Aja: The Queen on the Scene of “Drag Race All Stars 3”

RuPaul’s fanbase will forever love Aja for the fearless and fierce death drop she executed flawlessly earlier this season. But there’s more.

(*SPOILER ALERT*) As everyone knows, RuPaul’s Drag Race — All Stars or not — is hand-to-hand combat fought in wigs and heels, and this week the axe fell on Aja.

Many thought that her kamikaze leap to immortality would keep her on the show closer to the finale. But, as she explained earlier to the press, the whole idea came to her in a flashing moment of inspiration — meaning that she saw it online.

“It was really funny,” she told a reporter for Them, “because we had YouTube in our hotel rooms, and the morning of, I was watching videos of Leiomy Mizrahi, who’s a huge legend in the ballroom scene. I was gathering some inspiration for the talent show and I came across a video of her jumping off a table into a dip. When I got to the studio, I was like, “Hey, can I get a five-foot platform?” [The producers] were looking at me like, what are you going to do with a platform, so I was like, okay, I’ll show you. I was actually supposed to wear little mint green ankle boots that went with my outfit, but during the rehearsal, I actually hurt my knee and it bled through my outfit. I had to wear thigh-high boots to cover that blood. It was extreme and crazy, but I was like, you know what, I really just need a wow factor to boost my performance above and beyond.
It was very gratifying because everyone just kind of expected me to fail.”

Aja is, of course, the stage name of Brooklyn resident Jay Rivera, who competed on the ninth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

The inspiration for her drag name? That name, she attests, comes from a seldom seen (in America, anyway) Bollywood movie from 182 called Disco Dancer — which in turn features a tune from the soundtrack called “Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja.” She found the sound appealing, and Aja Rivera was off to the (drag) races soon thereafter.

A few weeks back, she offer a few tips to aspiring queens. What happens the first day of Drag School 101?

Don’t delay! The “Aja at Out on the Mountain” contest ends on September 3, 2018!