Jonny McGovern Spills The Tea on Hey Qween!

Hello everyone and welcome back for some more Drag Race gossip, secrets and drama. So today I have something a little bit different planned and I have someone very special with me here. My guest today is a stand up comedian, actor, podcaster, musician and songwriter who you may know by his alter ego, the Gay Pimp. His big break came when he starred in Logo's late night comedy show aptly called The Big Gay Sketch Show, but you may know him best for his widely popular YouTube show Hey Qween where

he interviews a host of colourful characters including queens from RuPaul's Drag Race. He's now started a new chapter of his varied career now that Hey Qween has officially moved to Wow Presents Plus and he's here with me today to spill all the piping hot tea so please welcome the gayest daddy there is, the hilarious Johnny McGovern! I've made it! The gayest daddy there is! Thank you Gay Jesus and thank you Drag Tea with Matt. Oh honey. I thought you might like that. Of course I am what I am, wh

at can I say? Thank you so much for being here, it's so lovely of you to come on. I know obviously my audience was very excited when I said that I'd be having you on my channel and obviously having a kiki and talking about obviously the legend that is Johnny McGovern and Hey Qween. Secrets and drama, honey we're gonna be here to spill the tea. Please do. I know all my audience are ready to sip all of that tea as well. Alright baby. Yeah but we're obviously very excited to speak to you and obviou

sly now with Hey Qween we'll discuss that a little bit but Hey Qween obviously widely popular show I love Hey Qween I've been watching it since the start definitely you're definitely kind of for me one of the OGs of doing particularly Drag Race interviews because I know that when I first before I even became a content creator on YouTube I used to watch Hey Qween all the time and actually you're probably one of the people that would be my I guess inspirations for wanting to do YouTube because I u

sed to watch you all the time. I love Hey Qween. I love that. Thank you baby. Yes we were doing it before everybody was doing it I mean now honey that's one of the reasons why it felt so good to get with World of Wonder because as you know the book the girls have commitments everywhere to the big stars the Entertainment Weekly Viacom you got to get in there where you can so exactly it's really kind of the most exciting about doing this with World of Wonder this new season wasn't like can we get

them it was like we can get them and they're flying in you know what I mean like that's fun it's pretty it's really fun. No I definitely have so many questions about Hey Qween that I've wondered for years I mean we'll get on to that a little bit later I just wanted to first start off which obviously we'll talk about Hey Qween and obviously moving to My represents plus and everything because that's really exciting for you so well done on that but first I kind of just first we just wanted to talk

a little bit about I kind of mentioned a little bit in my intro so obviously you a lot of people will know you from Hey Qween but you've also got this massively varied career from before that as well you've got such a huge music catalogue you run the Big Gay Sketch Show so I was wondering if you could maybe just talk a little bit for people maybe that don't know that much about you outside of Hey Qween I was wondering if you could potentially just explain a little bit about that part of your jou

rney in your career. Early Johnny McGovern 101 students sit down the tale that begins. I looked you know I was an actor living in New York after being in acting school and I started doing a lot of my own characters and performing sort of one-man shows all over the place in New York and I ended up performing at a lot of cool places on the Lower East Side meeting cool people and I started doing a character called the Gay Pimp which was kind of a reaction to what was going on in pop at that time wh

ich is Eminem calling people a faggot and you know kind of a homophobic vibe and look the only way a Lower East Side alternative comedian could really protest was I'll write a gay musical about it so I wrote this musical called Gay Pimp versus Eminem the wrong fact to fuck with it was at midnight on Fridays and look it was a hot mess but it had original songs in it I sang songs like Girl I Fucked Your Boyfriend and the song that eventually popped out of that song that show Stock for Practice so

I had this weird Lower East Side career of performing at these tiny little gay bars but acting like I was doing a big pop spectacle with like five go-go backup dancers and drag queen cheerleaders and eventually that act got bigger and bigger till I got a producer met me and was like what do you want to do with this and I was like I want to make a music video and so this was before YouTube Matt so why the hell I thought it was narcissism that I was like a music video that's what I want to make we

made a music video for a song I did called soccer practice which is like sort of a parody of everything that's masculine that's supposed to make you feel as a queer person that maybe you didn't belong to it the military athletics sports soccer football army navy all that stuff that made us feel weird and it's gonna flip it and turns into an analogy for gay sex so we made this music video for this song and out of the blue it became this huge like hit like totally grassroots style started playing

at video bars all around the country gay guys were discovering it and sending it to each other the queer audience was finding it in clubs and it ended up getting downloaded like five million times from my website and let me tell you that was a rickety website that my friend made Matt this was early years but that video went wild start got added to MTV Europe and Asia and I suddenly have been this like sort of comedian on the Lower East Side had this side career as this gay pop star and honey I

went with it and what I did you know for eight years or so I made videos toured and then all the songs were very gay empowerment gay comedy, dickmatized, sexy nerd man areas and I kind of put it to the side for Hey Qween when I really was so involved in just the everyday of doing that but that was a whole sideline for me and then you know I was on a big I was on the first gay sketch show my co-stars are now much richer and more famous than me Kate McKinnon from Saturday Night Live and Oscar nomi

nee Coleman Domingo honey we shared a dressing room okay can I borrow twenty dollars and then you know I've been podcasting for 120 years I started so long ago almost 20 years started in 2006 with my first podcast Gay Pimping with Johnny McGovern and it became the first gay podcast to bust into the top 10 on iTunes and you know it was one of those ones that really affected a lot of people at a certain age too that were looking for a way to get into their queer identity queer celebration and that

