Drag Race UK star Paige Three on her original Snatch Game plan: ‘I was so frustrated’

Extra, extra! Read all about it: Paige Three, arguably the biggest fan favourite of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK season seven, has been taken off the shelves. As they say, today’s news is tomorrow’s chip paper.

Throughout her Drag Race UK tenure, Paige Three became a main character for her bundles of charm and charisma, killer runway looks and her weeks-long battle for a RuPeter badge.

Of course, that wish finally came true in week six, when she won the Rusical challenge alongside Elle Vosque. So when Snatch Game – ahem, ‘Snatch Me Out’ – came about this week, in which she performed as a Scouse woman who voices Alexa, landing in the bottom two with her Soho bestie Bones was a bit of a “fall from grace,” in her words.

Speaking to PinkNews hours after being eliminated, Paige Three explains why she thinks she might not have failed Snatch Game had it not changed into a dating show format, the challenge she really wanted to win, and how she became this season’s go-to therapist for the other queens. 

PinkNews: Hey Paige Three! You’ve been a huge fan-favourite this season. I hope that’s offered you some comfort despite being eliminated.

Paige Three: It’s a good cushion from going home from the show. Losing is the new winning!

You were one of the more known queens going into the show. How did that affect your hunger for winning a RuPeter badge or wanting to go as far as possible?

Paige Three: I think that’s more of an expectation I guess. If more people know what you can do or what they think you do, that is an expectation of what you’re gonna do. The feeling in yourself to make that happen for them is definitely there. But I tried not to get into that head space to be honest with you. I wanted for everybody to be on the same level playing field and me taking it as it came. I’m glad that I did it like that because I was able to not be too performative and be human and real in the situation.

Did that offer you peace when it came to being eliminated? You didn’t seem as crushed or devastated as other girls have done. 

Paige Three: What can you do? At the end of the day, RuPaul stood in front of you and just told you to sashay away. I can’t kick up a fuss. Obviously people, at that point of the competition, know how much this means to me and how much of a perfectionist I am in those things. They’ll know that I’m devastated inside. I don’t need to kick up a fuss because I can’t do anything about it, Barbara, she’s told you to leave!

You managed to bag a win for the Rusical, one of the main Drag Race challenges. Were there any other challenges you wished you could have won?

Paige Three: I really wanted to win the girl bands [challenge] and that was obviously very close. I wanted to win them all. Not possible, obviously. I wanted to win the first week as well. Interestingly, the ones that I was in the top for are the ones that I wanted to win, because they did attest to things that I’m best at. I wanted to win the first one the most ‘cos that was more personality and rapport based, and it was important for me going into the show that I broke straight away from walking in looking like Pamela Anderson and doing that kind of like c-u-n-t-y thing and to be like, I’m a human.  I think it would have been really great for me to win. 

So you could be sure that you’d left an instant mark?

Paige Three: Yeah. Michelle [Visage] said at one point, “I know what you do”. I hadn’t really had much of an interaction with her at that point. I felt like saying, “No you don’t. You can see what I look like, but you don’t know me. I’m looking forward to showing you who I am.”

Then we get to Snatch Game. You insinuated this episode that had it been a regular Snatch Game instead of ‘Snatch Me Out’, you would have performed better. Why?

Paige Three: I’m somebody who likes to be prepared. I prepared a package for Snatch Game and it had answers that could pretty much be wrangled to any question so that you don’t get stuck and I could be like ‘OK, I’ll turn that around and use this and then say that.’ So I had that plan but I think that the change up of the structure of Snatch Game definitely threw me because that plan instantly went out the window. When you’re there you have no time to change that. You have to get ready for it. You get told it’s happening, you do the walk through with Ru, you talk about it and then you’ve got to get ready for it. With this structure change there’s no time to rethink that.

If you slip, it’s like swimming upstream ‘cos you can’t get out of it. It was also really fun, I’m not gonna lie, but it’s silent in the room. RuPaul’s stood right in front of you. You’re getting thrown these questions. I was really enjoying the other girls and thinking that I wasn’t on Drag Race at all. It’s an intense challenge.

I felt for you, because you can clearly do a lot as Alexa, like Gigi Goode did with Maria the Robot.

Paige Three: I was like, at least with Alexa and nobody knows her, I could go off and do different things but what I did was my Liverpool Scouse behind Alexa – which was the woman behind the phone – I was meant to let out over time and then be the full Scouser at the end, being like, ‘I’m done! I’m getting out of here!’ But I’d let it out so early on. I was like, damn it. I’ve done the gag already. I just slipped up. I was so frustrated, because then what? My lineage of storyline had completely gone out the window.

How did you all keep you sh*t together being next to Bonnie Ann Clyde as Cher as a chair?

Paige Three: A lot of us didn’t darling, we were absolutely howling. It was so funny. Catrin was really making me die. She had all these Jaffa Cakes down her pleather top. I could just see smeared chocolate across her chest. And then sometimes the side profile view of Silllexa as Cassandra, you would not even believe. She was up against that [costume], but she was wearing just a bodysuit and stocking feet behind [it]. It was so funny that I was just enjoying my time. And then a question would come to me and I’m like, ‘Oh my God! I’m a contestant!’ Like I forgot. I feel like my Alexa could have been worse. 

I wanted to touch on your relationships with the other queens, who have all said you were a big support for them this season. Did you have a sisters over competition mindset?

Paige Three: I did see it as a competition for sure, but at the end of the day, what happens in a competition that is this intense is you go through the mental struggle of Drag Race. People at home don’t get it. It’s hard. It’s really really really hard. It’s very intense hours. You’re filming in a short amount of time. They’re asking a lot of you and you’re making a television programme at the same time while trying to brand yourself and present the best version of yourself to people at home. There’s a lot going on and that can affect you a lot mentally and I’m just the type of person where if I see somebody that is struggling – because I know what that’s like – I can’t not try and help.

There were a few times on camera that they cut out [where] people were having days. The chat I had with Bones [in this episode], that happened quite a few times with a few of the girls of me being like, ‘Right let’s pull you out this hole. We’re not doing this. Let’s get you back on your feet and let’s keep going.’ 

I​n all fairness in that episode I was in my feels too. [Bones] was obviously really in her feels on the nerves of speaking and stuff and where that came from, but I’m proud of myself…  I was in the bottom two. I was there as well. I was able to put aside my, honestly, personal embarrassment from that situation and how I was feeling – a fall from grace ‘cos I just won the week before – and be like no, I need to help my friend. So I am proud of that because I needed a little pep talk as well, I think.

Paige Three: I hope you got that from the other queens?

No, not really, but only because there wasn’t really time for it. But I’m an independent diva. I definitely gave myself a smack.

Paige Three: Talk to me about Bones – what was your relationship before Drag Race and how did the show change it?

We’ve known each other since COVID. We met in lockdown on social media. That’s how we became friends and then it translated itself into the London scene when I came onto it. We’ve been friends for a long time and friends go through different things and people from the outside sometimes influence friendships.

There were probably things that we needed to talk about previous to Drag Race and us being in that scenario, but I love the girl and she loves me. When it really comes down to it, you’re there for your sister.

Drag Race UK continues on BBC iPlayer on Thursdays in the UK and on WOW Presents Plus internationally.

Share your thoughts! Let us know in the comments below, and remember to keep the conversation respectful.