Heading into the 10th episode of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 11, Kennedy Davenport had sailed through to the semifinals while Sam Star and Jasmine Kennedie were locked in a tie for the second spot. Unlike in her decision to eliminate a tied Morgan McMichaels in Bracket 1, RuPaul Charles chose to send both Sam and Jasmine through. In total, seven queens merged to the semis with an eighth (Morgan, Salina EsTitties, or Joey Jay) to be chosen from the hopper as the lucky “Comeback Queen.”
Kennedy, Sam, Jasmine, and the comeback queen are joined by A’keria C. Davenport, Dawn, Crystal Methyd, and Silky Nutmeg Ganache in the first challenge of the semis where they compete in a “Tell Me Something Good” Story Hour. Serving as guest judge for the challenge alongside series stars RuPaul, Michelle Visage, and Carson Kressley was comedian Evan Mulrooney.
Read on for our recap of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars Season 11, Episode 10, titled “Tell Me Something Good,” which began streaming Friday, July 3 at 12 a.m. PT on Paramount+.
“No matter how many times you go to church, you will never be able to pray this gay away.” — Joey Jay
At the top of the episode, the top queens made their Main Stage return and quickly learned that the winner of the wild card lottery was Joey. Going forward, Ru explained that their previous points were wiped and that they’d compete to become a single top all star of the week and avoid falling into the bottom two who will have to lip sync for their lives. Instead of Ru and the judges deciding the bottom two, the other queens would rank each other in the Rate-A-Queen MVQ Edition to determine the vulnerable sisters.
For their first challenge in the semis, Ru asked that they “tell an entertainting story that offers a life lesson to your younger self” live on stage to the judges in a “Tell Me Something Good” Story Hour. To prepare for the presentation, Ru invited them to a storytelling workshop with him and guest judge Evan.
In the Werk Room together as a group for the first time, the queens sized up their competition and assessed all of the existing relationships among them. Notably, Silky and A’keria were good friends for many years but recently had a falling out that A’keria said has gotten to the point where she can’t even acknowledge her presence currently. Silky also has a connection to Jasmine and Crystal through touring together and Kennedy has family ties to A’keria through the Davenport lineage. Jasmine also developed a connection to Kennedy, Joey and Sam during their time together in Bracket 3, complicating how they’d play the alliance game in this new stage of the competition.
“I rate queens every day. Honey, I look at them and go, trash, horrible.” — Jasmine Kennedie
At the storytelling workshop table read, each of the queens provided insight into how they tell stories so that Ru and Evan could return some advice on how to tighten up their delivery. Jasmine and Dawn proved their comfort at exaggerating lies with a quick quip in a way that can make Ru giggle while Silky was concerned with her long-windedness. Evan advised her to not “embellish things that don’t matter,” narrowing the focus to only story points that add to the bigger picture. Ru devised a game to have them each say their first thoughts about each other in order to encourage all of them to understand the things about themselves that they can poke fun at in order to draw their audience in.
With Rate-A-Queen in mind, the girls were already concerned with where the advantages laid in the group before they even took the stage to perform. Silky was convinced that she had an automatic vote to the bottom from A’keria because of their past. She explained that A’keria had taken to social media to comment on Silky’s weight-loss journey and general character despite their alleged friendship. A’keria was less worried about Silky and instead more concerned that if she showed any “shady business” that wasn’t fair then it would put her in the hot seat for the rest of the girls to come for her next. Not unlike her feelings during Bracket 3, Kennedy understood that her legendary status on the series that she’s a threat that the girls will be looking to take down a peg no matter what; Dawn felt similarly knowing how well she did in Bracket 1 and that she could also be seen as a threat.
“Now I know I want to be built like a stallion, but not that bad, baby.” — A’keria C. Davenport
Following their storytelling performances and runway presentations in the “Red Carpet Realness” category, the judges named Crystal as the top queen of the week. Ru called her performance the “perfect mixture of melancholy and ridiculousness” and Evan thought she was very polished. For the critiques of the others, Dawn took a hit for wandering through the story while also needing more embellishment, Silky earned praise for scaling back a known knack for being long-winded, the “big takeaway” of Kennedy’s story was missed because it wasn’t concise, A’keria got points for having many turns through the story, Joey’s writing was called “top notch” and found brilliance with the sound board, Sam needed more detail than was offered, and Jasmine impressed the judges with the theatricality of her stage performance.
The judges’ praise and critiques, as well as obvious strategic moves, played into the Rate-A-Queen decisions made by the girls themselves where Kennedy and A’keria fell to the bottom. As such, the Davenport family faced off in the Lip Sync for Your Life to “Nobody’s Supposed to Be Here” by Deborah Cox where although they both tore the house fully down with large and dramatic interpretations of the dance mix, A’keria was the one to save herself from elimination.
