‘Drag Race’ queen has dirty jokes for days in her first-ever comedy special

Chris Azzopardi | Q Syndicate
qsyndicate@pridesource.com

Are Alaska Thunderfuck’s filthy jokes about Jeffrey Epstein, “genderfluids,” labia and poop too much for our world on fire? Even though she has a song called “Anus,” Alaska thought maybe they were. She wasn’t sure if an assault joke in 2021 would fly.

So the winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 2 consulted comedy queens Jackie Beat, Sherry Vine and Margaret Cho to see if she was out of her damn mind. They didn’t exactly say she wasn’t, but they also did give Alaska just enough confidence to release The Alaska Thunderfuck Extra Special Comedy Special, her premiere standup gig. The special is airing now on OUTtv, the first LGBTQ+ Apple TV channel now available on the Apple TV app.

Dallas Voice: I feel like with this comedy special, you keep just checking boxes. Drag queen, comedy queen. What can’t Alaska do? Alaska Thunderfuck: I can’t do math really good, so I have an amazing accountant. And I also don’t know how to use TikTok. I cannot figure it out. My 10-year-old niece is really good at. I know I’ve always been just a look queen and a glamour girl. So this is a huge step for me to try and tell jokes.

Has a career in drag prepared you for a career in comedy? I don’t know. It was hard, and I was really trepidatious about doing it because I was like, “Yes, I’m funny, but I’m not a comedian.” Like, I have so much respect for comedians who go out there and pound the fucking circuit of comedy clubs and [are] having bottles thrown at them and learning their craft. I’m like, “I am a visual artist who does drag, who can tell jokes. Sometimes with an OK success rate.”

Was it harder than you thought it would be then? The jokes part, that was great. That was fun. It was learning how to do dance moves. That was harder. I couldn’t just do a comedy special where I tell jokes. I had to be Team Too Much. I had to, like, put in musical numbers and dance numbers and a drag contest.

Going back, were you a funny kid? I mean, my family has a fucking amazing sense of humor, and they’re so funny. … But I was never a funny kid, because I was too shy and too scared of people. I was like, “I’m gay, and I’m weird, and I just wanna hide in my room.”

Was comedy a defense mechanism for you like it is for a lot of gay kids? See, for me, it never got to that point. My defense mechanism was not being seen. I just tried to disappear. I tried to be a gecko and change to the color of the wall. That was my defense mechanism.

How are you feeling now that this special has been released into the world? I feel great about it now. It’s been 87 years since we filmed this. It’s been so long, and it’s not an understatement to say the entire world has changed so much. We filmed this in pre-COVID Hollywood, … [then] COVID happened. The quarantine happened. All these things happened. I was like, “Is this appropriate? Why the fuck do I need to be like, ‘Look at me telling jokes, toots!’ Should I even be doing this? What the fuck is going on?”

So luckily, we made it a part of the thing, a part of the movie. We have interviews with my comedy guru mentors, and they help assure me that the world needs laughter and comedy now more than, I think, ever.

When you’re up there, and jokes are not hitting like you had hoped they would, what are you feeling? I was feeling like, “This is gonna be good footage.” It’s like the moment before a nuclear bomb drops. It’s just perfect pin-drop silence.

Aside from Margaret Cho, what other comedians did you look up to growing up? Well, I always loved TV. I was really obsessed with TV. I was always getting told I watched too much TV as a child. So sitcom jokes, that sort of rhythm of the setup and the knockdown and the punchline is sort of ingrained in me. … Just wacky, goofy — that type of humor is my shit. It’s my jam.

How has being a drag queen been good training for being a comedian? Well, to me, they’re not that different. I think drag inherently is rooted in humor, because it’s poking fun at the idea of conventions of gender: What is it that makes a man in this society and makes a woman in this society, and those rules are ultimately so arbitrary and so out of nowhere, so just absurd. So drag clowns all of those conventions and calls them into question and makes fun of them and “winks, winks” at you while it’s doing it. I think inherently there is humor in the absurdity of just like, What the fuck is gender? What is society? What is clothing?

I loved seeing that a drag king, Tenderoni, won your very own drag competition, The Drag of the Year Pageant Competition Awards Contest Competition. … What forms of drag would you like to see elevated, and how would you like to see the art form diversify moving forward? The reason Lola [LeCroix] and I started doing the Drag Queen of the Year Pageant is [that] drag has always been crazy diverse. … So, we found it really strange that there wasn’t a competition that was open to all these different avenues of drag; it was always very compartmentalized. I mean, Drag Race is the sort of gold standard of drag competitions in the current landscape of the world. And the good thing that’s hopeful is Drag Race is always changing it up and always evolving with the times. So, I could see a drag king getting thrown into the mix. I think it’s possible.

What’s next for you? Might you record another album at some point? Um, maybe.

Okay. You’re in the studio. I don’t know! Stay tuned.

This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Chris Azzopardi is editorial director of Pride Source Media Group and Q Syndicate, the national LGBTQ wire service. Reach him via Twitter @chrisazzopardi.