The first episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 10’s purple bracket was a Wicked good time thanks to Ginger Minj and Daya Betty’s “Defying Gravity” lip sync.

Minj talked with Blavity’s Shadow and Act about her performance, which felt like all that was missing was Minj flying across the stage.

“Don’t think I wasn’t looking around for a cherry picker somewhere,” she joked. “It’s one of those songs that I’ve loved for so long. It’s such an anthem to so many people for so many reasons. And to be able to do it in front of those two people in particular, it was daunting.”

“Those two people” were none other than Wicked stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, who were special guests in the werkroom as well as guest judges.

“It was also like just this opportunity for me to share with the Drag Race fans that have known me for 10 years now through four seasons that know that at this point I’ve never lost a lip sync, but they’ve always been fun and campy,” Minj continued. “It was a great opportunity to show them a more dramatic, serious side of me as a performer, so I didn’t want to ruin that for me. I didn’t wanna ruin it for Cynthia or Ariana. I didn’t wanna ruin it for the fans, so it was a lot of pressure, but I feel like that really pushed me to really dig very deep and just keep going and just do it.”

Why ‘Wicked’ and ‘The Wizard of Oz’ matter to Ginger Minj

Minj talked more about what it was like to meet Grande and Erivo as well as why Wicked and The Wizard of Oz mean so much to her, divulging a recent dark point in her life.

“Well, I’m a lifelong fan. I mean, I don’t remember a time in my life where I don’t love them [Wicked and The Wizard of Oz]. I’m a musical theater baby. I have been obsessed with Wicked for decades, and to be able to see these people and meet them who have meant so much to me for so long, it was overwhelming, you know?” Minj said.

“To be very candid with you. In the months leading up to getting the call to come back for All Stars 10, I was in and out of the hospital,” Minj continued. “I was laying there in that hospital bed, did not know if I was gonna make it. I felt like maybe this is the end of my journey. And the first time that I forgot about being sick or didn’t think about being sad was when the Wicked Part One trailer dropped. And for those 90 seconds, I was just so happy.”

“To have the opportunity to share that with them, it felt like something that I needed to say, I needed to get it off my chest. But being so neurodivergent as I am, there were so many thoughts that were coming out all at once that I couldn’t think about how I wanted to articulate things,” she added. “It just came out as word vomit. And I’m sure it scared them because it scared me. And I’m looking at them afterwards going, ‘I don’t know how you’re supposed to receive this, but that’s what it is.’ And to see them embrace me and share that pain and share that joy and really just be present in that moment with me, it just gave me like that kick in the ass to keep pushing to be better and better and better.”

Ginger Minj on returning to Drag Race with a new format

Even without the Wicked surprise, Minj said she was “so excited” to come back, especially with the new bracket system in place.

“I love this bracket or this system so much, and you know, you’re a longtime fan. You’ve seen ’em all, every season that I’ve been in plays by a different set of rules. So I’ve never wanted to become redundant. I’ve never wanted to be that same queen that comes back and does the same thing over and over again,” she said. “And when I’ve gotten calls to come back and do other things throughout the years [and] it just didn’t feel like it was the right game at the right time for me. Mm-hmm. And when they approached me about this bracket system, I got really excited because I grew up in the drag pageant world where, A, you go back as many times as you can until you win. And B, in order to compete for the big national pageant, you have to qualify at a preliminary. And that’s what the brackets feel like. They feel like the prelim pageants to the big final national at the semifinals. So I really love this format. I feel like it’s Drag Race catching up to the outside of the television drag world by really throwing back to old pageantry rules.”

Pageant influence and personal growth on All Stars 10

Minj commented on how Drag Race hasn’t always embraced drag’s history with pageants. But with the brackets, it felt like Drag Race was finally drawing inspiration from the pageant scene.

“Well, it’s amazing for me to witness that because that’s not always been the way with Drag Race,” she said. “I feel like pageant girls are very often misunderstood because we are competitive, we are as polished as possible at all times, and some of the Drag Race fans see that as inauthentic. Or they see it as old school. But to me, it’s so exciting to see somebody care so much about the product that they present, that they wanna make it perfect for you. So I think that now that Drag Race is kind of breaking down the barriers and letting people see kind of behind the curtain of the polish and all of that, that people are starting to understand pageantry more. And to be completely honest with you, before Drag Race was a thing, drag pageants, national pageants, were the only way for drag queens to become quote-unquote famous. It was the only way for us to establish ourselves enough to make this a full-time career where we got to travel and share what we do with the world.”

This time, as with Minj’s previous outings on the series, she is happy to show some of the humanity behind the glitz and glam.

“I’m also really excited that, you know, through my four seasons, I have learned that sometimes it’s okay to throw the polish away and let the cracks and the creases show through, because that can be just as exciting in a totally opposite way,” Minj said. “So this season I’ve been able to, I hope, kind of marry the polish with a little bit of the polish remover.”

RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 10 airs each Friday on Paramount+.