's really what we did on that podcast so and I've just been hustling I've been doing gay stuff singing about dicks and butts and drag queens interviewing queer people telling queer stories also produced two seasons of Go Go for the Gold you know I was started off as a party promoter Matt so as a party promoter the parties that I threw were all like go-go based like the Go Go Boys were the stars and I knew you could have really star quality from just somebody on a box shaking their ass and that t

here was more than just like that's just their bodies there's like a lot of as much drama and characters are in drag queens Go Go Boys have that too so for OutTV we made a great two seasons sort of a Drag Race of Go Go called Go Go for the Gold with a wink of course the title to win was America's number one champion Go Go superstar star you had to say star twice it's a very serious title obviously you talked about your varied career and you've been on we will talk a little bit about the Kate McK

innon thing because someone asked a question about that we'll get to that a little bit later but obviously one of the things that you mentioned was obviously you've had such a varied career you were are really one of those pioneers I think which is what so many people said that you were out there doing the thing before so many people were because the technology just wasn't there at that point or it was only just starting to become there with podcasting and YouTube and all of that stuff and then

obviously that then led you on to Hey Qween eventually and obviously I think that's potentially what a lot of my audience probably would potentially know you from because it's Drag Race related a lot of it. This is the feel the drag tea is served. You were the original drag tea served. So with with Hey Qween I was just wondering if you could sort of I always thought it was just such a cool show and I thought it was so interesting the way that you always had such amazing guests on and you'd get t

hem to spill the tea and we didn't really have anything like that at the time and even since there's not really anything like that where the queens are so sort of open and we'll just talk and spill the tea and I always felt like it just came across as so professionally done in the sense that it looked so polished and had the queens that I was always just wondering how Hey Qween came about and how you managed to get all of those amazing guests on. Johnny hustle. Like there was no nothing special

about getting them. I sent them emails and Instagram messages. Look I think people when I started the show I thought it would be something I do quickly maybe a conversation like a conversations with Johnny McGovern. It was going to be called Hey Qween but I figured we would just say Hey Qween and then I'd chat didn't really think of it in that same way and I've told this story before but when I started thinking of Lady Red in the mix I hearkened it back to the old like Tonight Show with Johnny C

arson and his sidekick Ed McMahon and they would chat up front and then the guests would come on and Ed McMahon would still be on the side making comments and being himself. And I thought you know that would really work for a show with Lady Red so that she would be there we would chat up front. We were great friends and could just improv and have fun and then she can just go off and not have to pay too much attention but look really pretty have a snack comment when necessary when she wanted to a

nd that just sort of allowed through creating like a little world that I thought people could come into because it was the two of us. It was like you were coming into our little bubble and it helped that RuPaul was one of the first guests. It made the other Drag Race girls take notice that detox came on. I think after detox came on Willam asked to come on and then you know it was like more like they just kept coming and coming and then also at that same time Drag Race was going from like our thi

ng in terms of the queer community to like the world's thing. You know the first bunch of seasons were still it was still like we knew them they were stars to us but they weren't fully out there killing it mainstream style which is really what it is became and so we grew with them and you know I had a studio that backed me and helped us continue to grow but very tight budgeted operation and I edited everything. I booked the guest. I mean I did a million jobs. There are always people supporting i

n different roles but it almost got to a point where I got burned out because I was like we're delivering Hey Qween, Look at Hut, Drag Fan, all these other seasons of shows and really was like me in an office being like okay. So yeah it was a lot of hustle is what it was. Lady Red lived with me so we could be the time to go. Let's go. We're going to the studio to get my purple Corolla. Let's go. Lady Red also it was kind of like a muse for me so we would have fun imagining like what are you goin

g to wear for the show. What do we need? What are we going to talk about? And because we hung out so much and spent so much time together we didn't even think about that. Like we could you know turn on on a dime and how it got done was just a lot of hard work. I think the guests also kind of knew me from being in the music videos and the gay pimp so it wasn't like I was an unknown entity. People kind of knew who I was who had seen me maybe when they were teenagers or whatever. So I think that al

so helped people open up and also that I just wanted to talk to I'm an artist talking to another artist and I want to I would find out as much as I could about them and just try to have a great conversation. I mean spilling the tea just all happened by accident. That was just like getting people really comfortable and then they start to spill the tea. That's why we would film Hey Qween with them and then we would film Look at Her right away after. By the time you got through Hey Qween you were r

eally ready. You were like I'm just on the couch like chilling. Yes let me tell you about the time that she got a fight with me on first and they called the pizza gate. You know I mean like that's that kind of thing. That's why I think that worked that way. And look the pressure to spill the tea on everyone from my end from their end. It's a lot because everybody's the team got to get the day that day. Did you get to but did you fight. You know I mean like. The pressure on that can be a lot. So

you just got to like try to have fun try to get new information out of someone. That's what I always want to know like what don't we know we saw you on the show but like what don't we know. Yeah and I definitely think that how it had that's how it came across that you were genuinely a fan of the show and that you really wanted to find out more about the queens as artists because they are artists at the end of the day. And I always what I thought was really fun was you definitely have a way of yo

