Fenton Bailey, film & TV producer, 63: Q&A

He’s the producer behind RuPaul’s Drag Race, and docos on Britney Spears and sexual subcultures. So what does Fenton Bailey look for in a subject?

Curious: Fenton Bailey

You’ve dedicated your life to capturing the world on film. What do you find stranger, fiction or reality? Oh, truth is stranger than fiction. Absolutely. You cannot make this shit up, you know? I think that’s why I love the reality genre and documentaries so much. People are so extraordinary.

RuPaul’s Drag Race has been the biggest hit for your production company World of Wonder – but you’ve also explored sexual subcultures and televangelists. Is touching on taboo subjects your modus operandi? My business partner Randy Barbato and I have always tried to make things that just interest us, and I think the only reason we wanted to do that is because those subjects really weren’t seen onscreen. We often think, ‘Well, here’s a good idea, no one’s done it before.’ We go into things naive and hopeful that it doesn’t cause too much backlash.

Backlash ... there’s an element of that happening now, with a push in parts of the US to ban drag shows – and that directly impacts your biggest work. How are you navigating it? I hold on to this idea that what’s being proposed [by advocates of a ban] can’t work and people won’t accept it. I don’t think anyone in history has ultimately proved successful in turning the clock back. Dolly Parton once said, “If I wasn’t born a girl I’d be a drag queen” – and she’s from Tennessee, so I don’t see how the laws being proposed there are going to work. I see these laws as the failure of politicians to effect any meaningful change in the areas that really matter, like healthcare, or climate change, or employment.

When it comes to the reality genre, how do you navigate the balance between showing people in their unfiltered form and knowing when to turn the cameras off? I suppose our approach is not considered a purist documentary form because when we’re making films we want people to trust us and feel comfortable revealing themselves. I think celebrities deserve some sort of respect, and if we don’t, they’re not going to trust us and they’re not going to reveal themselves. We won’t get the story.

How did that factor into your work with Britney Spears for the behind-the-scenes tour documentary I Am Britney Jean in 2013, and with the disgraced televangelist Tammy Faye for The Eyes of Tammy Faye in 2000? Britney and Tammy Faye have both done maybe a million interviews over the years, so it wasn’t just about them saying something different for us. Everyone wants that. I think with Tammy Faye, in particular, people always wanted to know what she was really like when she took off that intense make-up and the camera wasn’t running. But honestly, she was exactly the same.

Really? Totally. People think that drag is about hiding who you are, but RuPaul has always said drag doesn’t hide – it reveals who you are. I feel that Tammy’s drag revealed who she was. And I feel that Britney’s drag was just that of an ordinary person. No one really ever believed that because she’s this great performer. She really is just an ordinary person. And I think that is unacceptable to people.

So if everyone’s in drag, who’s the greatest drag queen of all time? You know there’s only one answer. RuPaul. I mean, no question.

The third season of Ru-Paul’s Drag Race Down Under is now streaming on Stan.