RuPaul's Drag Race Queen Mia Starr Says Working with Jennifer Lopez for Super Bowl 'Felt Like Hell'
- Kris Avalon
- 2 hours ago
- 5 min read
RuPaul's Drag Race season 18 queen Mia Starr is opening up about working with Jennifer Lopez during the Super Bowl Halftime.
via: EW
As Mia Starr previously told Entertainment Weekly, before she was a RuPaul's Drag Race season 18 fan-favorite queen, the superstar dancer worked on stage with industry legends like Britney Spears and Rihanna. Now, after initially recounting her experience on fellow Drag Race alum Mistress Isabelle Brooks' YouTube show, Mia opens up to EW about what she says was an "uncomfortable" gig as a backup dancer for Jennifer Lopez's 2020 Super Bowl halftime show in Miami.
In a new interview with EW, Mia looks back on the rehearsal period for the February 2020 performance, which saw Lopez take the Super Bowl LIV stage alongside Shakira. Mia says that she took the job on a direct booking after the halftime show's choreographer reached out to her and offered her a spot without an audition. Already an experienced dancer, Mia says she quit her job on the casting team for reality competition series The Voice and headed to rehearsals as one of Lopez's backup dancers.
On the second day of rehearsals, Mia says, Lopez showed up to evaluate the dancers, and that's when things got awkward for her.
"She looks at me, comes up next to me, and is like, 'Hey, can you take off your shirt?'" Mia claims to EW. "I did it, and the look of disgust she gave me... now, people are looking."
Mia says a "huge speech" followed, with the drag superstar remembering Lopez telling the dancers, "Guys, I need you to elevate yourself. You're dancing for me!" after looking at Mia's body.
"I get it, but I was like, bitch, this is literally day 2, and we have three months, and I know my body. I'm going to snatch it back if we're going to be dancing 60 hours a week. We have three more months, give me a break!" Mia says of her mindset at the time. She then alleges Lopez asked "all the boys" to take their shirts off for the next few hours of rehearsals, which "was so uncomfortable" for her to do, Mia says.
"It just felt like an icky feeling. But, as a dancer, obviously, you are getting paid to look good. But I was coming straight from office casting work. This job came out of left field, and I was grateful for it," she recalls, noting that she got herself into better shape as time went on. Still, she says that "to a normal person, I wasn't huge," but that Lopez "made it very clear that she was not pleased with my image, the way she gave that look of disgust. I was like, oh, this is embarrassing."
With a laugh, Mia says that, the next day, a catering truck with ice cream arrived outside of the rehearsal space, and that she made sure she "was one of the first people in line" to get a snack.
"I said, 'Thank you' [to Lopez]," Mia adds, laughing once again. "She gave that speech again, she was like, 'Guys, I need you to elevate yourself.' Clearly, at this point, I was like, she hates me. I'm so petty. If I know you don't like me, I'm going to do everything in my power to make you really not like me. I'm going to give you a reason to not like me."
Mia additionally claims that Lopez would "always come in rehearsals maybe the last two hours after we'd rehearsed eight hours of a 10-hour day, and she'd just be like, 'I hate it,' and give this big spiel," leading to changes in the set — which, Mia says, are often a standard part of the rehearsal process.
Lopez's portion of the Super Bowl show with Shakira also included several child performers, and Mia maintains that Lopez "was super sweet to the kids," but "would always pretty much remind [the adult dancers] that we look like s---," which led to more changes in the set.
"That's the process of dancing and production. Things are always going to change. But I was reminded that we looked a mess," Mia claims. "I'm busting my ass. This dream job wasn't what I expected in the sense that this is the biggest moment of a dancer's career, and it felt like hell up until the point of the performance," with which she says Lopez was ultimately pleased.
Further, Mia says that she wasn't aware of Lopez's 2022 Netflix documentary, Halftime, until she and the other dancers found out about it at the "last minute," when they were allegedly asked to sign releases to appear in the film without pay.
"I was like, no, you didn't put me through all of that to not pay me. I didn't sign the paper. There were a few of us that didn't sign. They somehow found a loophole to still put me in it," Mia alleges. After her team looked into the matter, "the team that made" the documentary sent her "a $20 check" as compensation, she claims.
"It was so insulting," Mia says. "I told my agent, 'You know what, actually, you can just please send this back, they clearly need it more than I do.' I sent it back, because it's super insulting. I just had to laugh at that point, I was like, this is unreal."
Echoing a sentiment she previously expressed to EW in an interview tied to Drag Race season 18 ("There's a couple [stars] that I will not dance for again," Mia said at the time), she clarifies now that she was, indeed, talking about Lopez in the moment.
"They asked me back for a random one-off," in Los Angeles, Mia says. "And I said no. I was like, nope, no, no, no, ever. Ever."
EW has reached out to a representative for Lopez for comment.
In addition to dancing for Lopez, Spears, and Rihanna, Mia rose to further prominence in the entertainment industry as part of the Drag Race season 18 cast. On the most recent edition of the Emmy-winning show, Mia finished in ninth place, though she courted major fan affection for her lip-sync performance against Juicy Love Dion to Zara Larsson's "Pretty Ugly."
The moment came after both queens won the week's challenge, and had to lip-sync for the overall win in what ended up being one of the best-reviewed lip-sync duels of the season.
Mia and Juicy would again lip-sync against each other in the penultimate season 18 episode, in which they faced off in the final round of the RuPaul-A-Paruza smackdown. Juicy eventually won the contest, scoring a $50,000 prize and the title of Queen of She Done Already Done Had Herses.
*****
Mia should have told her "I'll elevate myself when you elevate them vocals."
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