u're so naturally charismatic and funny that it kind of I guess gets people relaxed and they're more likely to spill the tea and be themselves and not be like sort of someone who's on a camera you know being all stiff and having to think about what they say. And I thought you brought that out in the queens and that's why I think so much of the show was it was so successful and still is obviously on YouTube I'm talking about it before it moved over because it was just so authentic and also we all

love a bit of tea when you know the Pizzagate thing you talked about so many of those moments were iconic and they've just been talked about so much within the Drag Race world. Yeah I mean we definitely caught some shit where I was like wow all right and you know nobody ever really called and said take that out and if they did we did. But I honestly I can't even think of anybody coming in and saying you can't put that in there. I don't think that even happened ever once you know I definitely cu

t out boring parts but that you know that's what you do as an editor you feel free to do that for me on this Matt no problem. I used to I edit myself when I do my videos and I think oh god so I can't think that is something I'm well aware of that. I know that's the greatest power of being the host and the editor is because you can be like no I look stupid what that was a terrible angle we are not using that well let me crop this in. So in terms of Hey Qween obviously I'd love to kind of get more

into kind of the actual the episodes and the things that happened on it so I was just wondering obviously you've now moved over to Wary Presents Plus and we'll talk about that in just a second but in terms of the show when it was first on and on the YouTube era I suppose if you want to call it I was just wondering if you could potentially talk a little bit about one of your favorite moments from the show or maybe a moment that really stood out to you like was it RuPaul coming on because that wa

s so validating and Michelle or was it is there another moment that really sticks out in your mind? I mean look RuPaul will probably always be like one of the ones where it's like oh because I was so into RuPaul as a teen I was into Super Mario World I was into Star Booty I mean the early Star Booty before Super Mario World even happened because I did backwards research and was like you know well RuPaul articles so that was a big deal. I feel like it's the shows where people who I grew up being

into that really made an impression on me like we had Jack A. Harry from 227 who if you don't know that was like a sitcom that was very big during the same era as Golden Girls that was Marley Gibbs and Jack A. Harry and so it's a show that was on when I was like 10 to 14 or something so it's like I loved that show so having Jack A. Harry on the show and also getting like imagine the gossip you wanted to know when you were 13 getting at 35 you know I mean I was like oh she was a bitch really oh m

y gosh well tell me about the fight you had with Marley Gibbs like that was pretty that was fun so for me that's even more interesting than the Drag Race stuff which of course is interesting but those are the personal highlights. The time Eureka broke the couch by accident when she was trying to sit next to Lady Red in a very tender moment but then realized that maybe Lady Red's seat of something was like a futon frame on like a trunk because it had to be higher than the futon so it was balanced

for one person to be on it it was not a car seat and she came and she was like Lady Red I just want to whoa and they went both went flying. Yeah so I mean there's so many there were so many she's felt sometimes to remind myself I'm going through for old clips I'll be like god this is what this is good this is good this is still good. Definitely I mean for example one of my some of just some of my favorite episodes or moments from the show as well were I always thought it was sometimes it was th

e moment you least expected someone would say something like for example when Trixie and Katya are on and then Trixie sort of made a comment about Alyssa saying that like there had been some disagreements between them during a backstage moment and Alyssa had sort of stormed off and called them the B cast and then Trixie talked about that afterwards in I think it was and she said that she called Alyssa called her and they were like oh I heard there was drama and we've squashed it and I thought it

was just so cool that being on your show allowed two queens to have resolution to something that they might not have even thought about. Yes I mean I believe that was called Mimi versus Alyssa this is getting real cheesy which is why I thought of something about pizza because Alyssa supposedly said well I want to say that this is getting real cheesy and then supposedly they almost came to blows at least that's what we heard of the show you're gonna have to go back to the archives for that episo

de just on YouTube and get the full story because even I don't fully remember but yeah that was a moment that we were like that is interesting like that you know to get be made suddenly when the show is in the middle of conversations that was interesting sometimes stressful but interesting. Yeah I mean you definitely had like great moments like there's been moments I've talked about in my video like obviously Pearl being on like that was obviously a really when she talked about RuPaul and everyt

hing like that was such an interesting moment even I was a bit like oh and I was just but Pearl's just so like she's just so cool and just said it and I was like good for her for speaking her mind and everything but it was just funny and like even you I could see you were just a bit like oh this is great like you weren't expecting it. I said to myself just don't say anything just like listen let this person speak very interesting very interesting. No it's true obviously and I think as interviews

you do have to obviously be quite careful and just you let them talk and you know that's fine but it was an interesting story and it's her experience so it's fair enough. I was often criticized for talking over people early on in the show and so I also. Well I've just gotten older you know what I yeah people get really criticizing about being like why aren't they letting them talk one of the reasons the interviews are good between people and this is how it started on this on A-queen was I was j

ust trying to have a fun conversation between me and the person it wasn't like interview question answer interview question answer and sometimes that's when people feel like why is he talking when they're conscious talking it's like well honey we're having a conversation okay but that doesn't mean that we can't all take notes and of course over the years I did you know so you won't catch me over talking okay anymore. Everyone learns and that you always yeah that's fair enough and one of the thin

gs. I've been doing it for 10 years okay. Exactly and then obviously one of the more like recent developments on Hey Qween because it Hey Qween was massively successful on in the YouTube sort of era if you want to call it the different eras of Hey Qween and now it's in its Wow Presents Plus era so obviously that was really exciting that the beginning of this year it was announced that Hey Qween was moving on to Wow Presents Plus. I was just wondering what that felt like because as someone I can

