Shangela is feeling the love on Dancing with the Stars! After being the only star to receive a perfect score of 40 on Monday night, the drag superstar and her pro dance partner Gleb Savchenko spoke with GLAAD’s Anthony Allen Ramos backstage.
When you work so hard for something, you finally get the payoff. Tonight was a lovely payoff,” Shangela said after receiving the night’s top scores for her haunting jazz routine to Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do.”
Savchenko said he was thrilled but still shocked at the judges giving them 4 perfect 10s. “I was like, what the heck? I didn’t want to say anything, but I was like ‘Shangela, if we do really well, we might get one 10…but then we got a perfect score!”
Ramos joked with the pair that Savchenko’s Halloween makeup look was “drag adjacent” and it looks as though Shangela might be giving her dance pro a drag makeover in the very near future!
“Okay, I’m working my drag magic on old Gleb here,” she told Ramos. “Gleb is already fiery, so his drag character is also going to have to be just as spicy and fiery, I think that she’s going to bring you something!
“Oh yeah, baby, you gotta wait and see, maybe we are going to do something else,” Savchenko teased about seeing a possible drag makeover on the Disney+ competition series.
Watch: GLAAD at Shangela and Gleb Savcheko’s DWTS rehearsal
“I’m going to be the blonde! I’m going to do a lot of hair-ography, my dream, and then a lot of body rolls right and a lot of snaps, snaps, snaps! Savhcenko said about his potential drag makeover.
“You can find her at the amateur night at the Abbey West, Hollywood amateur night. You’re gonna have to pay your dues, you gotta start somewhere!” Shangela interjected.
Next week on Dancing with the Stars the theme is ‘90s, and although Shangela is excited about what’s ahead, she isn’t going to let the pressure of following up their perfect score get to her.
“I don’t want to put the pressure on us to try to get all tens every week… I would love to, but I just wanna feel solid,” the We’re Here star shared with Ramos. “After this performance today, I was so excited because we felt solid. Everything we worked so hard on – all the great choreography (Gleb) had, we delivered it and gave people at home a moment worthy of voting for!”
Both Shangela and Savchenko realize the importance of seeing the first ever drag queen on the series, as well as being the first men to dance together on this version of the series.
“Representation matters but it’s not just a coin phrase. If I was a little kid growing up right now in Paris, Texas seeing not only Shangela competing on this show in drag and seeing the love and the partnership (from) Gleb, it would mean that it’s just two people dancing and having fun…but it’s also seeing the representation!
In the wake of several drag queen protests happening across the country, including the banning of Drag Queen story hours for kids, Shangela says that being visible like this by competing on Dancing with the Stars is key to making change.
“There’s just so much LGBTQ representation, not only on the floor but also in the audience and that’s important because the people who want to attack our community, they don’t know our community. Our community is very loving, is very supportive and now is the time that we have to stand together now, more than ever.”
Dancing with the Stars streams Mondays at 8pm ET on Disney+.