(L-R) Lexi Love, Onya Nurve, Jewels Sparkles and Sam Star attend "RuPaul's Drag Race" Season 17 Finale Red Carpet on March 27, 2025 in Pacoima, California.
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Gonzalo Marroquin
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Getty Images North America
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Topline:
Goloka Bolte is the most Emmy-nominated casting director for unscripted programming in television history. She's been nominated every year since the reality TV casting category was created in 2017, and won twice, for her work on the drag queen reality competition RuPaul's Drag Race.
The background: Over more than 15 years, the show has become a cultural phenomenon and boosted the careers of dozens of contestants who, once they make it on the show, compete each week in a variety of judged challenges — on things like impersonations, acting, dance, or sewing.
The context: Bolte has worked on more than 200 projects, including Million Dollar Listing, Millionaire Matchmaker and The Real Housewives, but she says the work that’s been most meaningful has been casting RuPaul’s Drag Race. She’s up for an Emmy again this year for her work on the show.
Read on... for more about what happens behind the scenes to cast the queens.
Goloka Bolte is the most Emmy-nominated casting director for unscripted programming in television history. She's been nominated every year since the reality TV casting category was created in 2017, and won twice for her work on the drag queen reality competition RuPaul's Drag Race. She’s up for an Emmy again this year for her work on the show.
Bolte has worked on more than 200 projects, including Million Dollar Listing, Millionaire Matchmaker and The Real Housewives, but she says the work that’s been most meaningful has been casting the cultural phenomena that is RuPaul’s Drag Race.
She sat down with LAist’s Antonia Cereijido to talk about what happens behind the scenes to cast the queens that make “herstory.”
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• 3:52
Goloka Bolte reflects on what it's like to cast Ru Paul's Drag Race
The casting team scouts contestants on Reddit
Goloka Bolte: We look at Reddit, we see you guys really. Everyone's always putting out their dream [cast]. I love those though, really. Redditers, please keep sending those lists. I'm always creeping through them. We basically are just stalking drag queens in whatever way that we can and we're getting recommendations.
The queens have to be multitalented — and yes, that includes knowing how to sew
Goloka Bolte: A queen needs to be able to do so much more than just slay a stage. A lot of people will see queens perform in their local bars and they're like, ‘Oh my God, she needs to be on the show.’ But you don't know if that queen can act, if she makes any of her costumes, if she can do characters, if she could do a Snatch Game, pick up choreography — all of it. And the queens that you see on the show have so much talent. So in this audition tape that we get from them we see their acting ability, we see their comedic chops, we see them do the lip syncs.
Antonia Cereijido: How important is the sewing aspect?
Goloka Bolte: I think that for any competition, the more well-rounded your skills are, the better. If you wanna be on Drag Race, you know, at some point there is going to be a sewing challenge. Get working on those glue gun skills!
The casting team watches thousands of submissions a year — in their PJs
Goloka Bolte: We get thousands of submissions every year and we have a very small team, so we spend a lot of time poring over all of these applications, and then inevitably, the tapes all kind of come in at once. And I'm like… you've had eight weeks! Get the tape in before the deadline if it's ready. But I understand everybody wants to make it perfect. So our last week of casting we are just back to back, going through all of these tapes cross-eyed in our pajamas. I don't plan anything socially during that time. We've gotta buckle down because we're gonna watch every single one of them.
Onya Nurve, winner of Season 17, poses in Times Square after the "RuPaul's Drag Race" Finale Watch Party on April 18, 2025, in New York City.
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Santiago Felipe/Getty Images for MTV
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Getty Images North America
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The show doesn’t cast for a villain
Goloka Bolte: We don't really ever cast for the villain. I'm never looking for a villain.
Antonia Cereijido: Really?
Goloka Bolte: Never. They cast themselves as the villain. I actually think because our message on the show really is overall about love, inclusivity, loving yourself, those beautiful workroom moments and all of that — I think when you get the villain arc, a lot of times it's a queen who had some growth [to do]. [She’s] not a true villain. It's a queen who had a growth story and it usually comes through and there's a great realization and lesson in it.
Casting director Goloka Bolte.
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Courtesy of Goloka Bolte
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Social media following does not matter
Goloka Bolte: We don't care about the following at all. I don't care if you have no followers at all. The one thing I would say is because we do so much of our scouting virtually, it helps if you at least have a social media page so that we can find you. If you wanna be on the show, make it easy for us to find you. But we're not doing any kind of calculation like, ‘Oh, this person has a big TikTok following, let's put them on the show.’ We really wanna find a person that is talented, has a story to tell, and is doing drag in like a fun, fresh, unique way.
