For 3 NC drag queens, Chappell Roan’s sold-out show gave them a spotlight

When Kiara Mel began a corporate job earlier this year, she requested time off for June 12, just in case.

It paid off.

On Wednesday, as she does most weekends, Mel traded her black leather shoes for sequined heels to perform as a drag queen.

But, this time, she was on a huge stage as one of three North Carolina queens chosen to open for pop singer-songwriter Chappell Roan at her concert in Raleigh.

Mel applied for the gig in April after a friend sent her the link to Roan’s social media post asking local drag queens to open for her summer tour. She didn’t hear back for months.

Then, last week, she received an email. She’d been selected.

“I assumed I didn’t get it,” Mel said.

But it turned out that Mel, Charlotte-based drag queen Erica Chanel and Raleigh-based queen Honey Zahra all got the gig.

After her initial shock, Mel realized that she had one week to make her outfit for the show. She sews most of her drag costumes and often sources fabric from Los Angeles. But this time, she ordered whatever would arrive before the show date.

Mel worked on her costume, glittering with sequins and in compliance with Roan’s “pink pony club” show theme, when she could after work. It took about eight hours in total.

“Everything she’s wearing, she made herself,” Chanel told the crowd on Wednesday night before Mel took the stage.

Cheers and claps erupted from Red Hat Amphitheater, which was transformed into a sea of pink cowboy hats set against a cotton candy sunset.

Roan’s impact on the local LGBTQ+ community

Roan, the 26-year-old pop star with more than 20 million monthly listeners on Spotify, highlights the local queer community in each of her tour stops by featuring drag queens based in the area.

“For her to give drag queens these opportunities to open for her when people are trying to ban us and things like that, it’s such a huge honor and inspiration that I get to be chosen to be one of those queens,” Chanel said.

North Carolina Republicans introduced a bill last year that would have banned drag performances in public places or in the presence of a minor, but it didn’t get far. But several other pieces of legislation aimed at the queer community passed. Over the past year, state lawmakers banned gender-affirming care for minors, barred transgender women from women’s school sports and passed restrictions on LGBTQ+ elementary school curricula.

On Wednesday, Roan asked the crowd to give back to the local queer community by tipping the opening drag queens.

“They’re your girls,” she said. “Isn’t that amazing?”

‘Midwest Princess’ Chappell Roan brings her tour to North Carolina

Zahra has done drag part-time for two years, and Mel celebrated her fifth year on Saturday. Chanel got into drag nearly a decade ago and has been doing it full-time for four years.

The Raleigh show was Chanel’s second time opening for Roan. She shared the stage with the singer in Charlotte last October.

“When I first opened up for her, it was a very small crowd,” Chanel said. “It was maybe 600 people, and now she’s doing these huge amphitheaters with 6,000 people [in] sold-out shows.”

Shannon Rigsbee, a Raleigh resident who attended the concert on Wednesday, said Roan bringing queens onstage is a great reminder that drag needs to be supported.

“To see such a large artist really prioritizing that work and making sure local drag artists are a big part of her work, it’s really valuable to me as a listener,” she said. “It feels like she really stands behind her word.”

The weight of a skyrocketing career

Wednesday’s crowd at Red Hat in downtown Raleigh included many people watching Roan’s concert from several levels of nearby parking garages. In the middle of the show, she pointed them out.

“I see those people on the parking garage up there with the flashlights on,” she said between songs.

Later in the evening, Roan became emotional about her rapid climb to stardom over the past few months. She paused the show to tell the crowd, “I just feel a little off today.”

“My career is going really fast and it’s really hard to keep up,” she said. “I’m just being honest, I’m having a hard time today. I’m not trying to give you a lesser show, it’s just there is a lot on my mind. Thank you for understanding. This is all I’ve ever wanted.

“It’s just heavy sometimes.”

The moment came a few days after she performed at the Governors Ball Music Festival in New York City dressed as the Statue of Liberty. During that performance, Roan told the audience she rejected an offer from the White House to perform for Pride Month.

“We want liberty, justice and freedom for all. When you do that, that’s when I’ll come,” she said.

‘Someone who looks like me’

Zahra, who works full-time at a local charter school, received their selection email on Friday.

The three North Carolina drag queens made a group chat as soon as they learned the news. They knew each other prior to the show and looked to each other for support.

Mel said Chanel stays with her when she comes to Raleigh for gigs.

“She’s my sister but she’s also a role model for me,” Mel said of Chanel. “To be a Black drag queen in the South is not easy.”

Chanel said her biggest goal as a Black drag queen is to uplift her community.

When she began performing in drag, she went to shows with predominantly white casts.

“It’s not very often that you see drag queens who are Black hosting the shows, producing the shows, on the fliers and doing everything,” she said. “When I started drag, I was like, ‘I want to see someone who looks like me doing what I see everybody else doing.’”

Mel was teased and bullied for being plus-sized and feminine while growing up in Robeson County. Then, she realized the things she was put down for as a child were celebrated in drag.

“I do drag to be something I didn’t have when I was younger, which is a big, brown, queer presence that was presented in a positive beautiful sexy light,” said Mel, who was Miss Gay North Carolina America in 2022.

With 10 siblings, Zahra grew up in “survivor mode” and hopes to inspire other Latino boys, saying, “If I can do it, and I came from a harsh background, they can also do it.”

Zahra was raised by a single mother in Durham and watched her do her makeup. Now, Zahra’s sister asks them for makeup tips.

Chanel remembers her mother saying, “Just please don’t dress up like a woman” when she came out as gay in high school.

So she kept drag a secret. When her mother eventually found out she was a drag queen, she wasn’t happy.

But then, things shifted.

“If you’re gonna do it, make sure you do it right,” Chanel remembers her mother saying. And now, she’s Chanel’s No. 1 fan.

“My mom and I are super close,” Chanel said. “I love her. She’s like my best friend, and I think [her] love for me was much stronger than not accepting me. She told me that she never wanted to lose me because of who I wanted to be.”

On Wednesday, the crowd hailed the queens with raucous cheers, many waving Pride flags and wearing rainbow face paint.

But they ended the opening act with a moment of silence for the nearly 50 people killed in the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida. Wednesday, the night of Roan’s concert, fell on the massacre’s eighth anniversary.