Kay Sedia Fresh off the Taco Chronicles

Kay Sedia, The Tupperware-selling Drag Queen,  is celebrating 20 fabulous years of Tupperware Drag Magic. She’s the sweet and spicy combination of everyone’s dreams, supplying an unforgettable experience for all, and we caught up with her to find out what’s cooking.

When did you get into drag? When was Kay Sedia conceived?
There was a project that still takes place today called Best in Drag Show, but it started off as a Miss America Pageant way back in the 90s called Battle for the Tiara. And after 10 years of a group of friends putting that show on, they decided to close shop. One of the main creators passed away from complications from AIDS, and that was the whole purpose of this pageant, was to benefit (those who suffer from AIDS). 

So cut to a few years later, a new group of guys decided to come in, and they came up with the Quest for the Crown, and I was in the very first pageant and back in 2000. I was Miss Mexico Kay Sedia. Now, at the time, I was working at a grocery store. I’ve never been on stage before, and (when) I auditioned, they saw something because they put me in the show, and I ended up becoming, like, the crowd favorite. I was the first runner-up; it literally just launched a whole career for me to change the course of my life that night of the pageant.

How did you come up with your drag name ‘Kay Sedia’?
I came up with Kay Sedia for the Quest for the Crown pageant. The whole idea was a spoof, so you wanted to make these campy characters. Kay Sedia was this bigger-than-life supermodel from Tijuana, and she was literally the biggest thing to come out of that town, and she took that everywhere she went. She’s kind of delusional and based on some of the older women in my family, just self-delusional grandiosity.

It started off just for shits and giggles for that show, and then it literally just started becoming this character that people started relating to. I was constantly performing this character but in different situations,  in different plays and musicals. Again, it literally changed the course of my life. That’s how I created the characters, based on my mom and a few of my aunts,  just exacerbating this ignorant confidence that should not be there.

How did you get into slinging Tupperware? Where did that inspiration come from?
I was performing in clubs the weekend for the pageant I ended up at Drag Strip 66, which was the biggest and hottest drag club in L.A. The man who runs the show, Mr Knab, just took a liking to me. He put me on stage the following month, and then a few months after that, he wrote a song for me and I performed it live; all the drag queens sang there. I’m not a trained singer, but I’m a character singer, so I was able to carry a tune into the show. I didn’t even know how to do my own makeup, so my friend Glen Allen, who’s now this big drag makeup, Emmy award winning artist, would do my makeup for every event that I would book. I started performing in a couple of clubs in West Hollywood, and after about a year-and-a-half, I realized I really did not enjoy lip synching, or even performing in clubs, other than drag strip.

So I want to say a year-and-a-half, two years into doing drag, I came across a Tupperware party a friend invited me to. The woman who did the party, her name is Phranc, she’s like an old-school punk rocker turned folk singer from the 80s who had a bucket list of things she wanted to do, and one of them was to be a Tupperware party lady. She calls herself the all-American, Jewish, folk-singing, surfing, lesbian Tupperware lady. She had a flat top, and she had a little bow tie; she looked like a milkman. And I just sat there watching it in this very nostalgic funny show.

I’m like, I could do this in drag, and it just felt like a flash went over my head, and then a fellow friend of mine who was also a drag performer was sitting there next to me, and we both decided to challenge each other, “Hey, I’ll sign up if you sign up,” and that was summer, August 2 of 2001. So, I just celebrated my 20th anniversary, selling Tupperware.

How does it feel to be a one-woman show? Is there a lot of planning behind the scenes?
I’ve done a lot of ensemble pieces. We did a show for 18 years called Chico’s Angels, which was a take on Charlie’s Angels and became my second family. Obviously during the pandemic, we had a shutdown. I loved doing that; I loved it because it was easy to play off of people and to have fun. Doing a one-woman show feels like you’re walking a tightrope. I did it for two weekends; I’m gonna do it again, but most of the time, it feels like I’m in complete panic because there’s no markers. When you’re working with other people, there’s markers; you know where you’re at and what happens next, but  it literally feels like you’re going on a tightrope, and you’re jumping into the middle of the ocean; you have no idea where to go.

I had many moments where I was in bars and couldn’t remember where I was in the show. I’m looking around at the tech sound guy, and I’m literally calling out a line in the middle of the show. The audience luckily forgave me, and they were laughing along with me because they saw what I was trying to do. But it was fun,; it’s very cathartic because a lot of it was personal stories that I filtered and translated into Kay Sedia language, with stories of drug addiction, my upbringing, and also coming from immigrant parents. A lot of people were surprised that I kind of went to a darker place with this character, but at the same time, I still kept it  very entertaining and funny.

