Interview With Dracmorda Boulet Of The Boulet Brothers

Drag. Filth. Horror. Glamour. I can’t think of a more perfect way to describe The Boulet Brothers. Interestingly enough, the Brothers aren’t actually brothers at all. Rarely seen out of drag with nary a record of their ‘real’ names, Dracmorda and Swanthula Boulet have created a brand all their own. Hosts of the insanely popular show, The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula, these queens are celebrating that their recently created podcast, Creatures of the Night, has been picked up by Dread Central. I caught up with Dracmorda Boulet, and we discussed the podcast, working in drag, horror conventions, and of course, horror movies.

PopHorror: Congratulations on your podcast, Creatures of the Night, joining Dread Central. That’s super cool!

Dracmorda Boulet: Thank you!

PopHorror: I was introduced to your show, The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula, awhile ago, and now I’m a huge fan, so it is an honor to speak with you.

Dracmorda Boulet: Thank you very much.

PopHorror: With recently starting your podcast, what can we expect from that?

Dracmorda Boulet: I think the main feature of the podcast is that it allows you—and for our fans and viewers— to get a better connection with us as the hosts. On our show on Netflix, we are serving as judges or are doing scripted parts, so you don’t really get the opportunity to get to know who we are. And people always want to hear more about what we think or get to know our personalities better. So, I think the podcast offers a really unprecedented opportunity to see that. We’re very like we are at home, basically, so it gives you an unusual opportunity to see us in a regular light.

PopHorror: That’s really awesome! So what is it that draws you to the horror genre?

Dracmorda Boulet: You know, I have been interested in horror since I can remember. One of my earliest childhood memories is being in my grandparent’s house, which was in the woods and pretty scary, and being alone on a couch in the middle of the night watching Dracula. I think I was four or something. I just remember that I loved the feeling of it. I loved the look of it. I loved the energy around it, and it’s just been like that forever.

PopHorror: I love that when it starts young and just goes with you into adulthood. That’s my favorite type of Discovering Horror story.

Dracmorda Boulet: I remember being in first grade and getting a nose bleed. I don’t know why, but I used to get really bad nose bleeds when I was young. And I had a bad nose bleed, and blood went everywhere, all over my hands and everything. And I had to rush off into the bathroom, and I remember it was a stormy morning, and it was really grey. Just a creepy day. I was in the bathroom—it was a little kids bathroom—and looking up in the mirror, there was blood all over my hands. And I started imagining, “How scary would this be? What if someone was after me and that’s where the blood is from?” I just kind of wrote a little horror short right there in that moment. I didn’t know what I was doing, but that’s what I was doing. And it’s been like that forever.

PopHorror: I love that so much. Not that you had a nose bleed, but that it caused you to create. You two are so talented, and your passion for the genre really shows through. I love hearing stories like this. With your show, you started on a YouTube channel, and then moved to OutTV and Amazon, and now Shudder and Netflix have been showing you. How does it feel to see your creation grow and demand an audience that only these platforms could really provide?

Dracmorda Boulet: You know, I feel happy that it’s happening. It hasn’t been easy. What we do is considered very subversive to the general population. Convincing sort of “normal people” that our product has mass appeal is difficult to do. They see it, and some of these executives are so strait-laced they don’t even know what they’re looking at. The thing that’s helped us is that we’ve always had the numbers and the performances to prove our worth. I don’t know how many executives to this day even understand what we do; it’s just that they see its value probably, and it affords us other opportunities.

PopHorror: You mentioned the executives… Is there ever a moment when they tell you, “No”? That it’s too much or it’s going too far?

Dracmorda Boulet: Constantly. I have been told, “No…” We have been told, “No,” so many times. It’s incredibly painful, because this show is an expression of us. It’s an extension of us, really. And it’s the culmination of our career and everything we’ve worked for coming together in a TV show. So, there’s many times where I’ll be sitting down in front of really mainstream outlets, and they’re just looking at me like I’m an alien.

It’s a difficult balance, right? Because then you have fans who are incredibly aware of socialist issues, and they couldn’t be on any further polar opposites of the spectrum, and it’s hard to get fans to understand sometimes what we have to deal with to provide them the content that we do. 

