect much in terms of size. Still, this was one of the rare cases where the room looked bigger in person than it does on TV. Part stage and part judge’s chamber, it sat at the center of a mazelike network of production offices, editing suites, and storage spaces for the immense volume of costumes and accessories each contestant brought to the show.
I asked a producer how many checked bags each out-of-town Titan gets when flying out to L.A.; she said 10, but most of them have to ship larger pieces separately as well. With that in mind, it shouldn’t be too surprising to learn that the “lab”—the relatively small, empty space where contestants prepare their looks and apply makeup on camera—was mostly just for show. The majority of the transformations took place in the hangar-like “ready room” next door, another maze of clothing racks and vanity mirrors where piles of discarded pantyhose littered the floor and wigs sat haphazardly on styrofoam heads. A dusty pink dildo stuck out of one box, like a worm poking its head out of the dirt after a summer rain.
Another thing you learn on set visits is that there’s a lot of time to kill. By the time I arrived at 4 p.m. the top three contestants of Titans season two had already been on set for five hours and were sitting in folding chairs in full drag (minus the more painful elements, of course), talking shit to pass the time. We stopped to chat for a while, and the conversation soon turned to the extreme methods that are necessary to keep prosthetics in place under hot studio lights.
“[Industrial adhesive] E6000, wood glue, WD-40, I use it all,” Abhora said, picking at the dirt underneath their long acrylic toenails. Jay Kay and Evah Destruction nodded, sipping water out of plastic bottles with a straw. (Essential to avoid smearing one’s lipstick, straws are a drag must-have, along with setting spray and strong air conditioning.) All three described shifting their weight from foot to foot to avoid passing out during judgments and taking quick “dissociation naps” backstage to focus before the “floor show.”
They also agreed that, despite the “pads, tights, piss, and cum” of the everyday drag routine, they were less nervous returning for Titans. Time management is easier when you’ve done this before: One secret is to start doing your makeup at the hotel or on the plane, then finish it when you get to set. And the more relaxed atmosphere allowed them to see their competitors in “a more human light,” as Evah put it. “I was more excited and less stressed to see my friends looking incredible,” she added. Still, all this togetherness is only a positive thing if you actually like your comrades in drag.
For hosts Dracmorda and Swanthula Boulet, the process was “enlightening,” as Swan puts it in a Zoom interview a few months after my initial visit. “An interesting thing about this experience, and Titans in general, is that we revisit seasons that we may have not looked at for a couple of years,” Swanthula says. “And when these characters return and show us who they are for a second time, I can see instances where I’m like, ‘Oh my god, all of this stuff that I thought was someone else [on your season], it was you. You were part of the problem. The drama follows you.’”
