Drag Race Thailand is a Thai Reality Show in which Drag Queens compete in challenges to impress hosts Art Arya and Pangina Heals, with the winner of the series crowned as Thailand's drag superstar and awarded other prizes. The show is part of the international Drag Race franchise.
The challenges cover things such as modelling, makeup and fashion design - as well as comedy, acting and dance performances. Each episode also includes at least one themed runway fashion show, which may or may not be related to the episode's other challenges.
As well as the challenges themselves, a large part of each show is devoted to conversation and events backstage, in the shared "Werk Room". This is where contestants prepare their costumes, do their makeup and rehearse for some of the challenges.
Contestants aren't usually in drag during these segments, but are generally still referred to by stage names - Drag Race Thailand contestants are often more open about their real names and jobs than their equivalents in other Drag Race shows, but Drag Race as a whole largely avoids mentioning contestants' legal names unless they choose to share them.
Contestants are marked separately for the mini-challenge, the maxi-challenge and the runway. Their overall result is a combination of the maxi-challenge and runway score, with the mini-challenge winner generally getting some sort of advantage in the maxi-challenge.
At the end of each episode, contestants in the middle of the field are marked as 'safe' until the next episode, whereas contestants at the top and bottom of the results remain onstage to hear the judges' critiques. As the series progresses, the number of safe places available steadily reduces.
Once the critiques are over the runway winner is named, one queen is normally declared the week's overall winner, and two are warned that they potentially face elimination. Any remaining queens who received critiques are also declared 'safe'.
As with other Drag Race shows, elimination is tied to a "lip sync battle" - the two contestants lip sync to a song chosen by the judges, with both queens performing onstage at the same time. The judges then decide who'll be saved and who'll be sent home.
Drag Race Thailand is filmed in a mix of Thai and English, and is streamed internationally with subtitles. Unless otherwise noted, all English language quotes on this page are taken from official subtitles.
Drag Race Thailand contains examplss of the following tropes:
- Brutal Honesty: Judge Art Arya can be directly and bluntly critical of competitors, even at their lowest moments. She makes it clear that she cares about them and wants them to live up to their potential, but still tends to be the harshest voice on the judges' panel. In the first episode of season two she's so dissatisfied with the elimination lip sync battle that she tells both contestants to do it again, with the implied threat that they'll both be sent home if it doesn't improve.
- Confession Cam: Contestants provide commentary via confessional interviews, which are recorded after the scenes they refer to, then spliced into the episode. Confessionals typically start on video, sometimes continuing as voiceover once the episode cuts back to the original scene. Unlike most of the other Drag Race shows, Drag Race Thailand sometimes directly cuts between different confessionals to show contestants responding to each other. Confessionals are recorded out of drag.
- Distracted by the Sexy: In season two's "Under the Rainbow" mini-challenge, the Super Boys open their robes for five seconds, revealing shorts in a range of colours, then close the robes and swap places. Contestants must remember who which pairs wore the same colour and match them up. Kana Warrior and Mocha Diva use Confession Cam segments to explain that they were far too distracted by the men to remember their clothes.Kana Warrior: All I saw was muscles! I wasn't looking at the pants or anything else. Just the muscles.
- Drag Queen: As with other Drag Race shows, not only is it a contest for drag queens to demonstrate their skills, but hosts Pangina Heals and Art Arya are well established Thai drag queens. In practice, much of each episode covers the Werk Room preparations and rehearsals, with contestants mostly out of drag. Confession Cam segments, commenting on the show's events, are also filmed out of drag.
- Grandfather Clause: As of season two (2019), the show is still using an English language "You've got She-mail!" audio clip from the original RuPaul's Drag Race to accompany each episode's initial video call from the judges. Other Drag Race shows dropped the line years earlier, after it was criticised as transphobic.
- Introductory Opening Credits: Season two's opening credits introduce the contestants, showing a short clip of each of them and then captioning it with their name. Season one had very different credits and only focused on the judges.
- Reality Show Genre Blindness: Season two contestant M Stranger Fox mentions that lip-sync really isn't her thing, and that she didn't prepare for one as she never thought she'd be in the bottom two. Not only does she end up in the bottom two in the first episode, but the lip-sync battle is considered so poor that judge Art Arya gives both contestants a blistering speech, tells them to do it again, and then sends M Stranger Fox home.
- The Reveal: Season two's first maxi-challenge is a "Re-Born This Way" photo shoot on a graveyard set. Contestants lie in the grave, cloth covering their face, then rise for two minutes of photo poses. It's not until they remove the cloth that they realise season one's contestants are now gathered around them, in full drag, and they also need to outshine them...
- The Rival: When Kana Warrior first enters the Werk Room at the start of season two, Bandit's Confession Cam comments on their similarities and immediately declares that she's found her rival for the season.Bandit: The one that gave me pause, because of how similar she was to me, was Kana. We were similar from head to toe. We've got similar build and style. This is gonna be fun. Found my rival.Kana Warrior: Game on, Bandit! [blows a kiss] Love ya, but also ready to kill ya.
- Share Phrase: The judges reuse some of RuPaul's lines from other Drag Race shows, including the "Sashay away" Elimination Catchphrase and the "And don't fuck it up" warning. Notably, "Ladies, start your engines" becomes "Gentlemen, start your engines" when talking to competitors out of drag, unlike the rest of the franchise.
- The Unintelligible: For the season two "Under the Rainbow" photo shoot maxi-challenge, Genie wears makeup to make her face look undead. It leaves her mouth covered, so she's unable to talk and has to try to instruct the Super Boys via noises and gestures. She manages to win the challenge anyway.
- Video Credits: A variation. The opening credits include video clips showing and naming each competitor (including those who've already been eliminated). The sequence ends with the judges — who aren't named — joining the assembled competitors. The judges do get a similar intro later in the show, when they first appear within each episode.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Like their American counterparts in RuPaul's Drag Race, the Pit Crew who assist the first season's contestants with some challenges are young men who normally only wear underwear. It's downplayed in season two, as they're replaced by the "Super Boys", who generally wear a little more.
