Drag Race All Stars 10 was Ginger Minj's shot to 'take my life back'

Ginger describes Acid Betty as a queen with a "crusty, crotchety outer exterior" who is also "the sweetest little marshmallow inside."

"Most of my favorite old-school drag queens are that way," she points out. "They have that rough and gruff exterior because that's the environment that we were raised in. You had to be rough, and tough, to get your place in the drag community. But on the inside, they're giving and kind and nurturing and sweet."

Ginger believes that young Drag Race fans still struggle to understand the realities of being a drag artist before Ru's drag queendom took over the world.

"I first started drag at this little gay bar in Leesburg, Florida, which is where I'm from," she explains. "We had to park in a ditch across the street, and run across the highway, while all the rednecks set up there with bottles and rocks and bricks to throw at us, screaming 'f*ggot,' as we ran to the club to make $25 and get two drink tickets."

"We didn't do it for the fame or the money. We did it for the love of the art and the love of our community. We all had to have a rough outer shell — but the ones who stuck around the longest are the ones who had a heart of gold," she recalls.

As we flash back to different times, it stands out that Ginger was 29 — on the verge of 30 — while competing in season 7. Going into All Stars 10, Ginger was 39 — about to enter her 40s.

During her first guest judge stint on Drag Race season 7, Ariana Grande was around 21 years old. A decade later, Grande has shown up to All Stars 10 as a 31-year-old pop star and Academy Award-nominated actress promoting the Wicked: For Good sequel to her 2024 blockbuster musical film Wicked costarring alongside Cynthia Erivo.

"Ariana and I, season 7 was both of our first season on Drag Race. That's where I got to meet her for the first time," Ginger recalls. "And because I got to meet her 10 years ago, I've felt like a proud sister during her career — watching her reach the level that she's reached now. It was exhilarating to be able to kind of flip that around, and let her see how far I've come since we first met."

Ginger admits that her 10-year-old connection with Grande did add some extra pressure to her performance in the maxi challenge (and subsequent lip sync). Furthermore, she really wanted to "nail it" not only for Grande, but also for Erivo.

"Cynthia has been such a supportive fan of mine, especially on the internet," Ginger says. "And as a lifelong fan of The Wizard of Oz, and musical theater, and Wicked, there was just so much [pressure]. I was like, 'If you don't nail this one thing, just throw the whole season away,'" she laughs.

Ginger also highlights that she hads "never [done] a serious lip sync on RuPaul's Drag Race," which is kind of a shocking — but accurate — recollection. In season 7, Ginger lip synced to "I Think We're Alone Now" by Tiffany (episode 8) and "Show Me Love" by Robin S. (episode 10). Her next two lip syncs were on All Stars 6: "Phone" by Lizzo (episode 5) and "Sugar Walls" by Sheena Easton (episode 8).

Those past lip syncs had "always been in my campy wheelhouse, which is something that I excel at," Ginger notes, "but it was exhilarating to do something that really let me use my dramatic musical theater chops that I hadn't shown on Drag Race before."

Ginger and Daya lip synced to "Defying Gravity" from the original Broadway cast recording of the Wicked musical — in this case, sung by Idina Menzel as Elphaba and Kristin Chenoweth as Glinda. Nonetheless, Grande was in tears by the end of the lip sync, and Ginger was deemed the winner of the lip sync.

I tell Ginger, jokingly, that she had basically turned All Stars into a sports tournament already — before the official "Tournament of All Stars" format was even introduced. Just like the Summer Olympic Games and the FIFA World Cup, Ginger's All Stars stints were all four seasons apart: All Stars 2, All Stars 6, and All Stars 10.

This also means that Ginger literally experienced the three most notable formats in All Stars herstory: the lipstick/legacy format introduced on All Stars 2, the Ru-mocracy/Lip Sync Assassin format of All Stars 6, and the brand-new Tournament of All Stars bracket system of All Stars 10.

"This is probably my favorite of all of the games that I've played on the show," Ginger declares. "And, to be honest with you, over the years, I have been asked to come back for different projects… But I never wanted to be redundant. I didn't want to play the same game twice. But every time that there was a new exciting concept, I said yes, and I came back."

She continues, "This [Tournament format] reminds me so much of drag pageantry, which is where I first made my name. You've got the three brackets, which are like the preliminary pageants. And then you've got the semi-finals going into the final lip sync, which is the big national pageant."

As someone with plenty of experience competing through different pageant systems, Ginger remarks that it's "really fun to see Drag Race catching up with the real, outside-of-television drag world, throwing it back to OG drag pageant rules."

Ginger also acknowledges the other casting wildcard of the season, Jorgeous, who had just competed on All Stars 9 last year and was brought right back for All Stars 10. "I hope that Jorgeous and I aren't the only ones that get to do this," Ginger says. "I hope that there are tons of girls that come back and keep trying."

"Just because you get older, it doesn't mean you lose your dreams, right?" she considers. "And that's what drag pageantry is all about. You go back every year until you win."

RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 10 drops new episodes every Friday on Paramount+.