Orion Story was broke and broken when she flew to Los Angeles to be on RuPaul’s Drag Race.
Beyond having no money, the Grand Rapids drag queen was going through withdrawal and dealing with her mother’s suicide. To put it simply, she was straight-up unprepared.
“We were in quarantine in our hotel rooms for a week before filming and I was so stressed out,” she remembers. “I had nothing. I was still working on my costumes and wigs in the hotel room and definitely wasn’t as prepared as I could have been, but I did the best I could with what I had.”
Winning the show would have made for a great story of triumph with the odds so stacked against her, but she got eliminated on the first episode of her season and was brought back for a second chance only to sashay away for good in episode five.
In case you aren’t huge fans of RuPaul’s Drag Race like we are, let us catch you up right quick. Orion Story was the first Michigan queen to compete on the iconic reality show for a chance at being crowned America’s Next Drag Superstar. She was on season 14 of the Emmy Award-winning show.
Getting eliminated in the first episode is every queen’s worst nightmare, but Orion Story had a feeling she wasn’t actually getting sent home. When she got harsh critiques on her final episode and had to go up against the lip sync assassin Jorgeous, however, she knew her time was up, forreal this time.
“I didn’t know Jorgeous before the show, so I didn’t know what kind of entertainer she was,” she remembers. “And then I saw her practicing in the workroom and I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I'm going home.’”
For someone who was born in Grand Rapids and spent most of their life between the “Beer City” and nearby Spring Lake, making it on the show was a dream — although a frightening and stressful one.
“Putting yourself from the middle of nowhere, Michigan, to L.A. in front of 30 cameras and millions of people, is very nerve-racking,” she says.
As a teenager, Orion Story (whose real name is Chance Lambert) says she would make her own costumes and style wigs from Party City.
“I guess I was just subconsciously preparing myself for the show,” she says with a laugh. “It’s always kind of been there in a way. I have so many pictures of me when I was 5 with T-shirts and towels on my head as wigs, and I remember back in the day when I had a cassette player I would perform for my family to Britney Spears and come up with my own choreography. They just knew I was going to be in show business.”
Eventually, Orion and her mother started watching Drag Race together, and it was her mom who began encouraging her to start doing drag and audition for the show.
“It was our thing,” she says. “We wouldn’t watch it without each other, and she’d always say, ‘I could see you doing that. I could see you going on the show and winning, and being super successful.’ And I was just kind of like, yeah, whatever.”
But after her mother’s struggle with bipolar disorder ended in suicide by drug overdose, Orion Story started performing drag as a tribute to her. (“Story” is her mother’s maiden name, and “Orion” just sounded whimsical in front of it, she says.)
“I was actually going to school for audio engineering at the time, but then after my mom passed away, I kind of just started doing (drag),” she says. “It was a way to feel close to my mom again because every time I would do drag, everyone was like, ‘Oh my god, you look exactly like your mom.’ That’s what really started fueling it for me. I’m not, like, a religious person, but I feel like my mom has always been kind of here with me.”
She decided to audition for Drag Race and got cast on her first try at 24 years old. The now 26-year-old queen had only been doing drag for about a year and a half at the time but had already won several pageants and gone on tour.
She says she was also struggling with substance abuse and knew getting on the show was her last chance to turn her life around.
“I needed to make changes in my life and it was now or never,” she says. “I decided I don’t want to waste any more time. When I flew out for Drag Race is when I just stopped everything cold turkey and it was rough.”
She adds, “The best things that you can do for yourself are when you’re scared. I kind of already knew if I auditioned, I’d get on, but I also knew that I wasn’t ready for it. Still, I don’t regret it because I needed to do it.”
Watching the show after it aired in January 2022, Orion Story says she realized she was holding back because she wasn’t in the right mindset. On the show, she often seemed dazed and reserved.
“During Drag Race, I had such a huge wall up,” she says. “Especially after my mom died is kind of when I started building these walls. I was suppressing a lot of my emotions during Drag Race. I remember having a conversation with Deja (Skye) when we were getting ready in the mirror and I was telling her I hadn’t been able to cry in years. It was hard for me to allow myself to feel emotions.”
She continues, “It was a little bit of me grieving, but it was moreso, ‘Oh shit, this is happening and I’m doing this because of [my mom] and I want to make her proud.’ The pressure just really stressed me out.”
Not being as experienced as the other girls, Orion Story still hadn’t figured out who she was, either.
“I have never felt as happy and free and like myself as I have lately — and it’s really all because of Drag Race, honestly.”
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“Back home everyone tells you how amazing and sickening and talented you are, and then you get there and you’re literally competing with the best of the best,” she says. “These are really big personalities who have been doing it for a long time and they’ve established brands for themselves. Then here’s little old me. I didn’t really have a sense of what my brand was, I was just kind of like, ‘Here I am, and this is my drag.’”
Now she understands her purpose on the show wasn’t to win, but to process her grief.
“After filming ended, I was fine and then it started airing and watching it back brought back a lot of negative emotions. I was really depressed,” she says. “When you’re watching yourself go through all this emotional baggage in front of millions of people, it’s very overwhelming, but I’m grateful for it. One of the best things I got from the show was the ability to be myself and just be free again. Watching myself be so guarded has allowed me to drop a lot of walls down and be more open to my emotions — not just the good ones but the bad ones too, because that’s what makes us human.”
She adds, “I have never felt as happy and free and like myself as I have lately — and it’s really all because of Drag Race, honestly.”
Now, she confidently describes her style of drag as “if you took Barbarella and put her on a runway in Sesame Street.”
“I love very weird and campy art and fashion, but still very vintage glamor,” she says. “It’s like a good combination of all of that. I love puppets and making puppets and I just love things that make my neurodivergent brain happy — so very bright colors, fun, humor, just being stupid and allowing myself to get ugly.”
She plans on bringing her glamorous comedy to this year’s Dirty Show with all new numbers every night.
“I’m definitely planning on turning it out,” she says with sass. “I’m used to people discounting me, but it doesn’t bother me because I’m cool as fuck and I know I’m the shit.”
The Dirty Show runs 7 p.m.-2 a.m. Feb. 10-11 and 17-18 at the Russell Industrial Center; 1600 Clay St., Detroit; see full schedule of events at dirtydetroit.com. Tickets start at $45, ages 21 and older only.
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