Werk Room Weekly: Tayris Mongardi defends roast jokes, ‘Drag Race UK’ showmance

Werk Room Weekly: Tayris Mongardi defends roast jokes, ‘Drag Race UK’ showmance

I’m Teras Mongardi and get your drag fix on page six. Welcome to Workroom Weekly. I’m Brian and today we’re joined by an extra special guest fresh off Drag Race UK season 7. It’s Tea Mongardi. Welcome to Page Six. Thank you so much for having me. How are you? I am doing great. I love the animal print. I love the beret. It’s also giving a little D from Clueless. Yeah, it says I love Clueless as a reference point. And do you know what? I’m going to dox myself out here. I’d never actually seen the film until I got back from the show. I just love the fashion references and I just never got around to watching it. So, when we’re doing the makeover, Danny was quoting things from it and I was like, “Yeah.” Oh, if you’re like, “Whatever.” Yeah. Well, what do you think of the movie now? You finally caught up, right? Yeah. It’s really camp. It’s really h every line is horrible. Yeah. And I didn’t really make the edit, but I remember Rue telling me she thought I looked exactly like her. She was like, “Are you like illusion painting?” And I was like, “No, girl. I can barely manage my own makeup. That look trying to look like someone else.” I’m actually surprised Stacy Dash, the actress who of course plays Dion, didn’t respond because it is so eerie. Yeah, I’ll take that. I’ll take that. Um, well, let’s get it. Let’s get it going. Congrats on being part of the Fab Five and an allaround amazing season. We’re going to get into some of your favorite and best moments. But first, I want to talk about episode 9, which just aired. You were so funny in the roast. Beige three. I mean, Paige 3. I mean, perfect joke. Next up, we have Bones. Everyone clap for Bone. Not the first time she’s gotten the clap from a room full of strangers, and it will not be the last. How did it feel just being so good at standup comedy? Was this like in your blood all along? I mean, not good enough, apparently. No, honestly, I really enjoyed it. I think for me as well, I I like I regularly host my own shows, like me or another queen together. Um, like pretty much every weekend, and I’ve done charity roast and stuff before, so even though I didn’t necessarily think it was my challenge to win, like I really wasn’t afraid of the challenge. And if anything, I still stand by all the material. I think maybe the only reason I’m potentially follyied was that I can tell in some of the delivery I’m doing it like I’m hosting at the gig. Like I’m not being like I’m in the roast. So here is the setup for this joke and here’s the punch line. It was more like oh I’m talking like telling funny material but in a really conversational way. So um ultimately I guess also prior to it airing you just kind of have to emotionally prepare yourself for the worst case scenario of it all. But watching back, watching it back, I was like, “Oh, that’s actually kind of good.” I stand by that. Yeah, absolutely. Everyone actually had some great punchlines and at this stage in the competition, it’s just like it’s sad. It sucks. Someone has to go home and this week it was you. Um, how did it feel getting sent home by your friend Katherine Felins? I think obviously at the time in the moment you saw my reaction, I I didn’t particularly enjoy it. Um, but I think immediately you can see by the time I’ve walked into the work room, I’m like smiling and laughing it off because I think more than anything that re reaction for me as well was just really a sense of relief. Like from the minute we got the call from like the the point of all the prep to being on set to like fighting every single week. I think that it was just like such an overwhelming release of emotions to say, “Oh, it’s done.” Like deep breath, have a chill. And the thing is as well with my elimination like it was all really nitpicky and I can I feel like I can comfortably say there was no challenge in which I like was utterly abysmal you know um which is nice to not have like tanked anything. I just think really I think Rue did me a favor to be honest because I think at that point she had a look at the five of us and she said right right now who is not ready to be the next drag superstar for season 7 maybe tis just send her back to the house let her rest her feet she’ll have a cup of tea maybe a biscuit or two if she’s feeling crazy and we’ll see her in the finale anyway um exactly yeah I feel like I’ve got so much to be proud about for my time there that being eliminated of course hurt at the time but like in retrospect like we’re literally people dressing in wigs like who she cares. And you know, personally, I think you should have stayed, but um you and Catherine did give us a bit of a showmance for the ages, you know. Can you give us a status on how things are going now? I’ve seen some cute Instagram posts since the show. It’s so funny because I remember it just was not on my radar that something like that would happen. And I guess like it makes sense because you’re in like a pressure cooker and um you’re just spending so much quality time with people. If you find them attractive, then like it’s really easy to feel like you do you skip all the first parts of dating. You spend