“It is a true gift to be able to tour with her”

Bob The Drag Queen performing at The O2 on December 6, 2023 – Photo by MadonnaTribe

The New York Post talks to Bob the Drag Queen ahead of the opening night of The Celebration Tour at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center tonight.

The popular Season 8 winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2016 first met the Queen of Pop while hosting her New York Pride show at Terminal 5 in June 2022. Bob recalls:

I mean, I wish I could have a story like, ‘She spat in my face and called me a bitch,’ but she didn’t. She was a really cool lady. She’s pretty normal.

Bob – who identifies as nonbinary and goes by Caldwell Tidicue out of drag – has been hyping up the crowd before Madonna takes the stage and opens the show since the tour launched in London in October.

Just the fact that Madonna is able to touch so many people 40 years into her career… is amazing. We did six shows at the O2 arena, sold out every single time, and that says something.

It takes Bob a good two hours to get into hair, makeup and corset to make his grand entrance in a replica of the Marie Antoinette costume Madonna famously wore to perform Vogue at the 1990 MTV Video Music Awards, after borrowing it from the Dangerous Liaisons stage wardrobe for Glenn Close.

Getting in the garment itself is maybe, like 10 minutes. Putting on the makeup is a longer process, for sure.

As our readers know, Bob is not Madonna’s opening act but an important part of the show throughout its 2 hours and 10 minutes run. The first time he returns on stage is as a sad clown while Madonna is suspended in the air performing Live To Tell in loving memory of all the bright lights we lost to AIDS, surrounded by images from The AIDS Memorial project.

We actually did it on World AIDS Day, which was really kind of wild. It means a lot every single time we do it, but to do it on World AIDS Day was really like a make-the-hairs-on-your-arm-stand-up experience.

Bob also hits the runway as the ballroom MC during Vogue and explains:

This is a real tribute to the ballroom scene and to the riotous nature of New York City nightlife and the Stonewall riots and just… all of it. And I just love that we get to have a ball and that we have the iconic voice of Kevin Jz Prodigy on the track. What an honor to have Kevin’s voice there.

Read the full interview at The New York Post.