‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ Shocker: Season Premiere Edits Out Mysterious 11th Queen

There’s always some sort of extracurricular drama going on in the Drag Race franchise, but the speculation, intrigue, befuddlement, and gossip surrounding the cast of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 5 has been unlike any we’ve seen before. When the new cast of queens was ruvealed earlier this month, fans were surprised to see just 10 queens in the lineup as opposed to 12. For the last three seasons, Drag Race UK’s cast has consisted of a dozen queens. And while the mother series has never really had a consistent number of queens from season to season, RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 15’s cast was the largest yet at 16 queens. What’s going on across the pond?! That’s a question that every Drag Race YouTuber and podcaster set out to answer.

Some YouTube shows posited that maybe the show went with fewer queens in order to not rush production, as has long been rumored to have happened with UK Season 3 (Mangled Morning with Mera Mangle & Scarlett Syanide). Others — like the ominously named channel the drama — cited a since-deleted Reddit post from a bit back from someone allegedly within the Drag Race UK production. To sum it up: this alleged production member alleged in the deleted post that an 11th queen was indeed part of filming RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 5. During filming, allegations of sexual assault were made or discovered (unclear which) and World of Wonder (Drag Race UK’s production company) and the BBC (Drag Race UK airs on BBC Three) took action. According to this post, however, BBC and WOW decided to take action by giving the queen “the option to be eliminated in the next un-filmed lip sync” instead of publicly disqualifying the queen, as had been the case when a queen was disqualified for similar reasons after filming RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 12. This choice was given to the mysterious 11th queen because, as the Reddit post claimed, the BBC felt it would be “unreasonably expensive” to edit the queen out of the season. Drag Race journalist/sleuth Bussy Queen has a solid explainer for those who want more details.

Additionally, numerous unverified sources have claimed that a 12th queen was also cast but had to pull out of the season at the last minute, possibly due to family reasons or maybe COVID. Is that true? Will we ever know? I have no idea.

While rumors of a 12th queen are vague at best, rumors of an 11th queen only intensified in the run-up to the Season 5 premiere. In an appearance on the podcast Drag Her!, Drag Race alum Jackie Cox said of the rumors (at 58:10), “I do believe that is true because I got some texts from some of my sisters saying that is true. I don’t know what the accusations are, I don’t know how it all plays out, but I do believe that there will be another body on that stage. I’ve also heard that they may edit them out somehow, entirely. There definitely was an 11th queen there with them, but whether we’ll see them on the program remains to be seen.” We’d just have to wait until the season premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 5 in order to find out…

‘RuPaul’s Drag Race UK’ Season 5 Queens Break Down Series’ Most Iconic Moments

… and now that the season premiere is out — SPOILERS — we know the truth: there was an 11th queen on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 5. However, you will not see her on the program. She has been edited out — and this edit is way, way more thorough than the one we saw in Season 12. In that season, the disqualified queen was still seen in challenges and on the runway, but their confessional footage was completely scrapped after the allegations came to light and their appearances in the Werk Room were limited to moments that pushed the larger narrative forward. For UK Season 5, this queen has been edited around entirely, creating a kind of moving Where’s Waldo? game (or Where’s Wally? in the UK). But don’t be fooled: she’s definitely there.

The first time that something felt off in the episode was when RuPaul first entered the Werk Room. As always happens in season premieres, the queens divide up into even groups in order to listen to Ru — more for camera blocking than anything else, so we can see all the queens together comfortably in a shot. There’s the first lineup, including Cara Melle, Vicki Vivacious, Miss Naomi Carter, Alexis Saint-Pete, Michael Marouli, and Tomara Thomas.

Compare that to the shot of the other half: Banksie, Ginger Johnson, Kate Butch, and DeDeLicious.

If you have a cast of 10, why would they split up into a group of six and a group of four? And that shot of the foursome is cropped in way tighter, giving us a knee-up shot as opposed to a full-body. Is someone standing next to DeDeLicious…?

Yes, there is. You can see bits of black fur ever so slightly popping into the frame. Even more telling is one shot where you can see a hand with a giant black ring sticking out of a black, fur-trimmed garment.

The hand belongs to no one visible in the lineup of queens above.

Later in the episode when the queens gather for a club-themed runway, you can see half of this mystery queen in the lineup. Count them:

There are 10 heads but 11 pairs of legs.

The most you see of this mysterious 11th queen happens during the judging. This mystery queen is located behind Alexis Saint-Pete and to the right of Kate Butch (that’s Kate Butch’s right, our left).

The editors were incredibly lucky that the camera person framed up their shot of Alexis Saint-Pete to block the 11th queen completely.

So yes, there was an 11th queen in the cast of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 5. As for who that queen is — ? I will let you Google that yourself, for I feel weird about giving publicity to a queen who was presumably edited out of Drag Race for sexual assault — especially a queen who has yet to be confirmed as having been part of the cast at all.

And as for the veracity of the Reddit post that started all of the rumors, it was half right. There was an 11th queen. However there’s been no confirmation of that queen’s identity, nor do we actually know why they were edited out of the episode. And that’s another thing: the mystery poster said that the BBC thought it was “unreasonably expensive” to edit the queen out of the season, but clearly that’s not true. In fact, the editors worked even harder to remove this queen from the premiere. As for how long this queen will remain lurking just off-camera, that remains to be seen. And it’s unclear what the show will do if this mystery queen ever had to lip sync for her life.

Quasi-SPOILERS for a version of the season that doesn’t exist (?), but the drama’s initial explanation of events teased that the queen would be disqualified in Episode 2. If that’s the case and the on-air disqualification is anything like Willam’s from Season 4 (who was given a DQ for breaking vague rules, nothing criminal!), or when Eureka! was sent home for an injury in Season 9, then it would likely occur after a lip sync between two other queens. That means that the 11th queen’s disqualification could pluck right out of the edit after a fully intact lip sync. Remove that disqualification scene and ADR in a “shantay you both stay” from Ru and move along. And if the 11th queen’s only in two episodes, well, that’s a lot cheaper than having to re-edit the entire season, which is what happened with Season 12.

Maybe having the episode out in the world, one that includes fleeting shots of the mystery queen’s hand and legs and wig and fur trim, will spur World of Wonder or the BBC to make an official statement of some kind about this queen and this edit. We’ll have to wait and see how next week plays out, too. Will we get more quick shots of more mysterious limbs? Or is there a very weird, very unpleasant ruveal awaiting us? We’ll have to wait and see how this turns out.

Decider has reached out to World of Wonder for comment.

New episodes of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK Season 5 premiere on Thursdays at 4 p.m. ET on WOW Presents Plus.