‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Gets its First Main Stage Makeover in 16 Seasons

Stepping into the world of RuPaul’s Drag Race is anything but ordinary, so imagine having to design that world from the ground up.

Though production designer Jen Chu didn’t draft the look of Drag Race from its dawn in 2009, she did have the tall order of giving the show’s set a much-needed revamp after 16 seasons of the same iconic main stage. And, yes, “iconic” is the word to describe the famed set of the MTV reality competition, defined by that main stage where hundreds of queens have sashayed, shantayed and lip-synced their way to drag royalty. The show won four consecutive Emmys for outstanding reality competition program between 2018 and 2021, with RuPaul nabbing the win for outstanding host for a reality or competition program eight years in a row, from 2016 to 2023.

With that history of acclaim, Chu tells THR she felt “a good amount of pressure” to get the redesign just right.

“It was a bit of a process getting everybody comfortable with the idea of a new set,” says Chu. “We haven’t had a completely new main stage ever, really. It was a big deal for us. … It never feels like there’s a great time to leave behind something that works.”

While the Drag Race stage hadn’t lost its looks, it lacked functionality. “We had to update our stage out of necessity,” explains Chu. “Some of the equipment became obsolete, and it became clear that it was time to move forward.”

As RuPaul Charles would say, “You ain’t gotta reinvent the wheel” — and that wasn’t what Chu was looking to do with season 17’s main stage. Instead, she “pulled inspiration from within” the show to pay homage to its herstory. “That’s actually all anybody does on Drag Race — pay homage to something,” says Chu. “I was thinking about how to create a set that can feel historic or nostalgic, because this show is always referencing the past. They’re always referencing classic actors, classic films, and I wanted a stage that did not necessarily feel flung into the future. I moved in the direction of creating a stage that has a feeling of nostalgia.”

Chu’s initial inspiration for the redesign was a building, rich in art deco details, on Hollywood Boulevard owned by Drag Race‘s production company, World of Wonder. Chu settled on mimicking the building’s structure, which mirrored Drag Race‘s regal yet campy ambience.

“I started thinking about how art deco buildings resemble costumes — they have a lot of ornate detailing and very symmetrical, interesting metalwork,” Chu explains. “I started looking at [World of Wonder’s] building as a building that wears a crown, and I began to design a stage that was wearing a crown.”

To execute the remodel, Drag Race enlisted the help of FTB Design, a Los Angeles-based scenery shop that Chu says came to the table with a lot of “interesting, clever solutions” to issues that Drag Race was running into with the prior set, including ease of assembly (and disassembly).

“One thing I’ve learned as a designer is putting up a set that’s shot once is easy — putting up a set that needs to come apart and go together again and again actually makes the workload 50 to 100 times more complicated,” she says.

Plus, there were the financial considerations. “I think sometimes people are surprised, but Drag Race is not a super-high-budget show,” Chu admits. “The level of success that they’ve achieved is not equivalent to the budget that they have to pour into design all the time, and I’m happy to work within those types of parameters.”

One standout element of the new set is the inclusion of screen panels at the back of the stage. Chu says that the screens “opened up a lot of possibilities” for main stage creative imagery for herself and Gus Dominguez, Drag Race‘s lighting designer and Chu’s key collaborator in the redesign.

“Once the screens came into play, it became a much more layered conversation,” she explains. “Screen content can be purchased, designed custom, static, it can move. … We’re always trying to figure out how to create a cohesive look but not take too much attention away from the queens.

“For a show like this, it’s a lot of stage look changes and screen activity,” she continues, noting that there can be 12 to 14 contestants onstage at a time. “A big part of my responsibilities last year with season 17 — the first year we had the screens — was keeping track of the different looks. … There was a massive spreadsheet going around just trying to keep track of all the looks.”

Another notable difference was a new, shiny black floor that proved to be a drawback for contestants with an all-black wardrobe, who found themselves blending into the stage.

“Our set often looks like a housing for lighting, so what you’re really seeing is a lot of lighting, screen content and color. You’re not actually seeing the scenery that much,” Chu says, adding that the specific technical parameters and lack of prepared lighting created the issue.

“This year [with season 18], the lighting department has added lights, so if you’re wearing black against the black background, the lights will hit your shoulders from the back, so it’ll create more shape and outline around” the contestants, Chu says.

To quote RuPaul once more, “New friends silver, old friends gold.” It appears Drag Race has found a happy silver-gold medium with its new main stage, boosted by the team of creatives that have always backed the cultural phenomenon that is RuPaul’s Drag Race.

“It was very broadly collaborative because so many people on the show, their careers have been rooted in this show for decades,” says Chu. “I just wanted to make sure that everybody felt at home here.”