Out cover stars Trixie and Katya talk their dizzying rise to drag media moguldom

Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova are still in the business of drag, but they’re now queens ruling over a multimedia empire that’s venturing beyond RuPaul’s Drag Race frontiers, establishing its own resources, supporters, platforms, and ambitions.

Since their reality TV debuts in season 7 and viral breakout era with UNHhhh on YouTube, Trixie and Katya have spent the last 10 years growing a fanbase, building a diverse creative portfolio, and cataloging their real-life blossoming friendship. But as their jokes, vulnerabilities, milestones, and videos broke the internet, they inevitably also shattered conventional drag rubrics. Trixie and Katya’s kind of success felt obvious to the online realm yet totally foreign for TV queendom standards, tasking them — among other queer pioneers — to draw a new blueprint: one that merged digital channels and traditional networks, and that translated internet platforms and legacy institutions to one another.

Photography by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

This balancing act of trying to meet every expectation, everywhere, all at once, is not an easy job. Plus, sustaining a decade-long creative partnership is rarely as glamorous as an Albert Sanchez photograph, and almost never as funny as the final edit of an UNHhhh episode.

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“We almost quit the pod after starting it during COVID,” Trixie says of The Bald and the Beautiful, the podcast the pair launched in 2020. “We were like, ‘Do we like this? Are people even listening?’”

Katya nods, “I remember. It was a little weird.”

“It was COVID, so we’re filming in my living room,” Trixie sets the scene. “I’m setting up the cameras, the sound, and literally transferring the video files remotely. Once we got more partnerships, we could just show up and scream at each other. That’s the sweet spot.”

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The podcast survived. In fact, it hit 780,000 subscribers on YouTube and a reported 100 million lifetime downloads via RSS in July, leading Trixie and Katya to sign a three-year deal with the SiriusXM podcast network, weeks after Trixie made headlines for signing with powerhouse agency CAA. The podcast also inspired the Very Bald, Very Beautiful tour, with dates booked for the rest of the year and through 2027.

Reflecting on this victory-lap year for their careers, Trixie and Katya remain remarkably and hilariously grounded, dodging earnest compliments and congratulations like Neo in The Matrix.

“I have a very neutral attitude towards success,” Katya says. “I suppose I would probably have a more enthusiastic one if it started slipping away? [Laughs.] I’m very grateful for it, but I’m not the type of person who’s like, ‘Where’s the champagne, fuckers? We fucking did it! Yeah, we did that, girl. We ate that. We tore that. We fucking ate. We’re the best. No one can get this SiriusXM pussy!’ I just don’t think like that.”

Photography by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

Trixie notes that “success is about how you define it,” and adds that Katya “does notice when things do well, and calls me in borderline encouragement, sometimes in disbelief. ‘Mary, do you know people listen to the pod? Somebody came up to me and said they listen to the pod.’ And she’s being really earnest.”

As if they weren’t already having a banner year, Trixie and Katya also launched their highly anticipated Patreon (affectionately dubbed the “P Slur”), an online platform where creators can earn income directly from followers. The nickname was an immediate hit among fans, obviously, and it was bound to spawn further variations.

“Did you know that, on the P Slur, they’re calling people who don’t have the Patreon ‘non-P-lievers?’” Trixie tells us. We all laugh, and Katya says she loves the new term. But she confesses that joining the P Slur was a tentative experiment for her even as the page went live, explaining why she felt motivated to find a more positive corner of the internet.

Photography by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

“I’ve noticed in my behavior over the last however many years that if I’m reading a YouTube comment on a video that I’m in, I’m not in a good place. At least for me,” Katya admits. “I waded through the muck of the YouTube comments when we did our Patreon announcement on our regular podcast. They were almost uniformly negative, and I was naïvely shocked.”

Beyond the shock, Katya admits that the comments “hurt my feelings, a lot, and made me extraordinarily angry.”

The comments ranged between “They’re selling out,” “How rich do they need to get?” and “How greedy,” Katya recalls. But one comment stood out to her above all. “It was like, ‘I have never wanted something to fail more in my life,’ which is just so mean.” The overall vibes of those comments made Katya feel like stepping away from online spaces.

“If you’re a crackhead, you don’t want to drive through the crack neighborhoods. So it was like, ‘Why am I wading through these digital neighborhoods? They have nothing to offer,’” Katya remarks. “I’m not even looking for constructive criticism. If I need criticism, I’ll ask any of our producers, or I’ll ask Trixie.”

Photography by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

It turns out that the P Slur is, among other things, acting like a gated community for intentionality.

