“Honestly, I really want to get my Tony Award,” Nurve told 3News in an interview last month. “You know? I’ve got to dream big.”
Before her life-changing moment on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Onya Nurve used to run the kitchen at Doinks Burger Joint in Cleveland. Despite her current success, she has not forgotten her roots.
“I helped them open the place,” Nurve told me over a video call last month. “I was their first kitchen manager, and it was amazing.”
One Friday night in late January, Onya, who hails from Canton and is educated in Cleveland, decided to visit her old workplace, Doinks. But this time, she was not there to work in the kitchen; she was there to showcase her talent and entertain the crowd.
Onya reached out to the co-owner of Doinks, Bonn Rassavong, suggesting a casual viewing party. What started as a small gathering turned into a packed event, with attendees showing their support for the local drag queen. The turnout was beyond Onya’s expectations, and she was touched by the love and encouragement from the community.
Last December, Nurve was announced as part of the cast of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” for the MTV reality competition show’s ongoing 17th season. With the finale airing Friday night, Nurve is not only still in the competition — she’s a clear frontrunner. Her four challenge wins have put her in rarified statistical air; only eight queens in the history of the show have achieved that feat.
“I had my assumptions on what it was going to be,” Nurve said of life since “Drag Race” began airing. “But flying all the time and meeting all of these people, going from a normal local entertainer to an internationally known entertainer is a big jump. So I definitely feel the love. Sometimes I feel like I could go on stage and fart and they would cheer, [laughs] but I feel the love and it’s amazing.”
One of Nurve’s shining moments came at an opportune time: the show’s classic, long-running “Snatch Game” challenge, a loving send-up of “Match Game” where the contestants are tasked with performing celebrity impressions. Nurve stole the show with a pitch-perfect Eddie Murphy and won the challenge for her second victory of the season. (Her backup options, she told me, were Jim Carrey and Eartha Kitt.) Nurve called that episode “hands down” her favorite moment of the season.
“Going into the show, that was the challenge that I was most excited for. I felt like that was something that I do really well. Not that I do impersonations all the time, but I’m obsessed with Eddie Murphy, and I was just excited to do it,” Nurve said. “And I’m so happy because there’s now been 17 girls that have won Snatch Game, and I’m one of them.”
Nurve is the first queen from Cleveland to compete on “Drag Race” since Akashia competed on the show’s first season in 2009. She made sure to point out that fact in her audition materials, and she thinks it may have played a small part in her being chosen. But she didn’t walk onto set feeling the weight of the entire city on her shoulders.
“I guess kind of subconsciously I knew that I was representing a city that hasn’t been represented on ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ for a long time, so I had that in my mind,” she said. “But I got on the show myself. Like, the city didn’t necessarily help me get on the show. It was the work that I put into it. So more importantly, I was trying to make sure that I was representing the best version of myself, and if I did that, then I would be a good representation for the city.”
For her “Drag Race” fashion runways, Nurve has let her artistic talents and influences shine.
“I try to figure out, as an artist, what the viewer sees and how the viewer understands what I’m doing in comparison to how I understand it. I also put a lot of my cultural background, my African heritage, my Black heritage, and I’ve always done that in my artwork. So I think it was kind of easy for me to just continue doing that in my drag as well,” she said.
“Art has always been an intervention in a space. And drag is very identical to that, where it’s like, it’s an underground thing, so it’s always an interruption of a space,” Nurve continued. “They’ve always been connected to me, and it’s easy for me to approach those two things in the same way.”
This interdisciplinary approach to her drag was on full display in Nurve’s runway look on the season’s opening episode. She literally wore her art on her sleeve, strutting the main stage in a striking handmade gown and mask inspired by a piece of her own artwork, assembled with items you’d typically find in a beauty supply store.
“It was a full circle moment. It was actually very scary too, because it’s not like I was just putting someone else’s garment down the runway,” Nurve said. “But I was very proud of myself for just putting something that I also had a hand in, because it was the first thing that they saw, and it came directly from me. And so whether they liked it or not, it was authentic to who I am.”
While Nurve carried herself like a seasoned pro on TV, she’s still relatively new to drag — especially considering how long many “Drag Race” queens have historically had to wait before earning their shot. She started performing in Northeast Ohio’s underground drag scene around four years before making the show on her first audition. Before that, Nurve, whose real name is Justin Woody, earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art and was prolific as a theatre actor on stages around the Cleveland and Canton areas.
“My favorite show that I’ve done in Cleveland would have to be ‘Passing Strange,’ the musical that I did at the Karamu House. I played the character of Youth. It would kind of change my life. It was my first time working at the Karamu, it was a small cast, predominantly all Black people. It was almost like a live rock show, which is very different for me, and it was amazing.”
No matter what happens on Friday night — whether Nurve is crowned “America’s Next Drag Superstar” and earns the $200,000 cash prize that comes with the title — it’s clear that the Cleveland queen has it all in front of her. As the adage coined by former “Drag Race All Stars” winner Trixie Mattel goes, the real race starts after “Drag Race.” So what’s next for Nurve? One possible avenue could be a return to the stage; she specifically mentioned Donkey in “Shrek” as a role she’d played before and would love to reprise, and shouted out “Hairspray” and “Ragtime” as two favorite shows. And she also hinted at ways she can continue to make an impact on the scene in Northeast Ohio.
“Right now I’m just taking it day by day, but eventually I would love to establish something in Cleveland as far as drag goes, because it’s such a potent scene there. So I would really love to establish and grow what’s already going on there,” she said. “And then, honestly, I really want to get my Tony Award. You know? I’ve got to dream big.”
