'RuPaul's Drag Race All-Stars' Season 8 Cast Announcement

RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 8 (photo: World of Wonder Productions)

No time to catch your breath after last week's RuPaul's Drag Race Season 15 finale. Sasha Colby's crown is still settling upon her head, but it's already time to talk about the cast for the 8th season of Drag Race All Stars. All Stars will premiere on Paramount+ on Friday, May 12, and today, the show revealed the 12 queens who will compete for the crown. As has been the trend in recent seasons — save for last summer's all-winners edition — Drag Race All Stars will resurrect a mix of queens who came close to the finale and queens who sashayed away early in their original seasons. The Season 6 champion, Kylie Sonique Love, finished in 9th place on her original season but came into her own on her All-Stars run. Season 8 will also be the first U.S. season to include a cast member from Canada's Drag Race.

Update, Thursday, April 27 at 11:04 A.M. ET: Paramount+ has released the first trailer for All Stars Season 8.

Here's a closer look at the Drag Race All-Stars Season 8 cast and how they performed in their original seasons:

Jessica Wild
Season 2, 6th place

Jessica Wild was one of the first queens to hail from Puerto Rico on the show. A fan favorite from Drag Race’s's second season, Jessica won the "Rocker Chicks" challenge but was eliminated only one week later, after flubbing her ad for Absolut Acai.

Monica Beverly Hillz
Season 5, 12th place

Monica will be the 8th queen from the celebrated Season 5 to compete on All Stars. Her most notable moment from the fifth season was when she revealed in front of the judging panel that she was in the process of her gender-affirming journey while competing. She was eliminated after a lip-sync showdown with Coco Montrese.

Darienne Lake
Season 6, 4 place

Darienne Lake was the tart-tonged queen from Rochester, NY, who battled her way to the cusp in the Season 6 finale. Darienne is probably best remembered for throwing a ton of shade at BenDeLaCreme, against whom she lip-synced twice on the season, drawing once and winning the second time. She returns to the show after a transformational weight-loss journey, and Drag Race loves a transformation narrative.

Mrs. Kasha Davis
Season 7, 11th place

For an 11th-place queen, Mrs. Kasha Davis had a pretty successful run on Season 7, considering she emerged with a catch phrase ("There's always time for a cocktail!") and a lot of goodwill from the fans. Kasha comes into All Stars seven years sober now, which should give her some newfound clarity. She's performed extensively with fellow Rochester queen Darienne Lake, and at north of 50 years old, she'll be the most senior queen in this cast.

Naysha Lopez
Season 8, 9th place

This will actually be Naysha's third crack at the crown, as she was the first queen eliminated in Season 9 before being brought back after the double-elimination of Laila McQueen and Dax Exclamationpoint. A former winner of the Miss Continental drag pageant — same as Sasha Colby, which is a good omen — Naysha is popular within the drag community, having hosted the Drag Race viewing parties at Los Angeles bar Roscoe's for the last few seasons.

Alexis Michelle
Season 9, 5th place

Season 9 of Drag Race may well have featured the strongest top four queens in show history, so it's no shame for Alexis to have finished 5th that year. The Broadway queen from New York City put her BFA to good use on her original season, singing and dancing and winning the Snatch Game with her killer Liza Minnelli impersonation.

Jaymes Mansfield
Season 9, 14th place

Jaymes was the first queen eliminated in Season 9, an ignominious distinction that will give her the opportunity for one heck of an improvement arc if she comes out strong in the first few challenges. The Milwaukee, Wisconsin, queen was known in her brief time on the show for puppeteering talent and her struggles with confidence.

Kahanna Montrese
Season 11, 14th place

Kahanna's original run on Drag Race wasn't much better than Jaymes', having been eliminated in her second week after surviving a Lip Sync for Your Life in her first. Kahanna comes from the House of Montrese and is the drag daughter of Season 5 queen Coco Montrese. Kahanna comes into this season as the beneficiary of a plastic-surgery "glow-up" and has performed extensively in the Drag Race Live! show in Las Vegas, which could prove to be valuable experience for All-Stars.

Heidi N Closet
Season 12, 6th place

Drag Race's 12th season was a fraught one, airing during the early days of the COVID pandemic and dealing with the controversy over the sexual misconduct allegations against Sherry Pie. Out of all of that emerged Heidi N Closet as a massive fan favorite. She won over a skeptical RuPaul (who hated her drag name) and took the Miss Congeniality title for the season.

Kandy Muse
Season 13, 2nd place

Kandy comes into All Stars as the only queen to make the finale of her original season, which sets her up as the early favorite to win. Kandy's brash and outspoken personality got her into a few clashes on her original season, and she enters his season calling herself "one of the most polarizing characters in Drag Race history." Her "star quality" made her a favorite of RuPaul and the other judges, which bodes well.

LaLa Ri
Season 13, 10th place

Few queens come into All-Stars 8 with as much of a ready-made narrative as LaLa Ri. The Atlanta queen experienced one of the lowest lows of any queen after her shoddy "Bag Ball" look was deemed one of the worst outfits ever to grace the Drag Race runway. But LaLa showed flashes of brilliance during the season too, including a killer Lip Sync for Your Life to "Fancy" and a personality magnetic enough to win her Miss Congeniality.

Jimbo
Canada's Drag Race Season 1, 4th place

Jimbo will be the first queen ever to join an American Drag Race season from the show's spinoff neighbor to the north. An eccentric and eclectic "drag clown," Jimbo also proved to be a force on the UK vs. The World season in early 2022, finishing at the top in the first two challenges before being shockingly eliminated in the third episode. RuPaul seemed to be a huge fan of Jimbo's drag act on that season, which could forecast big things for the queen from British Columbia.

RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars will premiere its 8th season on Friday, May 12 on Paramount+. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.

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