PopHorror: I’m sure it wows them every time. 

Dracmorda Boulet: We will only work with people that will leave us to what we do. We don’t sign contracts that allow other places to have control over our edits or content, places that want to try to put that energy on us. We usually walk away from.

PopHorror: That’s good. You two have helped to bring drag to the forefront and really have catapulted it into the mainstream. Do you have any words of wisdom for those that are just starting their drag journey?

Dracmorda Boulet: I would say, “Think outside the box. Don’t do what everybody else is doing. Think about what you want to do, and what motivates you. And also, do it because you enjoy theater and performance and art and expression. Don’t do it because you want to have a catchphrase and get on a TV show and go on tour.” Those, to me, are the wrong reasons to do it.

PopHorror: I agree. Do it for you and not because other people are telling you to.

Dracmorda Boulet: At one time, drag paid peanuts. You’d get under $50 to do a drag show, and now you can get paid thousands of dollars to do it if you’re one of the lucky ones. It hasn’t always been that way, and it won’t always be like that. So do it because you love it, because the fame and the money might not always be there.

PopHorror: There’s a local drag show that I go to sometimes. It’s $2 to get in, and it’s in this tiny dark room in the back of a bar. And you know, they’re not making thousands of dollars doing it, but you can tell that they love it so much, and their performances and their talent shows that, and it really spotlights them. 

Dracmorda Boulet: Yeah, if you’re a smart business person, it takes a really unique blend of talents to be successful in this field, because you do need to be an amazing performer with a unique vision. But, unless you’re going to hand your business off to someone else to handle, you also have to be a marketing person. You have to be a producer. You have to understand business. A lot of people don’t have all those skills.

PopHorror: I know that Covid has really stalled a lot of things, and I watched your special on Shudder that was filmed during Covid, but what’s next for The Boulet Brothers? Anything else that you’re working on?

Dracmorda Boulet: Yeah, we’re really just getting started. We have a book coming out. We have a comic book series coming out. We’re working on some scripted things. We’re kind of just waking up from the pandemic. We sat on the sidelines for a little bit and worked in the background on a lot of projects. It gave us some time to write things, which we really needed that time to do. A lot of times, what you see in the finished product is the culmination of months of work behind the scenes, so it did afford us to do that. We did have to take things down a couple of notches for a few months, and now we have everything stored up, and we’re ready to just start firing.

PopHorror: I am super excited for a book. I can’t wait to see what’s coming out next. I know that, before the pandemic,  you were doing some conventions. While they’ve started back up, they’re not to the capacity that they usually are. Any plans to return to conventions or tour?

Dracmorda Boulet: Oh, I definitely think we will. As soon as we’re able to. We have some tours in the UK that are on hold right now that we were supposed to be doing. I think we’re just waiting to see. Conventions for sure. I’m not going to go to anything like that until it’s safe. For me, we’re around so many integral people to our business that work on the show and work on other projects, so I’m not going to expose them or potentially expose them to anything unless it’s… I’m just not going to do that. I’m not going to go to a convention and risk bringing something back to our house unless it’s absolutely necessary.

PopHorror: I completely understand that. I’m glad to hear that it’s not completely off the table.

Dracmorda Boulet: We love going to horror conventions. All the time, every day. As soon as it’s safe, I’ll do it. It’s very intimate conditions because you’re inside, and you usually do a meet and greet where you’re interacting and taking photos with people close up, so if we can’t give them the full experience, then we don’t even want to bother right now.

PopHorror: Of course. One last question for you, Drac. What is your favorite scary movie?

Dracmorda Boulet: This is a tricky one, because I have so many. I’m going to say one of my favorites is the Halloween series. That’s one of my favorites. I think I caught Halloween 4 when I was a really little kid, and there was something about that segment that drew me in. Of course, I was a huge fan of the original ones before that, and just seeing that they waited so long to put out a sequel, and you thought he was dead… I don’t know. The whole thing was just really exciting. I was really into it. So I think that maybe that’s my favorite.

Thank you to Dracmorda Boulet for speaking with us today. Be sure to check out the new The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula special currently on Shudder, and seasons two and three now on Netflix. You can find the Creatures of the Night podcast now on Dread Central, or other podcast platforms.