Miami's Lucky Starzzz Spills the Tea on Season 17 of RuPaul's Drag Race

Whether she was dressed as a seductive sponge, a lascivious lemon, or a bawdy basketball, Miami drag performer Lucky Starzzz made a notable impression on the 17th season of RuPaul's Drag Race. Her knack for anthropomorphizing inanimate objects gave the season a madcap, fever-dream energy during her relatively short stint on the show. Representing an unconventional and underground take on drag, she never quite fit the Drag Race mold, but that also set her apart from a diverse and talented cast.

"When I got the call, it felt like time split in two," Starzzz says of learning she'd been cast on the show. "It was my first time auditioning, so it felt amazing to have been seen by Ru." Once she put the phone down, she entered her new reality: "sleepless nights, creative overstimulation, hot glue, and lots of trips to Home Depot."

While fellow contestants like Sam Star and Jewels Sparkles headed for the makeup counter or fabric store, Starzzz's frequent visits to Home Depot reveal a different approach to drag. She does not identify as a drag queen, but instead prefers the terms "drag artist" or "club kid." Her style is representative of another avenue of drag that has been slightly overshadowed by the mainstreaming of the art form by Drag Race.

"I was a bit concerned, naturally, because I was so used to having such a polarizing drag style in my daily life," she says of entering the Werk Room. "But I was also super proud and building confidence. I wasn't going to dull my edges just to fit in, but I also knew I didn't have to. It meant everything to hold space for the underground, for the ones who never saw themselves in mainstream drag."

Starzzz is more of a concept than a character; shapeshifting is part of the performance. "I see Lucky Starzzz as visual storytelling, body distortion, satire, and surrealism," she says. "I perform ideas." Her goal is to confound and befuddle her audience. "I love when people watch me and say, 'What exactly is this?' That's the point. It's a moving art piece stuck in this reality. It's walking nonsense!"

Before stepping foot on the Drag Race mainstage, Starzzz honed her point of view and performance style at her home bar, Nathan's Beach Club on South Beach. "Nathan [Smith, the bar's founder and namesake] gave me a real space to be messy, loud, experimental, and unfiltered," she says. "He believed in what I was doing."

Starzzz found a little slice of home when she saw Suzie Toot, another South Florida queen, on the Drag Race set. In contrast to the friendly rivalry between Miami's Morphine Dion Love and Mhi'ya Iman Le'Paige last season, Starzzz and Toot were cordial throughout the competition. "From the outside, sure, Suzie and I read like total opposites, but we've always supported each other," she says.
One of Starzzz's season highlights was debuting her song "Lucky's Lemonade" during the talent show. Musician Tyler Campbell composed the beat, and drag performer Sagittae Nidae, known as "the Moroccan Princess of Miami," penned some lyrics. She attributes the song's rap influence to Nidae's contributions and says it sounds exactly as she imagined: "chaos bottled up and ready to squirt."

In a sense, that same experimental spirit was also her undoing on the show. A design challenge utilizing traditional materials was less than ideal for a conceptual performer who feels more at home in the hardware aisle than at the sewing machine. But Starzzz has zero regrets, calling her time on the show "short, but not quiet."

Another highlight was her ability to shed light on the financial burdens drag performers can face in their rise to the national spotlight. "I have always struggled financially, and that is something that, since the beginning of my drag, has influenced and inspired my style," she says. "It has made me very resourceful. It has helped me be more crafty. I have never had it all, so I have always been forced to look for trash and make magic with it."

Despite her brief run on the show, Starzzz joins Latrice Royale, Morphine, Mhi'ya, and her Season 17 sister Suzie in the contingent representing South Florida drag around the world. "I'm proud of the impression I've made with my three cute little episodes," she says. (A memorable return on the LalapaRuza episode made that four.) "I'd rather burn bright for a moment than be background noise for ten episodes."