Actor-television personality RuPaul
said in an interview this week that he grew up with the knowledge
that he would grow up to be famous.
RuPaul joined entertainment anchor
Keltie Knight, actress Becca Tobin and fashion designer Jac Vanek on
their popular LadyGang
podcast.
RuPaul, the host of VH1's RuPaul's
Drag Race, also talked about how his mother gave him the courage
to start doing drag in the 1980s.
“You know, it’s funny…Supermodel
came out on my birthday in ‘92, and by the beginning of ‘93,
things were starting to happen,” RuPaul
explained. “And I was visiting my mother in San Diego at the
time, and she was literally on her death bed at the time, and I knew
that this Kurt Loder MTV report was going to come on about me. And we
were sitting up in bed, waiting for it to come on, and it finally
came on. She looked at me, I looked at her, and she said, ‘N-word,
you are crazy.’ [laughs] And it was funny because, before I was
born, when she was pregnant with me, she saw a psychic – runs in
the family – who said, ‘Well, it’s going to be a boy and he’s
going to be famous.’ So, I grew up with that knowledge, and I went
into show business, and I did all the things. So that moment, when we
both looked at each other and she said that to me, we both knew that
the prophecy had come true.”
(Related: RuPaul
reveals he married boyfriend Georges LeBar in January.)
“The courage part of it – honestly,
I didn’t have a choice. You know, I was either going to live or
die, and that’s really the bottom line,” RuPaul said about his
career. “My mother was really, really Punk Rock. She was an
anti-establishment type of gal, and she was someone who would always
question authority. Actually, I saw a psychic years ago – over
twenty years ago – who told me my mother was world-weary. And talk
about the darkness. She had the darkness. And she wanted to – she
knew that I was a sweet, sensitive soul like herself, and she wanted
to protect me. She didn’t know how to protect me, but she did
bestow upon me that idea of doing your thing. You know, she’s
famous for saying, ‘Unless they paying your bills, pay them bitches
no mind.’”