all day every day together. Um, listen, well, we we’ve kind of said we’re going to nip it in the bud a little bit until the season’s done, then we’ll really spill all the tea and everything that’s going on. But what I will say is, did I text her about 20 minutes ago? Yes. So, so can’t be my bad books. So, you’re texting every day. You’re keeping in touch. Yeah. No, listen. Listen, when we’re about, I still get some sugar, you know, but I need sugar for my tea. So, exactly. I love the um the Nicki Minaj meme that that you guys did on Instagram. That was adorable. This is the thing. I I’m very much a my social media is like YouTube and like Twitter, you know, X. Um and then she’s a Tik Tok girl. She was like every time I’m in her company, she’s like, “We need to film these Tik Toks.” I’m like, “Yes, miss.” It feels like like strict wife and I’m like the sad husband like yeah okay dear. So I thought she oh do this and I’m like okay I’ll do it. Oh but listen it’s getting engagement so I can’t complain. I know that’s what my nieces do with me. They’re like uncle Brian let’s do a Tik Tok. I’m like honestly I have no idea what’s happening right now. Honestly she had to teach me how to get them to record. Like I was like I’m only 28. Why am I like such a technophobe? Honestly. Well, let’s get back to the season. It was, you know, full of surprises. It was very unexpected. A lot of, you know, topsyturvy, I was calling it. You know, queens with Rue badges went home the next week. We have Paige three, Bonnie and Clyde, Sally TM, who you sent home. Um, but there were other queens that never got a R badge, you know, and and did very well. So, what do you make of all this? Do the badges not really matter? Like, what’s going on? though I think it is rather I think maybe I think our season in particular challenges kind of a little bit of the formula and the rhetoric of what we expect from Drag Race because I know for instance for me at times you kind of just come to expect as a viewer if people are doing well in the competition like if they falter there might be some like accommodation made or like oh if she’s got two badges she’ll only be low and not lip syncing she’s done a good job up until this point Whereas I feel like maybe Rue was just really trying to like test our metal and say okay we are taking this week to week. So if you win a badge, that’s fab. That was that week. This is this week. And if you did the worst this week, you will be punished. Which is um which I also think though sometimes living it was quite confusing. But also I guess what is good for is um keeping the competition vibrant and like a good bloodline in it because I don’t think at any point anyone thought it was like too far to come back because sometimes if you can see a queen’s got four wins and you’re there with no win, it’s kind of over. But even coming into the roast, I was like, “Okay, well, if I win the roast, which actually I don’t think now seeing a result was hugely out of the realm of possibility, then I’ve only I’ve had one win and one bottom two placement.” That’s actually not that different to everyone else at this point cuz then Select would have the same. Bones would have two wins, two bottom twos, and L would have two wins, you know? So, I think it was making for a really even game across the board, which meant everyone was still fighting so much harder at all times because it was never like the game was never over for you until it was over. That seemed like the vibe in the workroom definitely that everyone was on edge. No one thought they were safe, you know? Maybe L the whole time was like, I’ve got this, but everyone else was a little bit like knives out, you know, which I love. Um I I think week five was the full Terrace Mongardi experience. your talent show crushed it. Literally, you did an original song, the dance, the outfit, and plus you crushed a watermelon with your legs. Um, did you always have this talent inside you? The watermelon thing is funny because I know initially, so when we were preparing for the talent show, I said, “Okay, what can I do?” And I thought about doing some classical singing, but I was like, oh, I’d seen it done really well in a couple of the past seasons, like with Sophia Castile and Monet Exchange, and I was like, oh, don’t don’t touch. Can I out sing them? I don’t know. So, I’m not going to risk it. And then, um, so I was like, what can I do? So, I also want to try and focus on a talent that wouldn’t come up elsewhere in a competition. Like, I don’t want to just like lip sync a song with no other piece to it, just like a fierce song. if I’m going to do girl groups, I’m going to do all these things. So for Halloween, I’d done like a pumpkin crushing thing, a Scooby-Doo. Like I had the personal fours just as Fred and obviously that was seasonal, but I was like, I feel like if I really go ham at the gym, I’ll have enough leg strength to do it with a watermelon cuz I was like it wasn’t that much harder. Um I would actually think a pumpkin would be harder to crush with your thighs than a watermelon. Maybe it was a little You think that it’s cuz it’s hollow on the inside. All you’ve actually got to break down is the initial surface area. Whereas obviously the the watermelon has like juice and like pith