imagine when you said Ru Paul came on your show originally it felt really validating how did that feel to think my show that is not just about Drag Race but there is a large component of that is now going on to the official network that does Drag Race. Well baby that's what we wanted from the beginning once it really kind of started to get into that mode of the stars of Drag Race were coming to the show and we did work together in different variations but not in this big of a way where they took

on the promotion of the show and like you know what to be honest like I don't know where else to really like what to keep it interesting for me I really needed to be like in the conversation in the early stages of the conversation because there's so many shows about the show that like talking to somebody two years later like sometimes it's like everyone you said everything that you could say about that one thing that you said in the werk room that one thought that you said and like you know so

I so when I talked to World of Wonder I was like look there's everybody's doing this you know but we have Hey Qween is the place people know to get the tea and why shouldn't it come to the mothership and let's get the tea like right away like right when they come off the show they're eliminated we get to talk to them and that is back to making it like kind of exciting you know for me plus working with people the people producing the show with me are winner Emmy winners so it's really exciting an

d so that's what we wanted from the beginning god I wish Lady Red was here to enjoy this and an even higher quality level of snacks from catering that she would enjoy but it's you know this is how I thought this is what made it worth coming back to again because to be honest the trudge of like another person in the conversation after eight times of talking about the same shit I don't think honestly I was really interested in doing it anymore but this made it like I was like well this is it this

is the shit that just happened we're talking about it right now and so it's so fun and exciting and like it re-energized me a hundred percent. No that I can definitely see it was like a refresh and almost not a rebrand but a kind of a new era like I said of Hey Qween and one of the things I really love about that about Hey Qweens obviously how much we get to learn about the queens and everything and I think now that you're interviewing the queens after they get eliminated for the newest season w

hich is season 16 the thing I really like about is someone for example like the first episode which was obviously Hershii, La Courgette, the reason I like the reason I really liked those interviews because obviously we didn't get to know Hershii that well she was only on what two episodes so when she was you got to obviously ask her questions and talk about you know and she was talking about her family and her adopted all the stepchildren and it's just stuff like that was so much stuff that we d

idn't know about I thought it was so interesting and then obviously you get the tea like when you interviewed Amanda and asked her about playing Jane like we all wanted to know and obviously they were both being quite tight-lipped about it for their reasons but then obviously you got to ask her in your very Johnny way and obviously you're so sort of charismatic in the way you ask so people are just willing to tell you but I thought it was just so interesting. Yeah you know what like that is it I

also want to be and have always wanted to be not a scary place for people to come you know like there was a time I think where girls would come and hate couldn't be like all right girl what do you got what do you got oh I know you're gonna show me my worst nightmare and like that was never the process of doing the show but you know with this one especially since they've just been eliminated I want it to be to feel good everybody who gets on the fucking show is a winner you've now have oh you kn

ow you're at a hundred thousand at least on Instagram opportunities are open for you even if you are only on one episode so we I like to make it feel good and the more good you feel the more you're likely to throw a zinger in or tell some real truth and leave feeling great and being ready to like you know also the audience is way more insane than it was when we started they're more like vile harsh evil adding I mean it's been bad for a while but it continues to be bad as we saw when you went off

on people on x the other day even Sapphira who seems to have like a run of perfection where they're only nice and they help everyone she said she's getting terrible you know stuff from people so uh it Hay queen should feel like a nice fun place to come for the girls yeah and I definitely think you give that that energy because I guess also because it's on why presents plus which obviously is effectively behind a pay wall not in a bad way it just is I guess that also means that you have to be ve

ry sort of a dedicated and big fan I have why presents plus that's how I watch Drag Race and everything so that's how I watch Hay queen but also there's no comments as well so I guess it kind of you really have to be interested in the interview to watch it so it really takes someone who's not going to be hateful because anyone can put any opinion they want on Twitter or on YouTube or whatever but I think it makes it a different experience because it makes it feel a bit more like yeah this is som

ething a bit more niche that people actually need to go on to to physically watch it so they're actually going to be fans of the show and not be horrible well yeah I mean I don't know whether it's whether you're really fan or not that you're horrible or not but I do think that it's more it's less of a yeah like you said there's no comment section you just got to see it and enjoy it there it is enjoy I don't miss the comment section at all goodbye comment section I know I can understand by so man

y of you were so nice but you know who I remember the one person that was me okay I've done a Britney Spears blackout on all anything about anyone's opinion on anything to be honest because I said you know there's a lot of times I hate when was blowing and I should have been really enjoying myself but I think I let because we were such a small operation I was also manning the YouTube channel publishing the videos monitoring the comments doing the thing so it's just like when you're doing every j

ob you see when people tell you you suck you're ugly you're dumb you should shut the fuck up so someone should talk up two minutes is when it starts when they stop talking and the queen that we want to see comes on that really gets you in the brain you know it made what could have been more fun less fun and I'm not down with that anymore so by comments see you on the wow presents plus streaming service for 99 a month it's a bargain for every iteration of Drag Race I mean there's lots of stuff on