“Everybody is on here on purpose, not just walking by and looking in the store window as they go to the cobbler,” Katya explains. “They’re purposefully and enthusiastically there. And I’m going to listen to what they have to say if I have the time. I’m inspired. All of the energy and desire that I have to share, whatever of my life that I want to share on social media, is all going to Patreon, and that’s it. It feels healthy for me. I love it.”

Trixie echoes the sentiment. “I feel good about it. It’s fun. Honestly, I feel like we’ve never done anything where fans are directly giving us money to pay for things we want to do together…. I feel like the Patreon is a third dimension,” she observes, which feels poetic, mirroring the role that editing played in UNHhhh as a sort of third invisible pillar that created fun chaos between them.

“We’re now getting vocal stims from them,” Trixie says, giggling. “We’ve given so many, and now we’re receiving them.”

Photography by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

Drag Race introduced Trixie and Katya to a world of fans, often through confessional scenes in which they presented out of drag. All Stars legitimized their leveled-up drag personas with fabulous runs, entirely unrelated to a crowning finale. UNHhhh established them as drag superstars, internet sensations, and queer icons — as the show itself reached unprecedented viewership and engagement on YouTube for drag-related IP without a Drag Race-esque production value.

But none of those shows were ever theirs. The podcast is. And so is the Patreon. “We have 100 percent creative control,” Katya says of The Bald and the Beautiful and of the P Slur. “And we like autonomy,” Trixie adds.

Photography by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

When UNHhhh ended in late 2023, gossipy fans jumped to the conclusion that something awful must have happened. But there was no tea, no shade, no pink lemonade from any of the parties involved. World of Wonder, the show’s production company, kept making successful and award-winning TV shows, documentaries, films, web series, and beyond. Trixie and Katya also moved on with other projects.

Katya looks forward to their new partnership with SiriusXM, musing that “it feels nice to be brought on to a global company; it’s a mark of success.” In turn, working with plenty of creative collaborators over the years helped her realize that “it doesn’t have to be anything more than that.”

More importantly, love for the art that’s been created doesn’t have to disappear. “We actively talk about it and miss it,” Trixie says of UNHhhh. “We talk about, ‘Wouldn’t it be fun to do an UNHhhh holiday special?’ We miss the green screen. We miss the editing. We miss our editors. Jeff [Maccubbin] was at our show Sunday. Ron [Hill], one of our editors, has an UNHhhh tattoo. We all love that shit,” Trixie adds.

In an entertainment industry that frequently runs on petty drama and “spilling tea,” Trixie and Katya aggressively refuse to participate in the noise. They aim to be funny, and that’s it.

Photography by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

“It doesn’t age well...ever,” Katya says of feuds. “Not to be corny, but if you think about a mission statement or a modus operandi, you can’t go wrong with just being funny. If you’re just like, ‘Let’s try not to be an asshole, and just keep it funny, and keep it light.’”

Katya examines how it’s “really tempting, really seductive” to feed into drama. “It’s very entertaining for the bottom feeders because it fucking gives them money through four weeks’ worth of videos.”

Trixie chimes in: “I mean, it sounds really crazy, but we’re kind of in the Trixie and Katya industry. All of our jobs are Trixie and Katya jobs. So we actually get excited when we see other drag queens. It doesn’t happen enough, frankly. That’s why most of our guests, and stuff we have, are from older seasons. We don’t even get to meet these girls.”

Beneath all the branding, the podcasts, and the tours lies the core element driving the success story of Trixie and Katya: a genuine, profound friendship.

After meeting as competitors on season 7 and going viral with two YouTube videos — a stint on Bestie$ for Ca$h followed by a meta-commentary episode of Fashion Photo RuView called Trixie & Katya’s Fashion Photo RuView, RuView of Raja & Raven — Trixie and Katya cohosted UNHhhh, where their new friendship unfolded in public view. In a candid moment from episode 58, “Death,” Trixie tries to set up a joke about a wig caught in a washing machine, but Katya misses the punchline a few times. Instead of getting annoyed or forcing the bit, Trixie drops the drag persona for a moment, stares right at Katya, and says, “I just like you.”

The 2019 documentary Trixie Mattel: Moving Parts, which centers Trixie’s journey of winning All Stars 3, features a heartbreaking scene — authorized by the queen to include it — of Katya struggling with her mental health due to substance abuse and halting production on an episode of Viceland’s The Trixie & Katya Show. In between takes of Katya talking with producers, the film shows a deeply vulnerable and emotionally complex scene of Trixie working through concern for her friend’s wellbeing; feeling physically uncomfortable in drag herself; and verbalizing, “Nobody’s going to want to see me without her,” admitting a genuine uncertainty about whether she’s interesting enough or popular enough to carry the show on her own (and specifically, sans Katya).