How can someone book you to perform and buy some of your fabulous Tupperware?
I have two websites, but my regular website links you up to everything, Kaysedia.com and it’s spelled how white people say quesadilla, K-a-y-s-e-d-i-a .com, or my direct website is kaysedia.my.tupperware.com

What does it feel like to celebrate 20 years as a sexy, Tupperware-selling diva?
Because of the pandemic, I did my celebrating mostly online, sharing stories. I just finished doing a one-woman show talking about my career as a Tupperware diva. It’s been all the feels; it’s been exciting. It’s been fun it’s been challenging; it’s been annoying. You go up and down the gamut. I started to do this just for the hell of it, for fun. And then I started making really good money, and I was working at a grocery store, full-time, union job, and we went on strike back, I believe, in 2003.

I remember always wanting to leave that job because it creatively just was sucking my brains out. I decided to start Tupperware full time and then for the first two months, I couldn’t pay my rent. I was like, “Wow,  I made the biggest mistake ever,” and then my brother helped me one month; the second month my sister helped me, and then the third month, I paid them both back. I already made the most money I’ve ever made all at once, and then before you know it, I started making six figures as a Tupperware lady. 

I have a family now. I have a husband and a son via surrogate. I started getting involved in family time, and I wasn’t working like a dog as I did in the beginning. The wonderful thing about Tupperware is that it allowed me to make my own schedule, so I’m able to raise my son. It’s been great.

How was performing in The Taco Chronicles series for your two-week run?
It was challenging; it was fun, cathartic, and horrifying. I always get a little nervous before I perform anything because someone once told me that if there’s no nerves, it means you don’t care. So I care deeply about what I do and what I present to the audience; I always want them to be entertained. But when you’re solo, there’s such a higher level of fear that can settle in of just, again, just remembering where you’re at, but I’ll do it again. I’ve done one-woman show in the past, but I had a guest star or just some sub character in the background helping me with something. This is the first one I truly just went up to along with no net.

What can audience members expect from Kay Sedia when she’s performing?
What I’ve come to love about what I do is that there’s almost a freedom. I always say I give myself permission to look like an asshole when I’m doing a show. There’s a silly level that I get to write, just go there, and I’m able to just find nuances in quiet moments or something that just doesn’t land right. It’s almost more fun or when something doesn’t seem right and I’m able to get my way out of it.

But what you get from Kay Sedia, is she always has an authentic show; she’s just as non-threatening; she doesn’t like people to be uncomfortable. I don’t like to be uncomfortable. There’s a lot of those drag queens that are very caustic or bombastic, and that’s great; that’s an art in itself; that’s just not me. There’s an innocence to my comedy that I always want to keep. It’s a fish out of water story about being a kid of an immigrant, coming from an immigrant, and being an immigrant myself, so I carry that perspective into my show. A lot of what I present to people, or what I put on stage, is the things that I was ashamed of as a young man or as a young child because I was so confused. And I literally found a way to filter that fear on to stage and celebrate the things that made me different.

When’s your next big performance coming up, What’s Kay Sedias’ future schedule like?
I have a Christmas show that I’ve done for years that I’m thinking of bringing back. I have to find a new theater for it, and with the way things are right now, I just have to be careful as to what and where I perform. I have my bingo night once a month, twice in December. It’s a Tupperware bingo night, and all my prizes are all Tupperware sets. They’re usually my samples from the month previous. So, people get really excited, because it’s all about quality, and I would say I have the Gucci of plastics. People can follow me for schedule updates on my social media; it’s my name, KaySedia1 on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. I’m mostly active on Instagram and Facebook.

I plan on doing this show again in the spring, and then my Christmas show hopefully will be the second or third week of December, depending on if I can find a location. But regardless, I’m always doing some shenanigans online. I do a lot of live Facebook Tupperware parties; if anybody wants to host an online party, I do those virtually as well. I’m always up to something, and I’m always sharing it on social media. So the best thing is to follow me to see what’s next. 

Anything else you’d like to share? Any closing comments?
I provide an escape. And all I want is to make people feel good, to make them think, to help them celebrate their differences. I’ve come to understand in my later years of my adulthood that my differences are a superpower. I’ve truly come to understand that on a deeper level as I’ve gotten older, because in my mind growing up, I always wanted to conform to what people like—that’s what I should look like; that’s what I want to be like—until I started realizing, you know, there’s a million of those; how about I just be 100 percent original me. And, you know, it’s given me freedom. It’s given me joy and an ability to share with others kind of my gift. 

Anytime right before I go out on stage, I always just say a little prayer to the universe, to the gods, whoever you believe in, just to help me channel this gift that I’ve been given of comedy, silliness, and of joy. To be able to share that with people, and that’s what I want to bring to everybody. That’s what I want people to walk away from is just to make them think, make them feel good, and make them laugh.