Katya on sex, self-esteem and ‘special’ Trixie Mattel relationship
“I’ve recently discovered the horrifying truth about Barbara Walters. I think she’s dead, but she was a hack,” says Katya Zamolodchikova, world-famous drag icon turned celebrity interviewer.
Walters, who did in fact die in 2022, was known for her ruthless, often immoral questioning, including interrogating Ricky Martin on his sexuality and probing Celine Dion on her weight. “She really tried to get the girls with some of those questions,” Katya cackles.
Katya is no Barbara Walters. “I just want to get to the truth,” she says and, though we’re on an audio-only call, I can hear her grin widening again. “…and then learn some things, and make the world a better place.” Cackle number two, characteristically husky, releases itself.
The internationally-beloved drag star has been making the world a better place for 10 years now, thanks to her appearance on RuPaul’s Drag Race season seven in 2015, her All Stars return in 2016, and a tidal wave of projects with her partner in crime, Trixie Mattel, in the years since. For the past year though, she’s been riding solo as the host of Grindr’s podcast, Who’s The Asshole?.
The podcast, which has already wrapped up its third season, sees Katya joined by LGBTQ+ icons – from Lisa Rinna to Adam Lambert – to paw over questions of sex, dating, and the rights and wrongs of both. Listeners send in their always sordid, sometimes outrageous experiences, asking whether they were the asshole in certain scenarios. Katya and co unpack it. Along the way, she probes the stars on their own sex lives, mulling over Gus Kenworthy’s penchant for public sex and Meg Stalter’s awkward one night stand encounters.
“If you had told me when I was 15 that this would be something that I was doing – it would be unconscionable. I’d be like,’Yeah, right! There’s more chance of me being, like, an astronaut’. I’m terrified. I’ve always been terrified of people,” says Katya, peppering her admission with another snigger.
This is how she became one of the most cherished queens to come from the boundless Drag Race universe: her childlike silliness and ability to find the funny in anything rubs alongside her occasionally searing vulnerability.
Ever since her Drag Race tenure, she’s been open about her mental health, substance use and sobriety journey, but always in a disarmingly kooky way. She practically vibrates as she laughs, breathless, buzzing, always welcoming people to laugh with her. “I care about what people think about me, and a lot of people like me, and that makes me really happy. That’s where a lot of my self-esteem comes from – from other people.”
Not that anyone listening to Who’s The Asshole? would pick up on her apprehension. Each guest feels more like a long-time companion of Katya’s, even if some conversations take more work than others. She’s spoken before of taking a while to warm up to actress Trace Lysette, while Kenworthy was a “hard nut to crack”.
She was also “terrified” of chatting with Real Housewives star Rinna, but “it turns out she was a riot”. Overall, each chat has offered something, be it hysterics or genuinely profound reflections on what it’s like to date as a queer person. “I don’t hate any of them; it’s great,” she says of her guests, “and I hope none of them hate me.”
The deal is this: if she builds enough rapport with a fairly big star to entice them into revealing juicy tidbits from their sex life, then she will do the same. But as long-term Katya fans will know, she’s pretty loose with her salacious sexcapade tales. She doesn’t mind airing her dirty sheets, as it were – “My parents, they’re the coolest people in the world. If they were going to be embarrassed about me, it would have happened a long time ago” – but she’s got a problem. “I don’t have any more stories! Like, it’s all it’s all out there. I’m not having sex,” she says in a half-panicked whisper.
She is an avid Grindr user, but she insists she has “no horror stories” from her time on the app. Sure, she gets sent memes of herself or fanmail, plus the occasional catfishing accusation, which she finds absurd. “Please, out of all the f**king famous people in the world, you think someone’s going to choose me as their catfish? Come on now,” she titters.
Safety is paramount and each hook-up is treated with spy-like proficiency: no one comes to her home; she won’t travel late at night; she investigates whether they’re using drugs; she’s absolutely not afraid to leave if she wants to. Equally, she’s “not a fan of endless chatting”, so once she’s completed her checklists, she sets off “getting the plan in motion, and then making sure that it goes all to plan, and then completing the mission”.
