Known as the “world’s most famous drag queen,” RuPaul George is a prominent entertainer and television personality. Though he’s most famous for hosting the award-winning RuPaul’s Drag Race, his career began with public access television and club performances in 1980s Atlanta.

RuPaul Andre Charles was born to Ernestine “Toni” Fontenette and Irving Charles in San Diego, California, on November 17, 1960. His parents, who relocated from the South during the Great Migration, named him after roux, a mixture of flour and fat common in Creole cooking. At the age of seven, his parents divorced, leaving his mother and twin sisters, Renetta and Renae, to raise him and his younger sister Rozy. He has described his father’s absence as having a major influence on his early development and expressed appreciation for his other family members’ acceptance of his queer identity from an early age, saying “I never had to ‘come out,’ because I was never ‘in.’” When he was fifteen RuPaul moved with his sister Renetta to Atlanta. There he attended Northside School of Performing Arts and worked with his brother-in-law transporting and restoring luxury automobiles before pursuing a career in showbusiness.

RuPaul’s first television appearance was on Atlanta’s public access variety program The American Music Show in 1982, the show’s second year. He was invited to the show after writing a fan letter to the show’s creators, James Prioleau “Dick” Richards III and James Bond, brother of Atlanta legislator Julian Bond. On the show he performed the song “Shotgun,” by Junior Walker and the All-Stars, with his choreographed lip-synching group RuPaul and the U-Hauls. RuPaul later moved into his first apartment on Charles Allen Drive in Midtown Atlanta. There he joined the new wave band Wee Wee Pole and, with his two groups, began performing in clubs like 688 Club in Atlanta and the 40 Watt Club in Athens.
For the next decade, The American Music Show aired a significant portion of the interviews, live performances, and short films that shaped RuPaul’s early career as a TV personality and musician. Several of RuPaul’s early albums and films were also produced by Richards’s record label, Funtone USA, including his debut album Sex Freak (1985) and the Blaxploitation film RuPaul is: Star Booty! (1987). RuPaul has frequently credited The American Music Show with providing his entry into show business, elaborating on this period of his life in his 2024 memoir, The House of Hidden Meanings.

In 1984 RuPaul began to transition to a career in New York, staying in stints at hotels while performing in popular nightclubs like Danceteria, the Pyramid Club, and Limelight, where he would meet his future husband, Georges LeBar. Many of RuPaul’s drag performances from this period survive in the archives of Richards’s childhood friend, Nelson Sullivan, who was known for scrupulously documenting 1980s queer nightlife.
An initial brush with national fame came in 1989 when he appeared in the music video for “Love Shack,” by the Athens-based B-52’s. The following year he appeared as a “club kid” on the Geraldo show. But it wasn’t until 1993, when Tommy Boy Records released his first major album, Supermodel of the World, that RuPaul became a star in his own right. By then, RuPaul had substituted his punk, gender bending style with the “glamazon” drag persona for which he would become known. Following the success of the album’s single, “Supermodel (You Better Work),” RuPaul signed a contract making him “the face of M.A.C. Cosmetics.” In 1996 he became the first drag queen and one of the first openly gay people to host a national television show with the debut of The RuPaul Show on VH1.

The show that launched RuPaul into superstardom, RuPaul’s Drag Race, aired its first episode in 2009. As of the 2023 awards cycle the show had been nominated for over seventy Emmys and inspired several American spinoffs, as well as franchises in over a dozen countries, many of which are produced by RuPaul. The show’s popularity has helped destigmatize the LGBTQ+ community and provided a platform for gay people to discuss experiences of conversion therapy, becoming HIV positive, and coming out to their families and loved ones, among other important issues.
As the host of Drag Race, RuPaul has been an outspoken advocate for gay rights, drag queens, and diversity in media. During his acceptance speech at the 75th Emmy Primetime Awards ceremony, he denounced legislation aiming to ban drag performances, saying, “If a drag queen wants to read you a story at a library, listen to her.” The win made RuPaul at the time the most awarded television host in Emmy history and the record-holder for most wins by a person of color.