The Canada-based eight-week drag competition series, Call Me Mother, is set to premiere on October 25 and will feature Drag Race royalty from both sides of the pond.
The legendary Peppermint from season nine of RuPaul’s Drag Race will be working alongside her frock destroying season one Drag Race UK sister, Crystal, and the drag icon Barbada De Barbades who is new to the screen of reality television.
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News outlets are comparing the series with The Voice, as the mighty trio will be acting as mentors to a colourful cast of ten drag babies, fighting to adopt the contestants into their drag families. The objective, you may have guessed, is to find the ‘First Child of Drag’.
The contestants will compete alongside the mentors as drag families each week in challenges that will showcase their artistry, skills and talents. The real blow comes at the end of each episode when, in a Sophie’s choice kind of twist, the drag mother of the losing team is forced to eliminate one of her own children.
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“The family component really resonated all the way through,” Peppermint, representing the House of Dulcet, told Entertainment Weekly.
“Our drag houses formed a bond with each other, but they also formed an incredible bond [with] all of the other drag children, even if they were in a different house. It was quite remarkable to see the tears and… well, the tears.”
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And this is no garden variety drag cast, by the way! Drag kings, queens and nonbinary performers will all be headlining this new series, reminding us all of the intersectionality of drag history.
“Among the cast of Canadian drag performers is a chef, a social activist, a Two-Spirit burlesque artist, a theater actress, and a drag king with a penchant for sewing historical menswear, among others,” states Entertainment Weekly, highlighting the show’s promise of lively characters.
“It starts with a little mama-mama-mama rivalry,” says Crystal, the House of Glass representative who describes her drag as ‘glamorous’, ‘sparkling’ and ‘absolutely worthless’, “and then we turn the kids on each other, and it becomes full-on Lord of the Flies.”
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As well as Peppermint, Crystal and Barbada (House of Harmonie), Call Me Mother also welcomes Farra N Hyte (drag mother to Drag Race season 11 finalist and Canada’s Drag Race host Brooke Lynn Hytes) as a judge and choreographer.
Entertainment Tonight Canada personality Dallas Dixon will also play host to the show and will join Farra as co-host of the series’ companion podcast, Mom’s the Word, which will feature elimination interviews and episode recaps.
Call Me Mother is out on October 25 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on OUTtv, OUTtv.com, the OUTtv Apple TV channel, and the OUTtv Amazon Prime Channel.
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