my presence but it's very good off not sponsored by the way I just I genuinely use represents no yeah they didn't give me a free account I have my own account that I paid for I've heard the queen say that as well with so you made a very excellent point though about the comment section about hatred and stuff it is and especially if you're doing it on your own I know I know personally for myself because I do I obviously have my normal Drag Race channel but I also have my interview channel and I d

o all of that myself and the fact that you have to read the comments in a way because it's your job it can be very disheartening so I'm sorry that you had that experience I can definitely I know from my own experience I've had that as well don't they know you spent three and a half hours transcribing everything that happened at Roscoe's even the boring stuff and then you sliced it down to give them a quick update on the whole thing that took a lot of work and time okay not doing any any no you'r

e just telling people what people what was said in public I think often I think people who don't know much about content creation I think and I'm sure maybe I mean I've never left horrible comments but we're not before I did YouTube I probably didn't realize how much effort goes in you just watch a show like Hey Qween or like my channel and you don't think about the fact that someone not only had to do all of the effort to get the show in the first place but then all of the editing all of the up

loading the description the title the thumbnails all of these little things you don't really fucking boring and annoying things that you have to do and you got to make them good okay you got to try to make them good you got to talk nice and you got to add all the links like this is this is a thing that has happened in the last 10 years that everyone has to be a creator I mean like your barista probably has a million followers on TikTok um like it is what it is but yeah it when you're doing all t

he shit it's not like I'm in an ivory tower and like the servants are checking the the comments no it's us making the shit putting it up doing the thing so yeah so I'm saying no to that in general so that's it that's fair enough I'm sure I definitely can relate I'm sure many other people can um they were I was wondering if we could move on to the questions that my subscribers submitted because there were so many questions people had that were to do with things that you were saying so I wanted to

kind of go back to some of the things but I wanted to incorporate the questions into them sounds good so one of the big things I wanted that people a lot of people asked about this and I thought it was really important to mention was they said thanks for keeping Lady Red's memory alive Johnny I still can't believe she's gone can you share one of your fondest memories of Lady Red um you know Lady Red and I used to look Lady Red was just like a person who was so magical and so um so much personal

ity and so funny and so fun to be with but you know she also had a lot of fucking struggles and a lot of difficult times and some fucked up shit happened to her and um you know a lot of what I did as well as being of her friend was also to be someone who was really trying to support her in many many different ways but the and creatively as well as like you know when she was homeless I can't she came to live at my house um so we spent a lot of time together and when things were rough you know som

etimes we the schedule for hey can we be shooting three episodes in a fucking day and she'll have worked at like as a as the security at a nightclub and weho the night before and um I always knew I could like we could be going to the studio and she'd have her glasses on and like a wig and my car still has a little um halo effect from where Lady Red and her wigs sat in my car for all those years and I could put on these old gospel songs from a movie called say amen somebody there were songs like

the stone is passing nowhere and she and I could get into just like these very soulful lady gospel songs and they would lift both of our moods because sometimes the grind of doing it and creating as much content as we were was really difficult and um we could always like connect and like feel good and also like when we left we were always ready to be like let's get the fuck out of here and that was something we could share let's get the fuck out of here baby um you were shooting should we go hom

e let's go home what are we gonna do nothing oh my god yes we both were very um enjoyed to be leisurely and not like stay at the club till however long in the morning be like time for bed good night see you tomorrow so we just had a lot of great time also writing songs for Lady Red and doing songs with Lady Red there was a song we did the first song we did together with a song called rich white woman which is kind of subversive song where Lady Red talks about being a rich white woman with diamon

ds and rings and husbands and it was a real fuck you to the audience type of song you know what I mean and uh recording that with her for the very first time discovering what her voice was really like in that song she sounded a lot like the singer from cameo it was like I'm a white woman you know yeah just like tons of tons of great memories and luckily a lot of them are all we have so many hours of podcasting and doing shows together that you know that that will always be there on the Hey Qween

patreon we have all of the episodes of a podcast that I did with her called uh oh uh so real with Lady Red and that there's like almost like 60 episodes of that that's just me and the Lady Red talking and it's not about us it's me facilitating Lady Red to tell us everything about whatever was in her heart and her thoughts and um for real deep Lady Red fans those episodes are chef's kiss yeah no I I knew her obviously mainly from Hey Qween but she always just she always just seemed so fun and co

ol and I was obviously very saddened by her passing and I really loved her on the show because she just came across as being she had that like she would say hey children like she just had this very calm but you could tell there was a lot of personality there and she was just so funny and charismatic and I just loved even if she didn't say anything you would just like cut the cat like move to her and she would just like just give a look to the camera and it was just like hysterical just even her

facial expression alone said everything that words could say and I thought she was such a fun co-host and like really was integral to the show yeah I mean it was the chaos of Lady Red that was like an extra spice in the show because Lady Red was on acting honey if she was bored she was bored if she thought you were being dumb she was rolling her eyes if she laughed she was laughing uh if she was hungry she was having snacks that was a you know special sparkle that only you can get from someone w

ho is being 100 so real no I definitely someone a very um sad loss and everything but I'm glad that her memory lives alive through your work and the things that you've still got you've got so much footage like you said of the podcasts and the video yeah and she's on the little candle with me on the desk as always right next to me on every show so that's a nice little way to for to have her remembered in every episode no definitely I really loved that and that the candle is definitely like a love

