Drag Race UK winner Lawrence Chaney has Oprah-like aspirations, Scottish drag pride
When Lawrence Chaney entered the workroom of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, he did it as the show’s first ever Scottish queen. Now, following last week’s season finale, he walks away as the show’s first ever Scottish winner.
A sharp and lovable character based in Glasgow, Chaney won over fan hearts early in the season as he drove RuPaul into near constant fits of wheezy laughter. Later, he’d come up against fierce competition in the form of the incomparably bendy Bimini Bon-Boulash, but ultimately managed to snag the crown and scepter when push came to shove. While there’s no cash prize in Drag Race UK, he’ll be Hollywood bound at some point in the near future, set to make a new series for the WOW Presents App.
That’s an especially big deal for Chaney, who says he’s never really been a big flyer. In fact, as he tells The A.V. Club in the video above, the only time he can really remember taking a big family vacation was when his family went on Holiday in Paris, and even that was just for a weekend. Things have certainly changed now, with a tour of Australia and New Zealand already planned for Chaney’s “UK Hun” group the United Kingdolls, and surely more to come. We talk to Chaney about all that and his recent reckoning with the harsher side of online fandom in the interview above.