‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ Season 17 Power Ranking: Episode 11 — Walk That Duck

With RuPaul’s Drag Race bringing back their Rate-a-Queen system for season 17, Billboard decided to rate each of the new queens every week based on their performance. Below, we take a look at the late-season acting challenge to see which queens nailed their performances. Spoilers ahead for episode 10.

To queen, or not to queen; that is the question posed in every acting challenge on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Do you go full ham, dialing your performance up to 11 and overacting as much as possible? Or do you try to deliver something more nuanced and real?

The remaining seven contestants of season 17 struggled with that very question on last week’s episode (aired March 14), when RuPaul announced that they would be acting alongside guest judge Ross Matthews in the show’s send up of Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Capote vs. The Swans (shoutout to the aptly-titled “show,” Ross Matthews vs. The Ducks). Acting as various socialites/reality TV archetypes, the queens were invited to bring the drama during this week’s challenge.

Back to the Shakespearean question we led with, the answer is simple: take that scenery and chew it, girls. Drag Race is not the place for contestants to angle for Oscar-winning performances — it’s where you go to put on a parody pastiche of the forms you’re imitating. Of all the queens in the cast, Onya Nurve clearly gets it — her cranked-up performance as up-and-coming rapper Big Fupa earned her a third challenge win, and rightfully so.

With solid performances across the board this week, the judges ended up placing Lana Ja’Rae and Lydia Butthole Kollins in the bottom two, where the pair lip synched to guest judge Sam Smith’s “Unholy.” It seemed like a simple set up to send Lana home … until Lydia completely blew the performance. Lana earned a stay of execution, while Ms. Butthole finally sashayed away.

Below, Billboard takes a look back at episode 11 and ranks where our remaining contestants lie based on this episode and the season as a whole: