Liza Minnelli Makes Rare Public Appearance For RuPaul’s Drag Race Finale

The true star of Friday’s season 17 finale of RuPaul’s Drag Race wasn’t its winning queen or its host, RuPaul Charles. Instead, it was Liza Minnelli who stole the show, taking a seat in a massive, onstage throne for a pre-crowning bit of banter with RuPaul.

Minnelli, the 79-year-old stage and screen icon and daughter of Judy Garland and director Vincente Minnelli, was awarded the show’s third-ever “Giving Us Lifetime Achievement Award.” Previous recipients include Cassandra Peterson (better known, perhaps, as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark) and designer Bob Mackie.

Revealed to the crowd as her 1972 version of “Ring Them Bells” played, a Halston-clad Minnelli reclined on her throne as the audience stood, clapped, and chanted “Liza.” “Look at you!” she said to RuPaul, admiring the host’s tulle-laden look. “I know. It only took six hours,” replied the 64-year-old RuPaul.

“Seven for me,” Liza Minnelli shot back. “I’m older than you.”

RuPaul, a noted appreciator of old Hollywood lore, asked Minnelli about her childhood on the MGM lot. “Everybody would rush to see whatever my mother was doing, and my father, especially, because he was making people do magic,” Minnelli said. “Oh, he was the best.”

The Drag Race host also asked about a 1980s-era newspaper photo of Minnelli “holding a guitar to go record with the Pet Shop Boys … why were you holding a guitar?”

“Because they told me to hold it,” Minnelli responded. “What would you do?” she asked the chuckling crowd. “I’m a director’s daughter!”

Speaking with Variety, Drag Race producer Tom Campbell says that Minnelli’s appearance on the finale came straight from Ru, herself. “She seemed un-gettable, like that’s too much to ask for,” Campbell said, but the competition show lucked out. “Her management were also big fans of Drag Race, and they know what we’ve done, and they know the heart of the show, and they’re invested as viewers.”

(L-R) Lady Gaga and Liza Minnelli speak onstage during the 94th Annual Academy Awards at Dolby Theatre on March 27, 2022 in Hollywood, California.

Neilson Barnard/Getty Images

Friday’s appearance was one of Minnelli’s highest profile appearances since 2022, when she appeared at the Oscars for an onstage bit with Lady Gaga—an appearance that longtime friend and collaborator Michael Feinstein characterized as “sabotage.”

“She only agreed to appear on the Oscars if she would be in the director’s chair, because she’s been having back trouble,” Feinstein said then. “She said, ‘I don’t want people to see me limping out there.’ She said, ‘You know, I want to look good. I don’t want people to worry about me.’” But minutes before her appearance, Feinstein says she was told she’d have to enter in a wheelchair instead.

“She was nervous, and it made her look like she was out of it,” said Feinstein. “Can you imagine being suddenly forced to be seen by millions of people the way you don’t want to be seen? That’s what happened to her.”

By contrast, the Minnelli that I saw Friday night seemed sharp as a tack—and also appeared delighted to appear on stage with RuPaul. “I don’t know what else to say, except, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be me. You made me,” Minnelli said to the room at large.

“Well, you made us, actually,” RuPaul responded, before moving on to the final lip sync battles of the evening between the final four queens, Lexi Love, Onya Nurve, Jewels Sparkles, and Sam Star. And while Cleveland-based Nurve emerged the victor, it’s likely that many of us will remember the finale as Liza’s night, instead.

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