Shea Couleé talks 'discredit' over 3-star twist on Drag Race AS7: 'Fans don't know what it's like'

Shea Couleé didn't come to play with petty fans, she came to slay the trolls questioning her status as one of the all-time RuPaul's Drag Race greats.

RuPaul shook the All Stars 7 competition Friday by awarding Shea with three Legendary Legend Stars instead of the usual single-star prize, thus boosting her from last place into one of the top four slots in the upcoming finale. Now, the season 9 alum exclusively tells EW's BINGE podcast (below) how she feels about "fans" attempting to invalidate her progress.

"Immediately, I was already thinking that I want to be in the finale, but I had this gut feeling that for me there will be people who want to discredit or disagree," Shea says of feeling anxiety over the situation during production. "I had to go in there and focus and live up to the agreement that I made to myself that no matter what I was going to give 100 percent, and that's what I did."

The All Stars 5 champion adds that the three-star twist initially felt like a "strange handout" for her show-stopping variety show performance of her original song "Your Name," but only because Shea is "hard on [her]self" in the context of a competition.

"People [are questioning], 'Did she really deserve those three stars?' I already knew that discourse would happen, and I felt in the moment like, here we go, if I win these, it almost feels like I won't be able to win because people who are fans of the other contestants are immediately going to try to discredit my win," she remembers, later stressing that there's no way for fans to have the full scope of experience that the queens have while filming episodes for hours on end.

"We were the ones who were there for the whole experience," she continues. "There's so much, so I have to finally separate myself and my personal experience and the perception delivered to the fans, because they're forming their opinions based off of what they see.... I can understand how they feel that way. Going as far as to say what someone does or doesn't deserve, that's not language I'd personally use in my life, but I have different experiences than these fans. These fans don't know what it's like."

Elsewhere in the episode, Shea also reveals why she thinks the judges had deep affection for Jinkx Monsoon and Raja throughout All Stars 7, her thoughts on Monét X Change breaking the tie between Trinity The Tuck and Jaida Essence Hall (plus who she would've selected to advance, if given the power), and how she continued to thread a narrative of Black excellence through her runway package on AS7.

The RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 7 finale airs Friday on Paramount+. Listen to Shea's full EW's BINGE episode above, and listen to more episodes featuring interviews with the cast in our podcast feed below.

Subscribe toEW's BINGE podcast for full recaps of RuPaul's Drag Race, including weekly All Stars 7 recaps and reactions with the cast, special guests, and more.

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