Canada's Priyanka to Texas drag queens at SXSW: 'The root of drag has always been protest'

“Breakups make great pop songs,” Priyanka said shortly after donning bespangled, bovine-print chaps and a lofty bouffant backstage on March 17 at Clive Bar. 

With gregarious charm and high-voltage star power, the Queen of the North and winner of Season 1 of "Canada's Drag Race," the northern outlet of RuPaul Charles' global drag franchise, was set to thrill the crowd with a hip-switching, whip-cracking set as the penultimate performer at the Dr. Martens Presents day party, an official South by Southwest Music Festival event. 

Priyanka scored a hit last year after the breakup bop “Come Through,” from 2021 EP “Taste Test,” went viral. The song features Lemon, one of Priyanka’s “Canada's Drag Race” sisters, and it revolves around a shady character who betrayed the wrong queens.  

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During the run of the show, the friends enjoyed a ladies' lunch. “I was like, ‘Lemon, I'm dating this guy now and he's so sweet. Let me show you a photo,’" Priyanka recalled. "I showed her the photo, and she was like, ‘Oh, I was dating that same guy two weeks ago.’”

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Priyanka failed to heed Lemon's warning about the “star-(expletive),” and “long story short, he dumps me the day after I win ‘Canada's Drag Race,’” she said.  

In a glossy takedown video with an elaborate international espionage backstory, the queens had the last laugh. When Lemon dropped a verse about best friendship, “I was like, ‘Oh, this verse is gonna go viral for sure,'” Priyanka said. “Bros before hoes, they say.” 

Priyanka's alter ego, television host Mark Suknanan, used to be the face of YTV — a network the performer describes as “the Nickelodeon of Canada." Now she says she's living a childhood dream. “What I always wanted to be was a pop star. Hello, are you joking?” she said with a laugh. 

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Priyanka is the first Indo-Caribbean winner of any international “Drag Race” franchise and one of only a few artists from the South Asian diaspora whom the show has featured. “I think the cool thing here is that it's nice to see brown people winning,” she said. “I think that's why this feels so iconic," Priyanka added, noting that growing up, the future queen wasn’t really taught to “celebrate brown people.”

At home, Priyanka has received broad support for her work. In 2021, she performed the song “Country Queen” at the Canadian Country Music Awards, which the artist also co-hosted. Within the South Asian community, Priyanka's parents are quick to shut down the few detractors they encounter.

“Other people see that my parents are cool with it. It gives them no choice but to be like, ‘Okay, well, if they're supporting their son, then like, how can we hate on it?’” Priyanka said. 

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As someone who has worked in children’s entertainment and drag, she believes the backlash against drag queens in the Texas Legislature is “smoke and mirrors” to detract from actual convictions of sexual crimes against children among members of the clergy, she said.  

Priyanka characterizes the conservative talking point that drag queens are grooming children as “projection,” because “the churches sometimes do that,” he said. 

“We're just here to celebrate love and light and to make people escape their lives and have a good time,” she said.   

For the Texas drag queens living the struggle, Priyanka has a message: “I think that the root of drag has always been a protest. So don't forget that every time you’re lip-synching your favorite Ariana Grande song and do a split off the bar when you're drunk on three shots of tequila, that is still a protest. Because what we do is a fight and will always be a fight. So keep on fighting the good fight,” she said. 

“Hate never wins, bitch,” she added.