Thirty years before Courtney Act would win the UK edition of Celebrity Big Brother (CBB), a six-year-old theatre group participant Shane Jenek fell in love with the art of drag during the school holiday pantomime season in Brisbane.
“I loved that British tradition where a man in drag would perform the lead villain,” he recalls. “I mean, Snow White and Cinderella are nice, but a bit boring, frankly. It was always the wicked stepmother who was far more colourful and exciting and attention-grabbing, and that’s where I first became aware that men could wear women’s clothes.”
Fascinated, Jenek would draw up make-up designs for various pantos’ nasty women, though he acknowledges it’s unlikely any of his amateur offerings were adopted. Lodged in the back of his head, it was Stephan Elliott’s The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) that reawakened his obsession.
“I would have been about 12 and I just thought it as the most wonderful thing,” he says. “At theatre school I remember everyone was singing the soundtrack and then, at the wrap party, my friend Scott and I decided to dress up in drag, wearing bikinis and popping on some lippy, and that was kind of where it all began.”
Gracing this year’s 40th anniversary Mardi Gras in Courtney Act: Under the Covers, it wasn’t until New Years’ Eve 2000 that Jenek’s alter ego appeared. He’d relocated to Sydney, hit Oxford Street’s drag shows front row, and made friends with several of the colourful queens. Becoming a regular gig, competing in the 2003 debut season of Australian Idol alongside Guy Sebastian and Shannon Noll kicked his high heel career into high gear.
“Idol was amazing because it took it from being this thing that I did in Oxford Street gay bars to something all of Australia was watching,” Jenek says.
As much of a confidence boost as the show was, Jenek reveals several negative voices (he’s not naming names) impressed on him that if he wanted to be taken seriously as a performer, he should ditch the drag. Thankfully he ignored them, and after a decade working cabarets, cruises and corporate bookings, RuPaul’s Drag Race took things to the next level, introducing Courtney to a global audience.
Along with Adore Delano, Courtney made the finale of the sixth season in 2014, but lost the crown to Bianca Del Rio. Jenek recalls the move to Los Angeles three years prior as a reality check. “I was the face of Sheer Cover makeup, flogging it on Australian morning telly, and I went from a big three-bedroom apartment overlooking the Sydney Harbour to a tiny little shoebox in West Hollywood, earning less money as a 28-year-old than I did when I was 18, but I knew I was exploring the world.”
Winning CBB might mean another move, this time to the UK, where several doors are opening. “I love the UK and I’ve been blown away by its relationship with gender and sexuality,” he says. “It’s part of the social conversation and has been for decades. Australia and the US are kind of stunted when it comes to that sort of stuff. Even if you look at heterosexual masculinity in the UK, it’s completely different. Somebody like Russell Brand or Harry Styles, they aren’t alpha males. They’re a bit feminine and are respected and celebrated, not questioned. There’s more nuance.”
That nuance was on show in the CBB house, where Courtney had an intense connection with heterosexual housemate and The Apprentice star Andrew Brady. “It really was kind of that gay/straight alliance thing. Oh look, a drag queen and a straight guy can have an affectionate, platonic friendship and that doesn’t take anything away from the straight guy. It’s cool that the conversation is evolving beyond the binary of gay and straight and never the twain shall meet.”
Though fellow housemate India Willoughby, a newsreader and trans woman, announced she had a phobia of drag queens, Courtney also took the time to enable discussions with her fellow housemates about gender and sexuality diversity. “I was glad that I was there to be able to tell my story and even, in some ways, help tell India’s story to some of the other housemates, chatting to the boys in the bathroom, explaining the difference between drag and trans.”
Jenek has been thinking a lot about the gender spectrum in the last few years. “My drag experience does intersect with my gender identity, and it doesn’t for many drag queens. I only really came to understand that in the last four years. I don’t stick to any rigid idea of what a boy or a girl should feel, even though in some ways as Courtney my expression is the extreme form of womanhood and femininity, almost a radical conformist. But then as Shane, I’ve come to embrace my femininity so much more.”
Identifying as gender fluid, Jenek is happy to be called he/him when Shane, and she/her when Courtney, or any combination. “I’m not particularly fussed when a friend calls me Shane or Courtney when I’m the other, and so often in drag culture everybody is a she, but I actually like those two different moments.”
That wasn’t always the case. “All through my 20s, it really caused me a lot of conflict, because I was like, ‘wait, am I trans, do I want to be a woman? Or do I want to go on steroids and become like a male underwear model?’ It was opposite ends of the spectrum and I realised that they were just socialised ideas of the ultimate expression of masculinity and femininity and I was always trying to live up to that, but ultimately what was true for me was somewhere in the middle.”
Catch Courtney Act: Under the Covers at the 40th Mardi Gras festival on March 1 and 2. For more info or to book tickets, click here.
