Drag Race star Heidi N Closet reveals real reason she quit All Stars 8
Drag Race star Heidi N Closet shares why she quit All Stars 8. (Getty/Santiago Felipe)
RuPaul’s Drag Race fan favourite Heidi N Closet has revealed that Kandy Muse, shady producers, and blatant favoritism were the reasons why she quit All Stars 8.
Heidi N Closet was a firm contender for the Drag Race All Stars 8 crown when it began airing back in May, but after four weeks of being overlooked by the judges and pressed by her fellow competitors, she sensationally quit the show.
Following her dramatic exit, Heidi explained that her decision to leave was due to both “how messy the girls were being” and poor mental health, following the death of her grandmother.
In a new interview with YouTuber Joseph Shepherd, Heidi has expanded on her decision to quit, suggesting that a multitude of factors were at play.
“Kandy [Muse] kept poking at me,” she began. During the Snatch Game episode, which saw Heidi leave towards the end, it was revealed that Kandy had apparently suggested to Heidi that she would break her pact with Jimbo, the eventual winner, and eliminate her whenever she got the chance.
Heidi then apparently told Jimbo this, and Jimbo confronted Kandy – who denied everything.
“Me and Kandy had our own conversation off the TV and she was like, ‘You told Jimbo what I said,’ and I was like, ‘that’s the same thing you did to me, when you told Kahanna [Montrese, fellow competitor] what I said.”
Heidi had told Kandy that she wanted to quit Drag Race All Stars 8 – and Kandy supposedly told this to Kahanna, “on camera”.
“That’s how the producers knew I wanted to quit,” Heidi explained. “My whole energy of being through with the situation was from that instance.”
Heidi added that the producers heightened the situation by encouraging Kandy to speak about her on camera, to which Heidi suggested that Kandy could have “told them no”.
“I told them no all the time, and I was very much the girl who would be calling out production for things like, ‘that’s not fair’,” Heidi added.
In addition to Kandy and the producers, Heidi confirmed that favouritism also played a part in her decision to go.
In the ball challenge in episode three, fans felt that Heidi was clearly in the top with her dazzling looks – but the judges deemed her safe once again. In response, she threatened to quit the show.
“I have eyes and I can see at least two girls in the top that should not have been in the top,” she told Shepherd.
“Point blank and period. So what am I supposed to do, when I know that these things are happening around me and I have no control over it? Just suck it up, when I know my worth? I’m going to voice how I feel and if you don’t value me, then I’ll go.”
The bombshell interview also included claims from Heidi that several of the All Stars 8 queens were “breaking rules”, but she refused to name who – though she did declare that they got their “rightful elimination”.
Heidi added that she wished on the episode that she quit that her fellow contestants had joined her in leaving, as “all but two” of them had said it was their intention to exit early as well.
“I wish the other girls had walked out behind me too because they wanted to just as bad,” she revealed.
“Honestly, a lot of the other girls wanted to leave that same day. Most of them actually – all but two. It was Jimbo and Jessica [Wild], they didn’t want to go. Everyone else wanted to quit.”
