Six former RuPaul's Drag Race contestants are coming together to produce a new show, set to premiere in New York City next month.
Titled 'Nubia', the production is a celebration of "black excellence" in the drag community and features Peppermint, Bob the Drag Queen, Shea Coulee, The Vixen, Monique Heart, and season 1 winner BeBe Zahara Benet.
“This all-new show is a celebration of opulence, regality, and pure, unadulterated Black excellence,” a description for the show reads.
It continues: “Featuring five of the most celebrated Queens in drag herstory, NUBIA is a live out loud, show-stopping extravaganza thrown directly in the face of racial division and political divisiveness.”
In another teaser for the show, Bob the Drag Queen said that black drag queens face additional challenges in getting recognition for their accomplishments.
“Black queens, no matter how popular you are or how well you did in the show, sometimes you don’t receive the same love or the same adulation that white queens get,”
Peppermint, one of Drag Race's first trans contestants, added: “Black queens matter because now that we are in a time where people are starting to recognize drag as more than something frivolous."
She explained: “As an industry, as an economy, as an enterprise it’s time for people to realiae the value that these black queens - that the Nubian queens - bring and can contribute to the art of drag. There’s a lot of people that are just unaware. So now it’s time to learn and we’re your teachers.”
Black Drag Race queens have been vocal in the past about the racism they face within the show's community of fans.
"There has been a shift that began happening since about season seven of Drag Race," fan-favourite Latrice Royale told Buzzfeed last year. "The new generation has gotten way more vocal and hateful. It's disheartening to watch something which once was a celebration, turn into girls getting death threats."
"I have been called my share of hateful racial slurs and fat this and fat that," the queen added.
"Which is funny to me because I'm 47 years old and have been fat and black all my life, so am I supposed to cry? I know what I look like! Large and in charge, CHUNKY YET FUNKY!"