meat. What do you call watermelon meat? Let’s call it the meat. The watermelon meat. Um yeah, but listen, I don’t think we’ve ever seen that in Drag Race before. I don’t know if we’ll ever see it again. I can say I was one of a kind that day. It was incredible. And that week you also crushed the runway theme having it large. I loved your nod to black dandism. It was so chic. Uh what was your inspiration for this? Was it a little bit of the mech gala? Did that did that come into play or? Yeah. So, um there were two kind of inspirations going into it. One um my so a good Julie of mine was on season 4 Dakota Shifer and she was like right we were kind of bouncing back ideas for the runways and she said well it already been announced that the next year was going to be tailored to perfection. So I wanted to do something with that. But also um something I talked about on the show which unfortunately didn’t make it to was um there used to be a drag artist in Brighton called Meline Hatter who’s this really sweet girl um and she passed away a couple years ago um at age 19. She had menitis and so I knew if I made it to the show I wanted to be able to do something in reference to her. So, um I also had like a little bit of Mad Hacker influence some of the styling of that. Um as like a little salute to a cat who was um yeah, really lovely lovely girl, really nice gem. But yeah, so I think uh I think a lot of my everything on the show I brought to the show I said it’s got to mean something to me. Like if it’s just a decorative object, the only ar the only runway I’d argue had no meaning to me at all was probably my nicest one to be honest, which is the Christmas one. But um I just think everything I brought I was like if it doesn’t mean anything to me. I’m just spending a lot of money on a decorative object. So I know am I the fashion queen? Probably not. Not now. Probably not ever. But what I can do is make sure everything I can stand by the substance and the heart behind all of my looks. I love the ho ho holiday look that you had. You were just like an ice princess. It was just so the blue is so beautiful. And another look that I was gagging over. We’d already talked about it, but last week’s celebrity hun makeover challenge, the clueless look. I mean, it’s just you’re tall, you’re 6’6 next to Danny, you know, you towered over her. The the the visual was so cool and just so exactly right. I mean, I was I loved it. Yeah, that’s so sweet. Thank you. And I think especially with that one as well, I was like, okay, trying to think of um instantly recognizable concept because I had another idea for the makeover, but clear. I might I might need to save that four stars. But um I said, okay, what can I do? Because I think a lot of what I present on the show and in my drag in general is very like it’s very black. So I was like, okay, I don’t want to be paired with a white person and say, how do you feel about dreadlocks? you know, so I was like, what can I also do that like speaks to my sense of like my love for like 90s naughties aesthetic and culture, but also um that allows me to still like play with blackness, but doesn’t also impose that on my makeover partner. And I was like, oh, Sher and Dion, I was like cuz anyone can be share of any race and me I was I also just want an excuse to get that lovely hat. So, um yeah, I I really enjoyed the makeover. I think meeting Danny and just having that day, it was probably probably my favorite day, honestly. It was so sweet and that hat was everything. Thank you, honey. And I also, you know, speaking of, you know, respecting the culture, I loved your the outfit you wore for the the roast. It was just exactly right. It was so chic and beautiful and stylish. It was very cool. Thinking, do you know what? That’s actually just off the rack. Yeah. I just bought it off the rack and then just rhinestoned like every single patch. And I remember R telling me like, “This is one of the best things you’ve worn.” And I was like, “Oh, it’s literally from grassfields.com.” Thank you. Yeah. No, it cost $1,000. Yeah. Yeah. Well, before we let you go, you know, I think this has been going so well. I just have to ask you one last question. Next summer, can I come visit you in Brighton? Yeah. Listen, be my guest. Me and Ubis go. We’ll have a little We’ll take you down the shippy. Go down the pier. Yeah. Be my guest. Go down the pier. Maybe go on the ferris wheel. Catch some waves. Yeah. Cool then.

Tayris Mongardi is far from “Clueless.” Following her elimination from “RuPaul’s Drag Race UK,” the drag diva stopped by Page Six to dish on her best moments from Season 7, including this week’s comedy roast, her watermelon-smashing talent, and her iconic transformation into the “Clueless” BFFs, Cher and Dionne, for the makeover challenge. In fact, we find out that RuPaul was stunned by our guest’s uncanny resemblance to actress Stacey Dash. Your “Werk Room Weekly” co-host Brian Faas also gets the dirt on the flirty “showmance” between Tayris and fellow contestant Catrin Feelings. Watch the full interview here!

Read more at https://pagesix.com/video/werk-room-weekly-tayris-mongardi-defends-roast-jokes-drag-race-uk-showmance/

#werkroomweekly #dragraceuk #tayrismongardi

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