CBC Gem series ‘Queens’ spotlights the queens of Toronto

There’s suffering for your art and then there’s shivering for your art.

Toronto drag queen Jada Shada Hudson recalls doing the latter while shooting the CBC Gem series “Queens,” which debuts today, June 19, back in December.

“It was really, really, really chilly,” Jada said about the outdoor shoot. “And my outfit was not really winter. There were some girls, they were wearing scarves and mittens and everything, and I am there in a plastic jacket. But it was so fun to be a part of this project.”

“It wasn’t so bad that first day of filming when it was so freezing and I got to just lie around in that fur jacket,” joked her co-star, fellow Toronto queen Champagna.

“Whenever we were shooting outside everyone came rushing back into Crews (Church Street bar Crews & Tangos) to warm up,” added Justin Gray, who created the series. “Shoes came off because their feet were wet and hairdryers went to their feet, so it just smelt like warm, warm socks.”

Gray, a.k.a. drag queen Fisher Price, fell into drag performing a few years back after taking a breather from trying to break into the film and TV industry. And the more he performed, the more “little fun ideas” he started getting about the people and situations he encountered. “And then it snowballed into wanting to write this silly, campy whodunit … By taking myself out of the film world for a little bit I kind of found myself right back in it,” he said, chatting on a Zoom call with Jada, Champagna and their “Queens” co-stars Allysin Chaynes.

The six-part series takes place the day of the fictional Miss Church Street pageant in Toronto’s Gay Village. Someone is trying to sabotage the pageant, putting obstacles in the paths of the various contestants. In the case of Paper, Jada’s character, it starts with a visit to a strip club followed by a trip to the emergency room.

For Naomi, played by Allysin, a visit to the mall to exchange a bronzer ends up with her getting locked in a makeup store during a gas leak. Luckily, she has a bottle of wine and her insecurities to keep her company.

Allysin spent 13 hours shooting that scene overnight at a mall. Then she and Justin grabbed a few hours sleep, put their drag on and headed to the Beaver, their home bar on Queen Street West, for a show.

“We really honestly don’t know how we did it,” Justin said. “We shot basically a feature film in seven days, including multiple lead actors, several locations and dealing with winter weather as well.”

Besides the three queens I talked with, the show also stars Toronto drag performers Baby Bel Bel, Ivory Towers, Quick Lewinsky, Lucy Flawless and Lucinda Miu.

“It was such a fun thing to be a part of and such a cool thing to put your name on, and have yourself represented in a very interesting part of Canadian queer history,” said Allysin.

“It’s also a testament to a drag performer writing a show about drag performers starring drag performers,” she continued. “Justin really understands where we’re all coming from story-wise in terms of what he’s written, but can also understand how much each of us has been honing our individual public personalities over however long we’ve been doing drag.”

Allysin came to drag out of art school, OCAD University to be precise, where she had been using drag makeup as part of her practice. Champagna was looking to vent her creative energy after finding limited success as a queer, male actor. Doing drag, “all the doors started opening,” she said. And Jada, who sings and dances, had been performing as a man in talent shows in the Village but got talked into trying drag after losing a contest to a drag performer at Crews & Tangos.

Her drag name is borrowed from two Black performers she admires, actor Jada Pinkett Smith and singer Jennifer Hudson. Champagna’s flowed, if you’ll pardon the pun, from “a really drunk-ass night” with friends and, yes, champagne. And Justin picked his after being in a Codeine-induced haze in a hospital waiting for surgery and spotting a kids’ Fisher-Price play phone.

Allysin shares her name, a play on 1990s grunge band Alice in Chains, with “a five-foot-tall Romanian porn star. I think I’m beating her in Google results now, which is really exciting. And hopefully this show helps more. My life’s goal is just to outrank her on Google.”

All the queens were excited to share “Queens” with the world. Besides checking it out on CBC Gem, you can go to pridetoronto.com as part of its Pride Month “Feature Fridays” for a special screening of “Queens” and panel party with the cast beginning tonight at 9 p.m.

“I’m intensely proud of the crew and cast that we have together for this project,” Justin said. “It filled me with so much happiness to have a heavily LGBT, POC crew as well as having seasoned veterans that have been working in Canadian television for years now that were strong allies and really pulled all the strings they could to make a lot of things for the show possible.”

“Justin won’t say this about himself … but we could not have asked for a better script, a better series or a better showrunner,” added Allysin. “It’s refreshing to have a queer series, and especially a queer series about drag, that is not necessarily about each one of our personal hardships or upbringings or adversities that we face. It’s us being viewed as people who work in a job and have experiences.

“It was a dream to work on,” she said. “We got to wake up every day and get paid to go hang out with our friends and say funny things written by one of our friends.”

Note: If you’d like to read more about “Queens,” go to thestar.com to read my Toronto Star interview with the cast as well as Brooke Lynn Hytes of “Canada’s Drag Race.”