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  • The Paris Review

    The Wholesome Yet Filthy Comedy of Trixie and Katya

    by Kastalia Medrano Nov 17, 2017 7 minutes

    Katya Zamolodchikova and Trixie Mattel.

    Because we haven’t figured out how to actually solve the various things happening in our country, for now we’re relying pretty heavily on humor. Contemporary political humor has many forms, but it’s the takedowns that get far and way the most attention. This has created an odd climate in which people assume that for comedy to have any political or cultural value it has to be mean. A lot of comedians fall back on the assumption that the shortest path to funny is through picking the lowest-hanging target. But Trixie Mattel and Katya Zamolodchikova, a pair of much-beloved drag queens whose show premiered on November 15 on Viceland, have found a way of landing jokes without aiming at anything at all. They’re able to show, consistently, that being wholesome is not mutually exclusive with being absolutely fucking filthy, and that a firm grasp of one’s own brand doesn’t mean acting like an asshole. Earlier this month, I sat down to talk with them.

    KATYA: Yeah, I don’t, I’m not like a very good actor.

    TRIXIE: Me neither, bitch! I’m not good at anything! I can do, like, two voices. We do the white-girl voice…

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