“The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula” has been entertaining (and grossing out) audiences for five seasons on Shudder, but this most recent season represented a breakthrough for the drag stars’ reality competition, which scored two Emmy Award nominations: Outstanding Makeup for a Variety, Nonfiction or Reality Program and Outstanding Hairstyling for a Variety, Nonfiction or Reality Program.
The premise is misleadingly simple: The Boulet Brothers bring their devilish charisma to the judges’ table of a competition to anoint the World’s Next Drag Supermonster. The competitors represent a wide swath of underground drag culture (including drag kings!), with an emphasis on the shocking and the spooky.
There’s the requisite runway show at the end of each episode, but there are also challenges that determine which of the two contestants at the bottom survives to scare another day. Among them in Season 5 were bungee jumping off a bridge in the pitch dark, transferring maggots across a room using one’s mouth (yes, really), and getting tied down to a bed, covered in cheese and forced to withstand rats nibbling away.
In other words, the Boulet Brothers are not fucking around.
The whole series takes its style cues from the Boulets’ signature looks — which are now officially Emmy-nominated since they do their own makeup for every episode. IndieWire spoke to them about Season 5, how their looks have evolved for HD cameras, and if they’ll ever run out of ways to freak us out in the challenges.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.
IndieWire: Five seasons in, what did it mean to score Emmy nominations, particularly for your makeup?
Dracmorda Boulet: It means a lot to us because, you know, we are self-made, and we did not go about getting into the business of TV the traditional way. We made our own show without getting a network or anything because we just felt so confident that it would do well. And so it was very validating to be recognized by the Emmys. I mean, that’s the biggest recognition you could get in the TV world. So it meant a lot.
Swanthula Boulet: Drac and I both are the heads of the makeup department, and we paint our own faces every time we’re on camera, which is kind of unheard of, I think, in the TV space. It’s two to three extra hours before call time. But we think it’s important because we’re judging drag. We are drag and we show up in that in the same way we expect our competitors to show up. So to be nominated personally is so important, gratifying, and exciting because it’s really an acknowledgment, not only of the show but our personal skills as makeup artists.
Coming from a live performance background, was there a learning curve as you started “Dragula”?
Dracmorda Boulet: Yes, you just really can’t cut corners. [Laughs] We wouldn’t really cut corners anyways, but sometimes if you’re doing a live appearance, you could cut a corner if you’re like, You know what, this stage is massive and nobody can see these details. I’m gonna skip this highlight or whatever.’ But on TV, you cannot skip anything. Everything shows up, and it’s very unforgiving.
Have you noticed small or maybe large ways that your makeup has evolved over the run of the show?
Swanthula Boulet: Oh my God. When we look back at the earlier seasons… I’m very proud of our roots, right? I don’t shy away from where we come from, but when I look back, like, girl, I am cringing through half of those.
Dracmorda Boulet: Well, makeup styles change, right? Back when we started, bigger lips were in, whereas now it’s not so much the overdrawn lips and exaggerations. And eyebrows got really massive for a while, and now they’re getting very thin again, so we sort of adjust with the times.
What does doing your own makeup mean for your work days? Are you doing your touch-ups between takes as well?
Dracmorda Boulet: it’s hard because, you know, we’re producers on the show, we’re the host and judges of the show, we direct the show. So there are days out of drag when we’re directing and doing that kind of stuff. And then, unfortunately, we’ll be sitting there doing makeup and people are running in talking to us, like, this camera person called in sick or this competitor is throwing a fit or this is happening. It’s never just, like, you’re calm and relaxed and doing your makeup. You’re always feeling chaos while you’re getting painted. So that makes it even better that people still thought we deserved an award doing our makeup in those circumstances.
Every season, I think I’ll be fine, and then every season, you manage to freak me out all over again. How do you always out-gross yourselves?
Swanthula Boulet: Thank you for that, honestly. Maybe for like a minute in our history, that thought kind of haunted us. But the truth is, Drac and I have an overwhelming abundance of ideas. We have been in a creative brainstorm for, like, 20 years, and we live and breathe and love this world of horror and glamour and drag and camp. So, we have tons of ideas, even for several more seasons. Boxes that we haven’t been able to check, and we desperately want to, so one day we will.
“The Boulet Brothers Dragula” is streaming on Shudder.