RuPaul Andre Charles isn’t always easily digestible — and the actor, singer, producer, TV star and writer doesn’t seem to mind that. While promoting his memoir “The House of Hidden Meanings” in an interview with The New Yorker, RuPaul touched on everything from his childhood (“I knew from childhood I was the golden child”) to how gender is defined (“I feel I’m everything. You are everything”).
RuPaul’s conversation with famed journalist Ronan Farrow began with a grim statement. RuPaul, a fan of the series “Secrets of Great British Castles,” told Farrow, “The headline is: Humans have been horrible since the beginning of time. And the human ego can justify these terrible things that people do. You know, these kings, Henry VIII, and Edward II, and all these people who have just decimated hundreds of thousands of people because their feelings were hurt.”
To that end, he said that he and his husband Georges LeBar are building a home (or as Farrow put it, a “fortified compound”) on 60,000 acres in Wyoming. RuPaul is still at a professional peak, having won his 14th Emmy while the 16th season of his “RuPaul’s Drag Race” is airing.
RuPaul was born in 1960, the youngest of four children. After his birth, his mother introduced him to his aunts: “His name is RuPaul and he’s going to be a star.” He told Farrow, “I was always anointed. I know it sounds obnoxious. But I knew from childhood I was the golden child.”
But he described his parents as “two battling nations” and also said that he’s never been interested in having children of his own. “Parents teaching their kids about safe spaces, and ‘I feel uncomfortable’ … It’s, like, You know what? The world is not a safe space. You have to find the comfort. It’s mostly uncomfortable,” he explained.
“I don’t like kids,” he added. When it comes to a slightly older demographic, he’s still not much interested. Later in the interview, RuPaul explained, “I’m not interested in appealing to 11-to-25-year-olds, I’m just not. I can, on a bigger level, as a mother. As Mama Ru. It’s a different relationship — I’m not trying to be them.”
Unsurprisingly, gender and gender expression have been major hallmarks of RuPaul’s career. But he doesn’t really like to talk about it, Farrow wrote. RuPaul told him, “Gender is a concept that we come up with, in our minds and our egos.”
“My genitals are male. But I can be whatever I can. I feel I’m everything. You are everything. You are male, female. Sometimes I feel more male than others,” he added.
The memoir’s publisher HarperCollins described the book as “a brutally honest, surprisingly poignant, and deeply intimate memoir of growing up Black, poor, and queer in a broken home to discovering the power of performance, found family, and self-acceptance.”
Of the book, RuPaul appeared to regret taking on the project in the first place. “I did not think this memoir s–t through,” he told Farrow. “It’s presumptuous that the interviewer can interpret my experience.”
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