When “We’re Here” debuted in April 2020, the world was locked at home at the onset of the pandemic. The previous year, popular drag queens Bob the Drag Queen (Christopher Caldwell), Shangela (DJ Pierce), and Eureka had traveled across America helping members of the local LGBTQ+ community (and their allies) put on a show of visibility in their small towns. They crisscrossed the country from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania to Twin Falls, Idaho. Outside of a rocky visit to Branson, Missouri, however, they were, at best, welcomed or, at worst, met with ambivalence. Season two, which debuted last fall, was filmed over almost the entire course of 2020 and, in hindsight, foreshadowed some of the attacks that the queer community is now facing.
Episode five saw the trio travel to Evansville, Indiana. Eureka’s “drag child” that episode was Pastor Craig, a heterosexual preacher who wanted to perform in drag to support the LGBTQ+ community and his own pansexual daughter. After the episode aired, Craig’s denomination, Newburgh United Methodist Church, “relieved him of his duties.” For Eureka, a Tennessee native who was raised Southern Baptist, the fact Craig wanted to participate at all was something special. Having him lose his livelihood for participating in a show promoting inclusion and love, was a blow.
“Honestly I had just had this incredibly spiritual moment at the God’s tomb in Israel and then I get this phone call and it just felt so surreal, but it put me in the right spiritual head space to talk to Pastor Craig, but it was really emotional for me because it just hurt my feelings,” Eureka recalls. “The last thing I want is for anyone in their life to be hindered by their experience on our show. And luckily Pastor Craig was very strong [about the situation].”
According to Eureka, the church bullied him into resigning after the show aired. Months after the episode’s taping took place.
“It was a really sensitive situation, but honestly, the town rallied around and raised some money for him,” Eureka reveals. “I think his goal now is to start an all-inclusive camp, like a Bible camp. When we were there, I couldn’t meet him at his job location. Cause he was doing Bible camp and the people at the Bible camp wouldn’t let us come onsite cause we were LGBTQ based. So, he wanted to start an all-inclusive Bible camp. I think that’s still his dream.”
Currently in production on season three, Eureka says the advocacy of the show is one reason she’s still so enthusiastic about it. It’s the “continued fight” for not only the participants they meet in each new town but their own life as well. Even if times have gotten tougher for many LGBTQ+ people over the past 18 months or so.
“We’re in a place where it’s like, we’ve almost gone backward in some way,” Eureka says. “Maybe it needs to come to the light. So, hopefully, some more people can learn. I don’t know what it’s going to take, but yeah. I think there are some nerves to it. But honestly, I’m also just excited because nothing gets me going more than teaching somebody who doesn’t understand. We’re just here to have a good time and we’re fierce and human, just like they are. That’s what makes my tit sweat, honey.”
_____
Even after a decade-plus as a working queen, Caldwell still loves drag. And, more importantly, creating art. “We’re Here” is part of that journey.
Caldwell reflects, “A lot of times, you talk to interviewers and stuff, and they’re always, ‘What’s so unique about this?’ Or, ‘What’s so unique about that?’ I don’t know that my purpose in life is to be the most unique person in the world. I’m not like, ‘I’ve got to be more unique than everyone around me.’ Although, I understand the urge. I remember when I was younger, there was someone who said, ‘You’re unique, just like everyone else.’ But that being said, I really do love that we get to amplify the voices of marginalized people. That really means lots to me.”
That mission has become even more serious with a sharp increase in the number of black trans women being murdered across the nation, the “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida, and trans kids and their parents under attack in Texas and Alabama. For Caldwell, the mission of “We’re Here” “definitely means a lot now more than ever.”
“Someone said, ‘When will it be enough?” [After] they talk about queer people for like a day,” Caldwell says. “‘They want more and more, more. When will it be enough?’ I’m like, ‘Well, whenever a black trans woman can leave her house without any fear for her life, then I’ll say we’ve reached a point.’ And that’s every single black trans woman, then I’ll say, ‘Yeah, maybe now we’re good.'”
