Divina De Campo Isn’t Afraid to Get Political
Words by Christina Dean
The Royal Vauxhall Tavern, stalwart of London’s LGBTQ+ scene, is normally packed with punters dancing under the disco balls, singing along to pop hits and enjoying some of the best queer acts in the country at nights like Push the Button, BeefMince, Cheer Up and Sunday Cabaret.
On a particularly sunny spring morning, the venue is empty, except for us and Divina de Campo, dragging up in a red Freak Couture MCR outfit that wouldn’t look out of place in Flash Gordon. It’s just one getup from an extensive drag wardrobe that currently occupies “two six foot rails out in Gran Canaria” and “a tall rail and a short rail that are about eight foot long in my room, and then shelving all above which is just absolutely crammed full of stuff”.
Divina is bringing her new one-woman show I Do Think to the RVT in May as part of a UK tour, where she’ll be offering her take on life, “all the things that I’ve learned over the last forty years of flying around on this rock in the middle of space in this weird meat sack that I’m in”. As well as promising a lot of fun, there’s “maybe a little bit of reading of some fellow queens. There might be, I’m not saying there is, but don’t come thinking I’m going to be nice about everyone!”
She’ll have plenty of material to draw on as Divina’s packed a lot into her drag career. There’s been TV appearances on The Voice and All Together Now; theatre performances, in Chicago, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and The Spongebob Musical; a theatre podcast; and an album with Frock Destroyers. She’s most famous for her appearance on the first season of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK, the British spin-off of what is undoubtedly the most high-profile drag show in the world.
Reality TV can be famously unforgiving but Divina is nothing but positive about her experience on Drag Race. “I was happy with everything, of how I came across, everything like that. It was very honest. What you saw of us on the show for season one was definitely who we were in the room at that time. The thing that has been so incredible for me is, six years after and people are still interested and still coming, and it’s opened loads and loads of doors for me. I’ve been able to do things which were dreams for me when I was kid,” she says. “I get to run around the country being a clown and making people laugh.”
Fans of the show will be well-versed in the format but for Drag Race virgins, it’s like a drag boot camp, where queens compete against each other to win the crown and be named the country’s next drag superstar. The weekly challenges cover all facets of drag, from acting and singing to make-up and fashion design, and the competition can be intense – the design challenges are notorious for queens getting unstuck, especially for those who don’t possess a lot of sewing skills.
“I’m just a drag queen trotting around on a pair of heels saying we need a bit more equality in the country”
“I’ve done so much TV, I’ve done so much performance, I’ve done so many different shows and things like that before and Drag Race was just unlike anything I’d experienced,” admits Divina. And for the viewers who sit at home watching, bemoaning when a queen comes on and doesn’t know how to sew, she’s got one thing to say, “have you tried being a drag queen in the first instance? It’s busy! It’s busy! You’re running from one gig to another gig, when are you supposed to learn to sew when you’re doing that? If you don’t already have those skills it takes time to learn to develop that stuff. So I think people could just check themselves a little bit before they start slagging the girls off online. It’s alright for me to do it, that’s fine, I’ve already been there and done it, what did you do?”
As well as showcasing her incredible vocal range (including that whistle tone), her acting chops and her design skills (that Vivienne Westwood/David Bowie-inspired trouser suit made out of laundry bags in the ‘Posh on a Penny’ challenge was a particular highlight), the show also gave her a platform to speak on political issues. In one episode she movingly recounted her experience of living though Section 28 – a law passed by Thatcher’s government that prohibited local authorities from promoting homosexuality, which had a particular impact in schools, with teachers not allowed to discuss LGBTQ+ issues or challenge homophobia.
“School was hard. I got a lot of flack from pretty much everybody in the school. Growing up for everybody was hard but then you add on being gay and it was just a whole other level, particularly for the time that I grew up in. Every single bit of those gremlins in my head are from those kids in the playground. Pushing and shoving and calling you a ‘fag’ and throwing their drinks on you. Because of Section 28, it meant that a lot of teachers felt like they couldn’t step in,” said Divina in the workroom. She then went on to recount an incident she had when working as a teacher, where a girl used homophobic slurs against her and the response from everyone else was outrage. “To say that kids are different now is to completely underestimate where we are. It made me feel like all those kids who are like me had hope, like they weren’t going to have the same struggle, it wasn’t going to be the same for them.”
