‘I felt the shame for many years’: drag queen Courtney Act ahead of Hong Kong show
- Australian reality TV star and programme host Courtney Act talks about feeling shame doing drag and how Cher’s trans son Chaz Bono turned things around
- She will perform two shows in Hong Kong on March 21 and 23 at Sevva, after which she will return to Australia to work on her second memoir
Courtney Act was easily one of the biggest breakout stars from reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race, placing runner-up in the sixth season in 2014, and has been moving from strength to strength ever since.
Act first stepped into the limelight in 2003 when she competed in the first season of Australian Idol, making her the first openly LGBTQ contestant to compete in a reality TV show.
Act identifies as she/her in drag and is gender fluid otherwise, and still uses his birth name, Shane Jenek, when not in drag. She is also one of the few drag acts to sing live rather than lip-synch.
The last time Act was in Hong Kong, her show at Sevva was cancelled due to citywide protests in 2019, and the world has become a very different place since then. A global pandemic, the war in Ukraine and an increasing polarisation of gender in politics had led Act to relocate back to Sydney, Australia.
“Well, I lived in LA during the Obama years, the glory days,” he says. “Then I moved to the UK and I felt so grateful, but I had an Australian passport and had the opportunity to go to different places when some of my friends couldn’t.
