‘I felt the shame for many years’: drag queen Courtney Act ahead of Hong Kong show
- Australian reality TV star and programme host Courtney Act talks about feeling shame doing drag and how Cher’s trans son Chaz Bono turned things around
- She will perform two shows in Hong Kong on March 21 and 23 at Sevva, after which she will return to Australia to work on her second memoir
Courtney Act was easily one of the biggest breakout stars from reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race, placing runner-up in the sixth season in 2014, and has been moving from strength to strength ever since.
Act first stepped into the limelight in 2003 when she competed in the first season of Australian Idol, making her the first openly LGBTQ contestant to compete in a reality TV show.
Act identifies as she/her in drag and is gender fluid otherwise, and still uses his birth name, Shane Jenek, when not in drag. She is also one of the few drag acts to sing live rather than lip-synch.
The last time Act was in Hong Kong, her show at Sevva was cancelled due to citywide protests in 2019, and the world has become a very different place since then. A global pandemic, the war in Ukraine and an increasing polarisation of gender in politics had led Act to relocate back to Sydney, Australia.
“Well, I lived in LA during the Obama years, the glory days,” he says. “Then I moved to the UK and I felt so grateful, but I had an Australian passport and had the opportunity to go to different places when some of my friends couldn’t.
“It’s kind of fascinating because drag queens were just minding our own business, doing what we love and all of a sudden, we’ve become the target of these extreme radical gender ideologies and criticism.”
In February, the US state of Tennessee passed a bill that restricts adult cabaret performances in public or in the presence of children, and bans them from occurring within 1,000 feet (300 metres) of schools, public parks or places of worship.
“It’s weird to think that the same piece of fabric sewn in one way or another can be so divisive,” Act says.
“I think my complaint about Australia was always that it felt like watching the world go by at a comfortable distance, but then with everything that went on that was kind of the perfect place to be.”
Australia has embraced Act and she has been busy since she landed.
Apart from judging, guest starring and opening for various events, in 2019 she competed in the Australian version of Dancing with the Stars. Act was the first drag performer in the history of the show’s franchise.
She is now also the host of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s interview show Courtney Act’s One Plus One.
I was scared of having pink in my home … I now think back to how absurd that is
When not in drag, Jenek is a vegan and identifies as pansexual, genderfluid and polyamorous, but this was not always the case. Act tells us that she struggled with her alter ego, even a decade into performing drag on the world stage.
“I think I felt the shame for doing drag for many years. I always thought I shouldn’t be doing this, like there was something wrong with it. I used to tell myself that it was just a uniform, like a police uniform on a police officer and I was just doing a job.”
Act kept her drag personality so separate that at one stage, not a hint of it bled into Jenek’s life.
“I was scared of having pink in my home. In 2010, one of my friends was decorating my new home in LA and he had something that was pink and chiffon I told him, you can’t put that in my house! That’s a girl’s colour! I now think back to how absurd that is.”
The watershed moment came in a conversation with Chaz Bono, the trans son of American singer Cher.
“It was 2014 and I’d already been doing drag for 14 years and he asked me why did I do drag. I proceeded to explain to him how it’s a uniform. It’s putting on a costume to go to work and perform on stage.
“Then Chaz was sort of questioning my gender identity and I guess I had a lot of internalised transphobia as well and he just explained to me this idea of gender being fluid and that it’s OK for boys to be feminine. It’s OK for girls to be masculine.
“That simple concept completely liberated me from a lifetime of shame about being a boy who was just naturally more feminine, and the conversation was really fascinating and important.”
She is back in Hong Kong for her show at Sevva, in Landmark Prince’s in Central, where she will perform two sets for the evening, one with her Dancing with the Stars partner Joshua Keefe.
Sevva’s owner, Bonnae Gokson, has been a champion of Act’s since the beginning, inviting her to perform in 2008, the year the restaurant opened.
“Bonnae gave me my first pair of Louboutins, they were white slingbacks.”
After her two shows, on March 21 and 23, Act will head back to Sydney in the quest to write her second memoir.
“In the words of [American drag performer] Jinkx Monsoon, there are many cultures, religions and political systems that I don’t understand, but it doesn’t mean that I think they shouldn’t have the right to exist.
“I think storytelling is one of our greatest inventions and sharing stories, understanding somebody else’s experience, creates empathy. That’s how we solve these sorts of problems.”