During one Who’s The Asshole? phone-in, a caller told Katya and Wicked’s Bowen Yang that a man had asked him to suck his toes, before producing all six toes on one foot to suck. Again, Katya promises she’s not had any propositions quite so strange, but she’s troubled by the popularity of faeces fanatics. “I’m continuously shocked and appalled at the amount of people who are into scat,” she says.
“Whatever happened to kissing and hugging?”
She doesn’t want to call it “disgusting” or “shameful|”, she’s just not a fan. And then she changes her mind. “I’ll sex shame it because listen, I’m ashamed when I go to the bathroom. I don’t want anybody to smell it, I don’t want anybody to hear it, I don’t want to do it. And I certainly don’t want anybody involved.” As ever, her point, as half-serious as it might sound, is all in good fun. “I think people always are trying to push the envelope and it’s like, hey, whatever happened to kissing and hugging?”
As some profess, the best sex of your life happens after age 40, scat or no scat. Katya has just turned 42, and is aware that age can bring “an intersection of sexiness and wisdom” but she’s sticking to what she knows: “top activity”. She didn’t have anal sex until she was 30-years-old. “I just didn’t know it was a thing,” she jokes.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know how to do it, she’s just not that into it. “I have friends here in LA, they do porn professionally, and they’re what I would call anally ambitious. I have never been that type of person,” she says breezily. “It always just kind of hurt. My training session was so laborious and protracted.”
She gleefully describes the process of using butt plugs as like “training for the Olympics”, while during her chat with Rinna, she revealed that she once fell asleep while using a butt plug which ultimately got lost. “It takes a lot of work. Again, the pooping. I don’t want any poop in the room.”
The conversation with Rinna is one of Who’s The Asshole?’s best. A single drag queen paired with a straight woman who has been married (to actor Harry Hamlin) for almost 30 years? It’s as fascinating as it is funny. Not only does Katya have no interest in getting hitched – “I was perplexed by the gay marriage movement” – she’s not sure she’s even up for a long-term relationship. Ever.
“I just love being alone. I love sleeping alone. I get wistful and Jane Austen about having a man in my life but not when I go to bed. When I go to bed, when my head hits the pillow, I am glad nobody’s there,” she exhales. She’s never had a long-term relationship, and she’s not looking for one. “I could meet the love of my life, whatever, but I would never live with that person because then they would become not the love of my life. They become the bane of my life, you know?”
There’s one relationship for Katya which, as far as fans are concerned, is a marriage. For ten years, Katya has worked with Trixie Mattel on viral hits, including web show UNHhhh, Netflix’s I Like To Watch, podcast The Bald and the Beautiful, and a number of international tours and shows. To the LGBTQ+ community, “Trixie and Katya” coexist like salt and pepper, bread and butter, Bert and Ernie.
Unlike Bert and Ernie, and despite how much fans might theorise, Trixie and Katya aren’t sleeping together. “I have a very non-sexual relationship with Trixie, but it is by far the most meaningful of all my gay relationships. This is a person who stuck with me through some very dark times and I just love him so much,” Katya says, at her most earnest yet.
Their unfiltered brand of eccentric, off-the-cusp comedy, laden with niche pop culture references and a deep appreciation of one another’s viewpoint, is what keeps fans returning whatever the project. “It’s just such a magical thing where you can go on stage with someone and create something out of nothing and it’s good, you know? I love her so much.” But no, not in that way. “I would never get married to her.”
Who’s The Asshole? season four is being prepped, and Katya will be solo again. No guests are confirmed yet, but she has a clear idea of who she doesn’t want to speak to: someone incredibly boring, or someone she loves who reveals themselves to be rancid.
“I’d be really scared to interview, like, Elton John or something. Somebody who’s like such a gay icon, just in the off chance they turned out to be a real c**t.” Another laugh. And another. And another.
Grindr’s Who’s The Asshole? is available on all podcast platforms and YouTube.
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