In 2018, LA-based queen Mayhem Miller bought her talents to the world’s attention as one of the 14 contestants on RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 10. Although she only managed to make it to 10th place position, her appearance on the show was enough to catapult her already successful career into the big time. With multiple TV appearances, music videos, and even a makeup line to her name, she’s a queen on the rise. Find out more with these ten fast facts.
1. Drag Race
On February 22, 2018, Mayhem was announced as one of the fourteen queens to form the lineup for the tenth season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. Speaking to VH1 about her reason for entering the show, she explained, “I need to be here so I can show everyone else what I got. I would say my edge in the competition is my experience. Drag Race … is seriously the Olympics of our profession and I think I am the most fiercest b***h around. So why not [compete]? … It’s my life. I’ve been doing this for so long and I don’t have any thoughts in my head to say it needs to stop anytime soon. I’m going to keep going until I just can’t go no more.” In the event, Mayhem didn’t manage to come away with the title, finishing 10th overall after losing a lip sync battle against Monet X Change in episode 4.
2. Family Connections
Coming into season 10 of Drag Race, Mayhem was already well-versed in what to expect. Of all the queens to ever enter the race, Mayhem was perhaps the one with the most existing connections, thanks in no small part to her extended drag family, all of whom had already been there, done that, and got the t-shirt to prove it. Of all her drag sisters to compete on the show (and we’re dealing with a list that includes Detox (Season 5 and All Stars 2), Delta (Season 3), Raven (Season 2 and All Stars), and Morgan McMichaels (Season 2 and All Stars 3), it was Detox and Raven that got the furthest, with both finishing runner-up’s on the respective seasons.
3. Drag Mother
Mayhem may have had a big drag family already, but it got even bigger when she bought her drag daughter, Cheyenne Pepper, into the fold. Pepper is the stage name of Eugene Lee Yang, an LA-based performer whose credits include appearing as one of the 12 queens on Kaiko’s Drag Race: Season 2 and the first queen to be introduced into the “Hall of Legends”.
4. What’s in a Name?
If you were wondering how Mayhem (who was born Dequan Johnson in Riverside, California) got her name, then wonder no more. During an interview with VH1, Mayhem explained the origins of her name, and a little bit about what Mayhem Miller really stands for. “I got my name ‘Mayhem’ from watching Tommy Lee and Pamela Anderson’s [sex tape] video and Tommy has ‘Mayhem’ [tattooed] above his lower regions,” she explained. “Mayhem is fun, fierce, and fantastic. She is that girl that walks into the club and everyone is like, ‘finally, the party is here.’”
5. Music Mania
Like many RuPaul girls both before and after her, one of the first things Mayhem did after sashaying off Drag Race was to hit the recording studio. After teaming up with producer Brynn Taylor, she dropped her first single, “Queen of the Party”, on December 7, 2018. Since then, she’s been pretty quiet on the music front, although she has managed to squeeze in appearances on the music videos for Blair St. Clair’s “Call My Life”, Iggy Azalea’s “Sally Walker”, and Lizzo’s “Juice”.
6. The Make Up Collection
The last few years have seen an increasing number of queens getting into the makeup industry, and as Pure Wow notes, it’s about darn time. Whether it’s with Trixie Matte’s self-titled cosmetics line, Alyssa Edwards’s cruelty-free collaboration with Anastasia Beverly Hills, or Aquaria’s “high-fashion space alien meets grungy robotic angel” collection with NYX, it seems the cosmetics world is finally waking up to the selling power of a drag queen endorsement. Mayhem herself is no stranger to the industry: in 2019, she joined forces with Henry & Hank to release a three-shade lipstick line.
7. RuPaul Girl for Life
Mayhem may have sashayed off Drag Race Season 10 earlier than she’d have liked, but it didn’t mark the end of her association with RuPaul… nor, indeed, did it signal the start. He first (granted, tentative) experience of RuPaul’s empire came in 2016 when she featured as a dancer on NeNe Leakes’s lip sync of RuPaul’s “Supermodel (You Better Work)” in “Lip Sync Battle”. Since Season 10 ended, she’s kept up her contact thanks to appearances on the likes of RuPaul’s Drag Race Holi-slay Spectacular and AJ and the Queen.
8. Career Highlights
Mayhem’s career highlights don’t start and end with Drag Race. Other key moments from her 18-year career in drag include appearing alongside Detox, Bob the Drag Queen, Latrice Royale and Tempest DuJour in the 2017 movie “Cherry Pop”, featuring on Germany’s Next Top Model in May 2018, and starring in a host of web series (including Try Guys (2014), Cosmo Queens, Whatcha Packin’, Hey Qween, Queen to Queen, Countdown to the Crown (all 2018), and His Vintage Touch and Follow Me (both 2019).
9. #MayhemChallenge
In November 2018, a video of Mayhem performing “Drama” by Club 69 went viral. As soon as fans began captioning the clip, #MayhemChallenge took on a life of its own. “I started getting tagged, but I didn’t realize how big it was until my nephew called and said he saw a meme of me that had over a million views. Then people started making different versions and I’ve been on the floor ever since,” Mayhem told Billboard.
10. The All-Powerful
In 2019, Mayhem proved her might when Vulture named her to their list of the top 100 Most Powerful Drag Queens in America. Other queens to feature included her fellow Drag Race season 10 sisters, Aquaria, Asia O’Hara, Kameron Michaels, Miz Cracker, and Monét X Change.
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