He adds, “I think a lot of people who are not queer, or especially not trans, or don’t know a trans person, it’s so easy for them to vilify trans people, but they just don’t know any. Trans women really are the boogeyman because it’s like the figure who’s kind of underrepresented, and they’ve never seen anything like it. So, they don’t ever have to justify their behavior because they’ll never be confronted with someone who’s like, ‘Wow, that really hurt.’”
For Caldwell, the point of going to these small towns is to simply show that LGBTQ+ people are everywhere. He notes, “We’re not just these weirdos living in Los Angeles, Chicago, Atlanta, and New York City. We are teachers in Idaho. We are mothers and fathers and parents in Alabama.”
During the second season’s visit to Selma, Alabama, Caldwell was part of a heralded drag performance. That powerful episode focused on how Queer people have to still fight in a city known for its place in the history of the American civil rights movement. The number saw Caldwell walks onto the stage in a gigantic wig, a nod to the influence of hair in black culture. As the song plays the wig seems to fall off his head, but, surprise, the wig is actually a little girl.
The idea first came to Caldwell about eight years ago, but they didn’t have the skillset to make such a complex costume. There was also the problem of finding someone small enough to play the wig and fit on their shoulders. A family member saved the day.
“So, it was actually my niece on my head. And my niece was 11 at the time. And I think she was maybe 4’10″, maybe 4’11″. And she was 80 pounds. She was perfect for the job,” Caldwell says. “I called my brother and I asked him, ‘Can I please borrow my niece for a week? And we’ll have some fun together.’ My niece is very talented. She really dumbed down her dancing so that I could dance with her. She’s like a gymnast. She can do back flips. She’s an amazing dancer. And I was so lucky to have her join me for this living wig moment.”
_____
Another moving and entertaining episode of season two saw the queens visit Del Rio, Texas. The city may have a dominant Hispanic population, but Del Rio is in a very conservative county. A county that voted for Donald Trump by 10 points over Joe Biden in the 2020 election. On the flip side, Del Rio showed it can break conventions by electing a publicly out mayor, Bruno Lozano, who is unabashedly proud to be a queer man.
Pierce, who was Lorzano’s Drag Mother notes, “I was so excited to have representation on our show of someone like Mayor Bruno, who is intelligent and active in his community, as well as an out loud and proud queer person of color, a Tejano who was so proud of his culture and didn’t want to separate his life as a gay man and his life as a public servant. And to be in my home state of Texas also was just icing on the cake.”
Like their co-stars, Pierce feels “Were’ Here” is needed more than ever.
“Right now, I think people across our country, especially those with strong conservative youth feel extremely empowered to be very vocal and kind of unashamed about their anti-homosexual views, right? About their opposition to our way of life, about being anti-trans,” Pierce says. “And they feel just very bold about being out, loud and proud, which reminds us that we have to be just as bold and just as vigilant as we go out here and we stand up for equality and we stand up for the rights of everyone to be treated fairly and also to make people feel less alone in this world, especially those in our queer community.”
Pierce continues, “That’s how I’m feeling going into this [third] season. I’m feeling like, you know what? If we didn’t have a purpose before, baby we’ve got a purpose now. Does that make me frightened in any way? No, I don’t feel frightened because you got to remember I came up in this kind of world. Hey, I came up back when Bush was an office, child. When we had times of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ and where it wasn’t something that was very supportive to even say the word gay. To even say queer community. So it doesn’t make me afraid. It just reminds me, it maybe triggers me in a way of some of the traumatic things that I went through as a kid and as a teen. I feel like we’ve gone backwards a little bit. But I’m so grateful to be able to have a show like this where we are able to get out here on the battlefield, we’re going into war, we’re suited up and no, I am not afraid at all. I am fired up.”
“We’re Here” seasons one and two are available on HBO Max.
