Courtney Act Talks Rise to Fame and Spills ‘Drag Race’ Tea in New Memoir

Long before Shane Jenek rose to global fame as drag icon Courtney Act and landed a spot in the top three of RuPaul’s Drag Race Season Six, there was a story of searching for and finding oneself.

In her brand-new memoir Caught in the Act, the superstar writes about growing up in the 80s and 90s and how her adolescent angst was pitted against the love of her traditionally wholesome parents. She shares tales of the thrill in discovering drag and digs into the seedier side of her adventures, including dabbling in meth and engaging in multiple sexual encounters with a broad spectrum of sexualities and genders.

Of course, there’s a lot of Drag Race tea as well—like her shaky introduction to Adore Delano and the time RuPaul blocked her on Twitter.

Act might dazzle and titillate, but at the same time, her honest reflections help readers reexamine and appreciate wrong choices they may have made that ironically helped steer them toward the right path on their own life’s journey.   

She took some time to discuss Caught in the Act with OFM.

Congrats on the U.S. launch of your memoir, Caught in the Act! How was it received when it was released in Australia last year?

It’s been received very well by audiences! It became a best-seller, and it’s gotten great reviews and responses from people. It’s been amazing to have people read the book and love it because this is a pretty vulnerable thing, writing about your life and wondering if anybody will care or read it. When they do and connect with it in personal ways, it’s very, very meaningful.

What initially inspired you to write a memoir?

I always loved reading memoirs when I was younger, and I started to discover queer memoirs after I turned 18. Reading about Jenny Boylan, Kate Bornstein, and Chaz Bono, as well as non-queer memoirs like Fran Drescher’s, Boy George’s, Geri Halliwell’s, I just loved them all. Although my sort of queer journey isn’t necessarily like a current one because it happened in the early 2000s, I think so much has changed since then.

I thought there might be things that I had learned through my experiences that other people might benefit from. Other people of similar age, or people who are younger or older. I just wanted to capture that era, not only of my life, but of the Sydney drag scene and my experience on Drag Race, which I think is also such a unique point in history as well.

Ultimately, what do you hope readers take away from the book?

If my experience doesn’t reflect theirs in a sort of direct way, I hope that they at least see the humanity in someone else’s experience and understand a different experience a little bit better. If my experience does reflect theirs, maybe it’ll bring some solidarity or insight to that experience. Also, there’s lots of fun stories. There’s lots of sex stories, very queer stories, and I just hope that they enjoy those and feel sort of seen by them.

Is there anything you learned about yourself throughout the writing process?

Oh, God. There’s so much I learned about myself! When you go and explore your life so deeply as to write about it descriptively in a book, you really tap into those memories in a way that you probably never have before. I’ve told lots of stories before about my coming out and first kiss, but they were bullet points. The highlights.

When you go in and try to describe all the fine details, like the cigarette-punctured couch in the corner of the Stonewall Hotel by the DJ booth where you had your first kiss, you start to remember so many other things. When you’re actually trying to remember details, you immerse much deeper in the feeling of the time, and that can be really cathartic.

You go back and view it with the lens of your adult brain rather than an 18-year-old brain at the time. You get to see it with a lot more life experience, and when you do that, you get to repackage it in a way that is, for me at least, a lot more helpful to feeling settled and feeling healed.

Caught in the Act covers your global rise to fame, your childhood in Brisbane, and your journey towards understanding gender, sexuality, and identity. Is there a section that you’re most excited for us to read?

I think when it gets to Act II, when I arrive in Sydney, I feel like it really gets exciting. The childhood stuff is important because it sort of sets the story, but when I arrived in Sydney, I guess in a way, I felt like I was giving the history of my drag scene of the early 2000s, where I came from, and sort of just recording that imprint. I loved getting the opportunity to share Sydney’s queer history of that era.

Was there a certain moment or topic that was most difficult for you to look back on and write about?

Yeah, there were a lot of difficult parts, but I think one of the biggest healings I did, if you will, was around Drag Race. In 2020, I was in my LA flat writing, and I went back and watched Season Six again, which was the first that I’ve watched it in its entirety since it went to air in 2014. I’ve definitely seen clips, and I’ve started watching a few times, but never made it through. Six years later, my life and career had obviously gone on, and I’ve had many other successes, but I was able to have a lot of space between my experience, how it happened, how I perceived it at the time, and how I felt about all that now. This time, I was able to look back with a lot of gratitude.

It was such an exciting time, and to write about not just being on the show but touring around the U.S., being in different cities, going from club to club, and just feeling that excitement and adulation from the crowd, it was so thrilling to be a part of. It’s unbelievable how audiences are invested in such a cult-like way. Drag Race, especially the single-digit seasons, was kind of the beginning of this new time in queer history. I think we’ll look back in 10 or 20 years and look at that era of Drag Race, where it started exploding into the mainstream, as being this fascinating time. To be a small part of that was very exciting.

You have said in other interviews that you sometimes felt a little dehumanized by the show. Can you talk more about that?

Yeah, for sure. The thing that reality television of that nature does so well, it creates strong characters. When you’ve got 14 people, and you’ve got an hour of television a week, you have to reduce those three-dimensional characters to two-dimensional ones. You’ve got to give them a catchphrase, and you’ve got to give them a simple identity/archetype that the audience can connect with.

Drag Race does that very well, but then to feel that as a person who’s on the show, it does feel very dehumanizing because you know that who you are is so much richer than the few elements of your personality that’s magnified on the television. That is, by definition, dehumanizing, but I think as you get a bit further away from it, as I sort of have now, you realize that is the art of reality television.

Ultimately, I’m more grateful for what I gained than how I suffered at the time. Obviously, relative to real life suffering, it’s still a privilege to be on a reality television show and to struggle because of your edit. It doesn’t mean that how I felt was any less real, but I guess I just have more perspective on it all now.

The book also discusses your introduction to Adore Delano. Personally, I’ve always been curious about what it was like for you to meet her.

It’s funny because I only remember it as being a friendly experience. I guess I didn’t think about the mathematics because I was on Season One of Australian Idol, and on Drag Race, people might remember Adore and I having this exchange about us both being on Idol. I was like, Season One, right? I don’t know why, but in my head, I thought she was on Season One. Then of course, that turned into a bitchy moment in the confessional interview.

I can’t remember if I talked about this in the book, but I definitely asked Adore about it when I was writing, and I can’t remember what she said, but it was definitely much more of a non-event for her than I think it turned out to be on the television. I’m just glad that Adore and I became the friends that we are now. There was that competitive thing with the musical, like Courtney v. Adore, idol v. idol. The show definitely built that up.

I do remember being in Chicago at Roscoe’s when Adore’s album came out, and it charted on the Billboard 100 charts, which was epic. I had this sliding door moment where I was like, I can either be jealous and hate her for it because I had always dreamed of having a pop music career for myself, but the overpowering emotion was pride and enjoyment in Adore’s success. I was very happy for my friend. There’s such great joy in supporting friends, even if they’re on the same path as you.

With Drag Race becoming more and more mainstream, do you think the franchise is going in a positive direction?

I think Drag Race has done good in the way it’s highlighted drag around the world. It’s being celebrated, and interestingly, those two-dimensional characters have shown drag in such a three-dimensional way where people understand it and appreciate it in ways they never did before. I’m also glad that all the local franchises of Drag Race are giving queens who are not in the United States opportunities to be showcased.

Some may think it’s losing some impact, but then I’m like, what’s the alternative? Do we just keep drag exclusive to the United States version of Drag Race, do one season of that per year, and one season of All Stars? A part of me is like, share the love. I guess it’s kind of like a balancing act. Perhaps our flaw as a consumer is thinking that we have to watch every episode of Drag Race that comes out around the world, which is obviously not humanly possible.

What are some future goals you hope to accomplish with your career and platform?

I love bringing stories into the mainstream. Celebrating and sharing other people’s stories in a heartfelt way, so I hope to continue doing that!

Before we wrap up, are there any other upcoming projects or anything else you’d like to mention or plug?

I recently finished a season of a TV show here in Australia that I host called One Plus One, which is an interview show on ABC, and that went really great. I also had a pilot on one of our commercial networks, Channel 10, which is called Courtney’s Closet, where I interview a celebrity and I put them in drag.

So, I’ve been busy doing those, and now I’m actually going to start working on a new book because I loved writing my memoir. I am working on a children’s book and a fiction narrative. I’ve been reading a lot of books, a lot of queer fiction, to sort of get inspired and help plot out the characters.

Then I also have my podcast with Vanity Faire, Brenda, Call Me!, which comes out every Thursday. It’s a lot of fun, and it’s our little way to give our Australian stamp to drag because so much of the stuff that we get, it always feels like it’s from overseas. It’s nice to have our Australian spin on stuff.

Stay up-to-date and connect with Act by following her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @courtneyact, or visit their official website, courtneyact.com. Caught in the Act is available to order on Amazon and all other major book retailers.

Photos courtesy of Magnus Hastings and Joseph Sinclair