ly um memory of her one of the next questions was we kind of you did sort of touch on this earlier one of my patrons called Rachelle said um do you still have a relationship with Kate McKinnon because obviously you were both on the big gay sketch show in the early 2000s um I'm at her mansion right now filming um from her filming room no girl I think she changed her number after she got on Saturday Night Live and I think the last message I sent which went to the ether was girl congrats on Saturda

y Night Live that was it so I mean congratulations to her no bad blood we were colleagues we were friendly um she was nice and now she's a very rich trans movie star but I don't think I have her number well that's fair enough I guess at the end of the day your colleagues and I who's you're not always necessarily going to be like always in touch with colleagues from many years ago even if you were like good friends at the time but god bless honey I mean she did that and she was already she looked

when even when we did big gay sketch show she was the writer's favorite she was producer favorite people just like gravitated to her and she was a natural she got that big gay sketch show job right like the summer she graduated from college and she went to the open call and got on the show so she was a star already you know what I mean no she's extremely talented funny and like obviously she's now a massive movie star and everything so good for her obviously very talented again can I borrow 20

dollars um so someone this isn't maybe a slightly um it could be a slightly shady question not towards you but just slightly in general someone said has there ever been a queen that refused to answer a question and if so who was it and what was the question god has anyone straight up refused to talk about something I know this sounds like I'm being like a Pollyanna or something but like that it I don't think so nobody said like I won't talk about that people have given answers that go around the

question a little bit nobody's been like no no has there ever been you know I think a lot of people sorry to interrupt I'm just wondering um has anyone was there ever I guess I think a lot of people maybe don't know that much about like interviewing queens they always think there's some sort of like magical formula or like lots of backstage conversations and obviously it's often not like that you just literally dm them on Instagram and you get an interview but was there ever I guess maybe this

person's asking was there ever a queen that said I don't want to talk about xyz like these topics are off the table and you were kind of told in advance what you could and couldn't ask there has been a rare occasion when someone's come on and and when I say rare occasion I mean like two times in the history of the show where someone's manager will say hey they can come on the show but they don't want to talk about this one thing now usually it's something that first of all I would have never men

tioned anyway um and the one eight intense that I'm not going to say who it is uh there was like some weird thing that had popped up on the internet and it was didn't make the result look good and they were like just don't they don't want to talk about that and I was like oh well I didn't even know about that really and if I did I certainly would have been like guess what we're talking about um and maybe that's happened once as well like very like on one hand the amount of times that that is the

case usually people just come and like brace themselves for whatever it is and it's like anything we talk about usually has been on television or you've said it in public we're not like going to like buy on you at home and get secret information usually because you talked about it so we figured you might as well address it I mean shall we address it no it's very true a bit like it's I guess it's the same with my channel I always think well you know if you're talking about obviously the queens a

re famous and they're on the TV show they're effectively so they are celebrities and they have thousands of followers and things and you're only talking about things that they have publicly said and put out there so I think that's kind of what makes it fun because we're all in on the joke we're all in on it because they said you're not going through their trash at their home and like do you mean it's sort of you're you're just talking about them I don't have the time to go through their trash ye

ah I wish there was a more juicy answer but really the answer is no it's been nobody's been weird no one was a bitch everyone was fucking super nice and and we always had fun I mean some people were more interesting than others some people there's more dancing that we would have to do to be like well what about this well that was oh what a boring answer what about this let's make a joke hey lady red was that boring yes it was my goodness well let's try another text I can edit this out later I me

an sometimes if you see me like it's funny because I'm trying to get something for out of the person so there's that but no one's ever hostile mean rude it's always pretty fun and delightful every time I've had anyone on the show I mean I think early seasons there was like a porn star who came on who did not want to talk about being a porn star and that probably was one of my most annoying interviews it's like I'm a designer now well I want to let you know they're still a porn star they're not a

designer but they came on the show and they wanted they did not want to talk about being a poor star we're kind of like why would we talk about that it was like well because you're a famous porn star that one had to edit out a lot but that was very very very early Matt no one's shady no one's it's always pretty delightful sorry I wish it was a more interesting answer often that's like that's the truth of it I mean the same with me like none of the because the queens are obviously happy to be on

your show or like my like on my interviews whatever because it's free publicity for them and they enjoy talking about their life and their career so they're not going to be hostile you know this isn't like some sit down this is your life really serious it's just supposed to be a fun kiki yeah yeah exactly so another question was someone said so happy to see Hey Qween on wire presents plus will look at her still be connected to it and can you say which of the season 16 queens has been your favor

ite or a favorite moment from one of those interviews look at her rights are still tied up elsewhere so we're playing new games on this season of it so they're not connected currently but that really also works for where we're at right now which is the format of a queen just talking to the girl about themselves and we're basically we play versions of games like that we play get off or you know kiki kai kai cut a bitch things where you're getting the same sort of take from it though I don't neces

sarily say those words and what were some what was some like a favorite moment oh well I mean I just had Plasma on and Plasma was just a delight first of all I thought Plasma was me like five two like tiny like that I could put like in rock like a baby she arrived and though she was in some high platforms we were the same height I was like well you're actually kind of like a tall person in real life which I just did not I didn't think that and then the energy was hilarious and you know it's alwa

ys good when someone's leaving and they having feel it felt good about what they did and what they're also I thought it was very smart of her to make these really high quality videos like that don't wait rain on parade and the bloody mary like that's how you do it baby that is how you do it there's this opportunity is right here for you do the work before everything comes out so that you can really serve it and then you feel good and so that type of queen especially is ready to zing zing give so

me zingers so her version we played a game with her called don't rain on my parade or no do rain on my parade so we'd be like rain on her parade playing jane rain on her parade Mhi'ya you know what I mean and that that type of queen is in a good spot is ready to give a little spice and that's what we got it's pretty fun yeah Plasma no she's she's so fun I think she was fun on the show but even off the show like but her appearance on there but also like I obviously saw when I saw the Ross did the

