Drag Race UK star talks doing drag as The Traitors’ Claudia Winkleman: ‘She said it was magnificent’

A drag queen who starred in RuPaul’s Drag Race UK has achieved viral fame for playing Claudia Winkleman in drag on social media and said “if the call ever came for Traitors, you can guarantee I will be there”.

Paige Three, a 29-year-old drag queen from Guildford, Surrey, has been honing her craft for six years. She rocketed to fame last year after appearing on the seventh series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK.

She competed in a Traitors-themed challenge titled The Tainters, in which the queens had five minutes to get into drag as the show’s host Claudia Winkleman.

This sparked an unlikely social media series in which Paige dons Winkleman’s famous black fringe and eyeliner to lip sync to some of her most notable quips and quotes, to much acclaim from fans – and from the star herself.

“I saw a glimmer of myself in one of the camera shots, it was just my face, and I went, ‘Oh, my God, you really look like Claudia Winkleman!’,” Paige said of the Drag Race UK challenge.

She initially thought nothing more of it, but when her series of Drag Race UK aired it coincided with The Celebrity Traitors, a spin-off from the main show which saw the likes of Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross, Celia Imrie and Drag Race UK judge Alan Carr play the game of deception and deduction.

Taking to TikTok and Instagram under the handles @paigethreedrag and @paigethree respectively, Paige reignited her Winkleman drag to lip sync along to The Traitors’ host’s zingy quotes. She was surprised to find the clips went viral.

“On Drag Race, we were handed a wig, a cloak and a black eyeliner. It was quick drag, we had like five minutes,” Paige explained.

“But I actually pushed it far on the show. We have a thing as drag queens, if you’re a cis man, called beard cover, and it’s like an orange foundation, essentially, and you only use that on your bearded area because it cancels out the blue of a five o’clock shadow.

“I decided to use that all over my face, and it seemed to have worked!”

“Getting in drag now as Claudia is very easy,” she added.

“It’s definitely a turtleneck, a fingerless glove, some sort of blazer, the black fringe, and orange foundation, a lot of bronzer and a blacked out eye. It takes me four minutes.”

Paige’s usual drag look – which includes creative make-up, costuming and a glamorous wig – takes two and a half hours.

She said of her Claudia look: “I’m very happy for it to be four minutes!”

Paige said the former Strictly Come Dancing host is “fascinating as a human being”.

“I think she’s so light and funny, and her humour I get, and I have this thing where I kind of look like her!”

“I think she’s just so human and just there to have a good time,” she added.

“And I think, at the moment, people love that, because it is refreshing. The world’s a crazy place at the moment.”

Speaking of her viral videos, Paige said: “I did one TikTok, and it did very well. It wasn’t even a case of me then doing it because they were doing well, it was because it was just stupid.

“And she’s not exactly at a loss for loads of memeable and soundable moments. She’s got so many that it was very easy for me to be like, ‘OK, well, now I’ll do that sound, or now I’ll do that sound’.

“It’s quite an easy thing to come up with. She’s definitely providing me with the material.”

Winkleman saw one of Paige’s videos and wrote on Instagram: “This is magnificent,” which Paige saw as her “seal of approval”.

“I was like, ‘Right, well, there you go. Claudia likes it. No offence being done. Let’s keep going’,” she said.

Paige loves how the quick social media performances show the fun, silly side of her personality.

“I think that sometimes it can be misconstrued. As a drag queen, I do certain types of performances when I’m working, and it can definitely be almost standoffish. I’m not being standoffish, but it can appear standoffish because, you know, I’m doing this huge production number, and they’ve got the wind machines and the hair and the glamour, and it’s a bit disconnected.

“What I like about doing something like this is it reconnects me with the audience… I just appreciate the humour of it all, and it definitely lightens up what I’m doing.”

Paige is appearing in the Adult Panto Tour’s production of Beauty And The Beast in dozens of theatres across the UK.

In her headline shows, Paige said she wants to feed more of her playful nature into her glamorous performances.

“I want people to be able to come and see a show and really enjoy the performances, and be given the pop star fantasy and feel themselves drift into that fantasy of a moment, but then me grab a microphone and break that fourth wall and be like, but this is all stupid, and we’re all having fun today!