Interview With Down Under’s Elektra Shock
Elektra Shock talks about why Scarlet Adams isn’t on her friends list, feeling picked on by the other queens… and whether or not she ended up getting Raven’s number
The 28-year-old drag queen from Auckland who landed herself in the bottom two in the very first episode of DRDU was considered an early boot by her fellow queens and fans alike. Underestimated and determined, Elektra Shock(ed) and electrified the competition, hitting both highs and lows. With nothing but a dream and her shake-and-go wigs, she made it one episode shy of the finale.
Elektra – who hails from Auckland – stirred up some online controversy during episode one, when she donned a Korowai for her hometown runway look. The cloak garment woven with feathers is immersed in history, tradition and cultural significance. Elektra explains, “I think the problem was that the Korowai and the Kākahu was given to me by my drag mother (Trinity Ice), who is Ngāti Kahungunu. She put that on me as a gift, an honour and a blessing: to share her story and our story with the world. Everything was above board and approved. We talked with local Iwi and we really wanted to make sure that we were paying respect to our land, paying respect to our people and bringing those stories with us onto this platform,” further stating, “without that context on the show, people 100% were right to be like, ‘excuse me, what’s the backstory here?’”
Often at the receiving end of her fellow contestant’s shade, Elektra expresses she understood the pressure on everyone “to bring the shade” that the audience have come to expect from Drag Race but does cite that she often felt ambushed by several of the other queens. Admitting she cried in her hotel room and often questioned her place in the competition, Elektra says, “what was tough was that I felt like I was always the one. Like am I the only one not worthy of being here? Am I the only one with faults? If I was not a threat to everybody, why do they need to keep going? It felt like everyone was using me to make themselves feel a bit better.”
“All the shade and all those little critiques, they really got to me.”
With the pressure to ~Make Good TV~ and the unrelenting shade being thrown at her, the underdog declares that by week three, she’d reached a breaking point which triggered a realisation, “Ru saw something [in me]. It wasn’t the outfits,” she jokes, “but maybe it was just me! So, I just started to really be myself, I stopped trying to be whatever it is I thought ‘RuPaul Drag Race’ needed me to be. I just thought, ‘you know what? Nah fuck it, be yourself!’” With newfound confidence, Elektra says, “I started defending myself and that’s when I really started to find my stride in the competition.”
As one of two dancing queens of the season, Elektra and Scarlet Adams often found themselves pitted against each other. Often trading jabs in the werkroom and confessionals, Elektra professes that she and Scarlet Did Not Get Along, confessing, “I just think she was mean to me. To be quite honest, even before the stuff about her past came out [i.e. the black face, the cultural appropriation, etc.], she was rubbing me the wrong way. She was quite brash. The words she chose to use when she was being shady were quite intense, and I didn’t think valid. I just thought that she was finding her place in the competition by putting me down.”
When Scarlet’s backstory was eventually revealed, Elektra says, “that didn’t help my opinion of her,” Expanding, “I think she will continue to grow and continue to work. I hope and I wish her the best for that journey, and I hope that the people around her continue to support her, hold her accountable and continue to help her be on the right path.”
Elektra and Scarlet have not mended fences since filming concluded. The queen says, “not saying that I never will reconnect with her, but I just think she’s got work to do, in my opinion. But right now, she’s not on the friends list.”
During this episode, Ru asked the queens the notoriously messy question, “who do you think should go home tonight?” and all the queens agreed that Elektra should be the one to be eliminated. Often feeling ostracised from the others, Elektra says she, “struggled to make connections,” adding, “Art and Scarlet – we weren’t friends, and we weren’t getting along.” So when Ru posed the question, she says she expected it.
Also during the episode, Mama Ru did her weekly werkroom walkthrough with special guest and RPDR alum Raven. Elektricity seemed to be in the air, with the two sharing ‘f**k me’ eyes and kiss on the hand. Elektra says she didn’t get Ravens number, but, “she’s more than welcome to slide into my DM anytime she wants.”
Elektra walks away with a new fanbase and the confidence she thought she’d lost before entering the competition, saying, “drag race was able to pull out of James that confidence and believe it within myself.”
Faltering just short of the finish line, Elektra admits she would have loved to make the finale. She acknowledges that she wasn’t ready to make her exit, but in the last moments of the lip-sync, while embracing her friend Kita, she tells, “it felt like the right decision.”