Roscoe's video she was just she was even bigger personality than we maybe saw on the show and she was just so naturally funny really quick the don't rain on my parade and now the bloody mayor so like you said it's such a cool branding thing and the fact that she must have spent some budget on that because those videos looked so good and really cool and it's such a cool idea right I had to ask her I said where the fuck did you get a fucking tugboat bitch where did you get a tugboat you have to w

atch the episode to find out where that fucking tugboat came from available on my presents plus ding so another question was what queen surprised you the most either for a good reason or a bad reason just in general yeah I guess in the whole life of the show who surprised me for a good or bad reason okay when when Gia Gunn came on ready for to ready to just like for coming for blood like that is like there's not I am a hearts and flowers and everyone's sweet but baby when Miss Gia Gunn came on I

was re-watching this to make for clips for like recently and it's just like she now talking about someone who went into their own personal business there was like a thing like a story between where she lost a earring that can't Carmen Carrera had led her in her car and they went hiking and they couldn't find it and she wanted to let her know I mean there was a battle and she gave us all the personal information the personal details and then her stuff with Laganja like I mean like Gia Gunn came

changed outfits for looking to give a different separate look and then proceeded to just go for it and also at the same time not only be harsh but also then completely go back take complete blame for things apologize do it again and like I mean it was like we gave you the fucking gamut if you ever you want to see an episode of look over somebody that does a chef's kiss way to keep the audience 1 million percent engaged Gia Gunn's I think second appearance on the show that look at her I'm well I'

m dead I mean it's it was really good really good Gia Gunn is ultimate entertainment yeah I when I was watching I even she would just say things and I was I mean good for her like she obviously that's how she felt and like she's excellent I love Gia Gunn she's fun she's problematic she's a delight and more content please Gia love it no Gia is excellent television like regardless of what you think about her and obviously like you know on and off the show but excellent television and she's always

going to give you some entertainment you know also like sometimes like when someone's personality is so magnetic in person that's something that really strikes me when I'm like wow they this person is like Coco Montrese honey when Coco Montrese is talking to you like wow she's electric you know I felt like immediately I was like oh my god this person is the coolest Kimora Black was someone who I left the interview being like what a fucking cool bitch like funny sexy you know never saw her again

honey but I mean like god she was I remember leaving me like ah and when Zunami came on this season she was a New York queen up in that New York club scene ballroom scene that's kind of in the universe that I came up in in New York throwing parties so we had a lot of mind meld and so that was another one where I was like who is honey this person is just so magnetic wow so I love I love when that happens when I when I get when you really get to feel the star power and of course like when the RuPa

ul comes by you know you get the sunshine and you just gotta soak it up you're in the RuPaul sunshine don't expect it don't you may never have it again just enjoy yourself no I can only imagine like that sometimes people also have a magnet a magnetism in person that doesn't always necessarily come across on camera but because it's there in person it obviously then affects the and it's you it's something you almost can't put into words like you can't like you can't bottle someone's magnetism it's

just something they have you know so yeah and someone on Twitter from Brazil they said I'm from Brazil and I would like to ask if you intend to add the old seasons of Hey Qween on YouTube to wow I think is what this that was the first bit because they want to see all the interviews and they also said they've been a stan of yours since DICmatized which by the way is my favorite of your songs and they said that you also you also introduced Miles Davis Moody to the world who's obviously on the pit

crew you're welcome everybody's done a stunner well I mean like what would I love all of Hey Qween the whole archive to be in one beautiful gorgeous place yes I would is that the case currently no you can still find it on YouTube and all the the archives are there if you want to watch there's a work the early seasons are only available on our patreon and then the from I think season four up when the show really started to look its best those are all there on on YouTube still for you to enjoy an

d we're actually going to be starting to release bull because you know when you gotta make content on YouTube they tell you things like your 50 minute interview and you must know this they'll be like of your 50 minute interview people watched seven minutes and so you got into a thing where you are now breaking up the content into three 10 minute sections or whatever 15 minute sections so that each video has a higher amount of engagement so you can make your one quarter eighth hundredth of a penn

y for your one second but that did mean especially now that people are watching it on streaming I wanted to be able to put back some of the Hey Qween greatest hits in full on YouTube so we started with Valentina it's not one part no big breaks you can watch the whole thing so if you're streaming it at home you can do that I'm gonna put up the detox and Vicky episodes which are huge classics and then I'm just gonna pick some of my personal favorites and start curating them in full on YouTube so t

hat you can go people can discover them and also if you only now are used to seeing the clip or the little thing you can really get in because funny I'm watching some of the old shit and I'm like this was wild this was wild new sometimes you don't realize things until you look back on it and then you think oh I that was wild and I didn't even think about it at the time yeah you know that early seasons of Hey Qween we were in this building where you had to take this big industrial elevator with t