That was in 2019, so does she feel the same way six years on? “There’s been a period of time where things were easier for LGBTQ+ kids and now we’re having a real slide back. The rise of online influencers like Andrew Tate have really toxified the environment for lots of kids in school again.” The same goes for Dan Wootton, former journalist for The Sun and GB News. “He’s one of those people who has a massive platform and has no thought or care with what he does with it. It’s all about clickbaiting, you know,” explains Divina. He wrote an article about Divina that sent a slew of trolls her way. She’s put a quote from him, “woke trash”, on her tour poster. “I’m just a drag queen trotting around on a pair of heels saying we need a bit more equality in the country, financial and social, thanks babe,” she laughs.
She’s not impressed with Wes Streeting either, who has used the Cass Review (a study that looked into gender identity services for children and young people in the UK) to implement a puberty blocker ban for under-18s experiencing gender dysphoria.
“I get it, somebody who is living their life in a completely different way to you and you don’t understand that, it can be scary. I totally understand that, I do. But that doesn’t mean you have the right to stop them living their life the way that they are and the way that makes them happiest. This is all that trans people want, to be able to live their lives authentically as themselves and gender-affirming care does that, it helps people to live much happier lives,” she states. “The rate of regret for gender-affirming surgery is less than 1%, knee surgery is a much higher percentage. But nobody is talking about banning knee surgery.”
Go on Divina’s socials and you’ll see plenty of political talk amongst the podcast clips, lip syncs and behind-the-scenes action. “As a queer person, your life is inherently political in a patriarchal society. So you can pretend that it’s not and you don’t need to do anything and that’s all fine but the reality is, who’s more likely to get beaten up in the street, a queer man or a straight man? Well the queer man is, aren’t they? Because they are seen as a target by those people who think that we shouldn’t exist,” she explains. “And unfortunately the way that our politicians are talking about our community and the people within it, is that we’re much more of a target. And the problem with all of that is that it’s all again just fuelled by inequality, so it all boils down to this question of inequality.”
“There’s been a period of time where things were easier for LGBTQ+ kids and now we’re having a real slide back”
And it’s not just affecting people in the community, it’s impacting the places that are a part of it too. The RVT has managed to endure but many other LGBTQ+ venues in the capital are struggling, with more than half having closed between 2006 and 2022. “It’s about the economics. It’s about inequality.” states Divina. “Because all the people at the bottom are just fighting, fighting, fighting to tread water, which means you can’t go out, you don’t have the money to do it.” A shift in behaviour from people going out on Friday and Saturday every week to cutting down to once or twice a month means venues are being starved of revenue.
What can we do about it? “We need to tear down the system, tear it all down!” she laughs. “No really, we need a wealth tax, we need a redistribution, we need people to be paid proper wages.” And we need our arts and cultural industry to be properly supported, because, as she rightly states, for every pound that gets invested into the arts, several times that amount is generated in the wider economy, “and yet every time we get to it, we’ve got to make hard choices and that means the dance programme and the music programme and the art programme and the drama programme all get cut, when actually those are the things that make life worth living.”
When it comes to singing, dancing and performing, Divina’s certainly doing her bit to keep the nation entertained. She is one booked and busy queen; she had to turn down a bunch of projects for the summer because she’s doing The Diana Mixtape in London and Manchester in the summer, with Courtney Act, Rosé, Baby and Kitty Scott-Claus, and she’s joining Viola, Mimi Chanel, Le Fil and Shania Pain on a national tour of Dragged to the Musicals in September and October. But first, it’s her turn to dazzle the crowds at the RVT, “the birthplace of so many massive, massive drag queens”, which is exactly where she belongs.
Divina De Campo is performing her one-woman show I Do Think at the Royal Vauxhall Tavern on Weds 7th May and you can get tickets here.