Photography by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

Since becoming a public person, Katya has maintained radical sincerity about her ups and downs with substance abuse, struggles with professional burnout, and evolving dynamics with friends and creative partners. Trixie has taken longer to open up and show such bare vulnerable sides of herself, but she often credits Katya and their friendship as teaching her how to now advocate for herself at times when she, too, feels an emotional toll for professional or personal reasons.

Life happened a few more times for both queens over the years. Notably, the workhorse Trixie reached a burnout breaking point that prompted her to take a career sabbatical between July and October 2024. The break was followed by a romantic split, and she was supported by Katya — filming episodes of The Bald and the Beautiful podcast by herself for many months — the whole way through.

Earlier this year, Katya was hospitalized between April and May for an emergency bowel obstruction surgery, spending 10 days with a nasogastric (NG) tube. By May 10, Katya announced she was back home, the tube had been removed, and she could eat and drink regularly again. In that period, Katya shared on social media a photo of herself wearing the NG tube and dubbed the situation “body jail.” Though Katya was trying to lighten the mood for fans who felt worried (and some who made assumptions that this was something that it was not), a remarkable outpouring of love for her wellbeing still flooded social media. This response demonstrated the compounding power of vulnerability for an artist who’s stayed truthful, no matter what, over the course of their career.

During their photo shoot for the Out cover, Trixie and Katya were asked to share what they love most about one another. Katya starts, “What I love most about Trixie is that she reads [Kurt] Vonnegut, and she despises toxic waste. And the only reason Trixie Mattel does her homework buck naked is ’cause the library’s so hot.”

Photography by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

“She inspires me to be a better person,” Trixie says. “She cares about things that I think most people should care about.” Katya adds, “Like human lives, blood.”

“And she doesn’t care about things that many of us find ourselves too worried about,” Trixie remarks.

Katya says that Trixie “inspires me to wonder why people work so hard.”

“She inspires me because it’s like, ‘Girl, you live alone. Have that ice cream.’” Trixie observes. “She inspires me to indulge in that late-night snack. ‘Yeah, you deserve it.’”

Going along with the visual, Katya heightens the scene: “You know, it’s like the angel and the devil. I’ve got both hands on both shoulders, and I’m going, ‘Go on, girl. You deserve it.’”

Jokes aside (or sort of), Trixie points out that they do get compared to contrasting figures. For instance, “If it was up to me, we would work every day. If it was up to you, we wouldn’t be here at all. So we really find our...what is it?”

“Yin-yang,” Katya replies. “I’m the yin, she’s the yang.”

Photography by Albert Sanchez and Pedro Zalba

For mass audiences, seeing two queer men build a platonic, loving bond on camera — without any premise like coming together for a makeover event, or pitting some against others in a competitive framing — has been quietly groundbreaking.

This is true not only for younger generations who see this as an existing dynamic, but also for aging men (straight included) who studies show are struggling to make friends at an older age.

When praised for modeling a kind of healthy, aging friendship for people who may struggle to find it elsewhere, Katya is touched.

“Thank you. You know what? Thank you so much. That’s really sweet,” she says, noting the irony of sometimes having more in common with straight male friends watching their videos than with queer men.

Trixie reflects, “It’s weird that people are always like, ‘Oh, I just love them together. I love your friendship,’ because we became friends on camera. We met on Drag Race, but we knew nothing about each other when UNHhhh started, really.”

“In a way, I think people who watch UNHhhh and who listen to us now, they haven’t really missed anything.... You can watch the moment we met, and you can track all of this,” Trixie says. “We’ve changed a lot, too. We’ve gotten older. We’ve worked together over 10 years. When I started working with Katya, I was 24.”

“That’s crazy,” Katya marvels. “I mean, you’ve got to go through life with other people. And, romantically, people come and go. If you’re lucky, you get one for a good long time...but it often does not happen that way.”

Katya adds, “I have friends of 20 years. It can absolutely happen with friends.”

The Bald and the Beautiful with Trixie and Katya is now streaming on major platforms. Check trixieandkatya.com for upcoming tour dates.

This cover story is part of OUT’s Sept-Oct 2026 print issue, on newsstands Sept 1. Support queer media and subscribe — or download the issue through Apple News+, Zinio, Nook, or PressReader starting Aug 20.

Out's September/Octorber 2026 cover with cover stars Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova

talent Trixie Mattel @trixiemattel & Katya Zamolodchikova @katya_zamo
photography Albert Sanchez & Pedro Zalba @sanchezzalba
creative director Mikey Lombardo @djmikeypop
beauty Ryan Carpenter @fenabarbitall
videographer Chase Finn @imchasefinn
writer Bernardo Sim @bernardosim