he gate to come up and then after the show or before the show the guests would smoke cigarettes or smoke weed on the roof and we would you know it was a vibe like it was this big loft studio so you've got you know our our executive producer was like giving you the Costco snacks you know we were budget conscious but we still had said snacks there was it was a vibe and you know lady red and I were coming from my house every day in my purple Corolla where her wig sometimes didn't fit in the car you

know what I think like it was a you know it was a really special and you know fun time but you know also a lot of work and again a moment which it would have been nice to slow down to enjoy a little more of it but you know it is what it is. No I can I can definitely appreciate that and so I was thinking for the sort of the final question one thing I wanted to ask I guess for myself as well is with it now being on WOW Presents Plus where do you see the show developing in this kind of new era of

the show because obviously you've said it is quite different you're very glad that it's on WOW Presents Plus there's no comments and it's very much more kind of you're getting direct access to the queens that you wouldn't have done otherwise as soon as they're eliminated from the show like the week they were eliminated I was just wondering how you see the show developing. I mean look this format that we're doing right now is obviously very specific to season 16 but as you'll see we have some sur

prises coming up later in the season so I think that opens up not opens up but shows that like Hey Qween can be a portal to talk to anybody in that sort of wow World of Wonder universe I mean the stars of all of the things of Drag Race all the movies I mean queer stories there's always a great place there's never an end for a place to tell our queer stories and if Hey Qween were to continue on I'd love to certainly jump on of course you have to deal with all the schedules when they're filmed yea

rs apart and whatever but like I'd love to talk to each All Stars girls I'd love to do DragCon and like get in quick interviews with the girls like you know I've been doing this and in this world of following these artists and their stories and this show and the trajectory of it and all of the secret tea and drama and so Hey Qween's just a natural hopefully keep going I'd like to do it in front of the British way where it's like Hey Qween series 12 you know film it do it let it sit there and the

n come back in a little while with something else delightful and fun like I don't want to film like 900 fucking episodes and be like oh you know what I mean like doing it this way is so fun there's a great team at World of Wonder I can like think of dumb shit like you know we had Plasma turned out she didn't wear that that little cute wig she wore for the sound of ruzek was not what she was supposed to wear originally they had this huge mushroom wig that she was supposed to wear which she took h

ome and cut the shit out of and she didn't have to wear it on the damn show and she ended up wearing this cute little wig that we saw well we brought the way back I said well where's the wig it was like can we bring the wig back and confront her with the wig and yes we did that's the shit you just can't do you know when you're on the hamster wheel doing it all yourself so it's that kind of fun stuff I think it's a natural to to always be able to come back because I love talking to queer people t

hat's really the heart of it all I love being gay I love queer community and I love drag I love artists and that's what's fun is connecting having fun just like trying to make you smile you know and if it doesn't make you smile well there's no comment section so go suck a dick no definitely I feel like it's definitely a new era of the show the fact that you've got like direct access to the queens is so cool and I think in general like I can say for myself like thank you so much for all of the st

uff that you did like for Hey Qween and your career and all of that because I think you really did open the door for other people but there's so many other YouTube creators like myself and there's others that came way before me that did like drag queen interviews and stuff and I definitely think you opened the door to a lot of that stuff and so many people in the comments basically were just saying Johnny is a legend but they didn't really have a question it was just kind of saying I've done it

Matt I've done it what can I say I'm wearing a plaid jacket matching shirt a jacket in front of a plaid wall is this luxury yes it is well thank you so much for being part of it and coming on my channel everything I know people are very excited to hear from you I was just wondering if there's you know can people where can people find you online do you have any projects or anything else that you'd like to talk about yeah honey well look I'm doing a podcast every week not Drag Race related but pop

culture related I do a show called Johnny McGovern is gay as fuck and it's me and you sitting down I'm whispering all the gossip into your ear and so I call it a show where pop culture and dirty stuff me because it's pop culture but through the lens like a real gay lens like you know are they showing his butt what about that Jake Gyllenhaal trailer wait a minute is he gonna is that a scammer on OnlyFans or are we gonna really see him get fucked you know what I mean that kind of shit that's mean

t for our ears so that's free it's every week if you want to hear me doing more podcasts I do them on patreon.com/gaysofaltime that's where I'm back with my homies from the old days and then I got a new album coming out in the summer honey I decided after man areas became a 22 million streamed hit on Spotify last year 22 million Matt I didn't do one lick of work to get that and I loved it I said you know what that ratchet nasty gutter dirty strip club anthem has gotten 22 million streams I shoul

d unretire from music if that's the case so I've recorded an album called man areas maybe it's just nothing but nasty gutted rotted gay strip club anthems and where can people find you online I'm on Instagram Jon McGovern is your daddy that's it I mean look just know what it is and that's what it is thank you so much for being on and obviously like I said make sure you obviously go and check out where presents plus with Hey Qween now on there and I'll put a link in the description well thank you

so much for being on it obviously you are genuinely one of the inspirations for me and I'm sure many others when I saw you because you were really were one of the first youtubers that were really in that space like really coming out for the community and really sort of showing the side that not many other people have seen to these queens and to these other artists that you that you interviewed so thank you so much for everything you've done you can and you're continuing to do it as well on wag

presents plus on Hey Qween so thank you sweetie bless you my child thank you so much bye bye thanks sweetie you you (upbeat music) And, thank you Gifts Becomes.