Jaremi Carey dishes on Pokémon gays, drag vs. cosplay, and why you should watch your nuts around him
A post shared by JAREMI CAREY (@justjaremi)Most of the world first met Jaremi Carey through his drag persona, Phi Phi O’Hara.
A finalist on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 4 who later returned on the Drag Race All Stars 2 (still a top-tier season), Phi Phi found herself painted as one of the franchise’s “villains,” a role the sweet and sensitive Carey was reluctant to play—and has since spoken about at length.The gag is, Carey is Phi Phi no longer—he goes by “Just Jaremi” on his social channels, including Twitch where he has thousands of followers—but these days he doesn’t really mind being painted as the villain, or the hero, or anything in between… so long as he’s the one doing the painting.That’s because, in the years since Drag Race, Carey’s carved out his own path, one that includes gay-ming, original music, makeup, and cosplay—which is essentially another form of drag, if you think about it. (Don’t worry, we’ll get into it.)Thriving and Twitch-ing on a regular basis, we caught up with Carey between livestreams to feature him as the latest guest in our rapid-fire Q&A series, Dishin’ It.
In our conversation, the artist and performer tells us all about what he sees as the similarities (and differences) between drag and cosplay, the seasonal staple he’s surprisingly a collector of, and how The X-Men helped him embrace his own queerness.A post shared by JAREMI CAREY (@justjaremi)Is there a piece of media—whether a movie, TV series, book, album, video game, etc…—that you consider a big part of your own coming-out journey, or that has played an important role in your understanding of queerness?
Why does it stand out to you? Hands down, X-Men played a HUGE part in my journey, not only as a queer kid, but coming from a home of.
