The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula Season 5 premieres tonight. Technically a Halloween premiere dropping at the stroke of midnight for our East Coast friends, 9 pm PT. This season is switching things up a bit, with The Boulet Brothers stepping into the directors’ chairs full-time. This season also boasts the most international cast members on a single season. Longtime fans of the series will be quick to notice a few changes with the premiere of season 5, the most noticeable will be the way the floor shows play out.
Dracmorda and Swanthula joined us ahead of the new season’s premiere to talk about directing in drag (spoiler: it’s a drag!), their ultimate dream extermination challenges, and the ultimate desire to someday drop a batch of willing contestants into potentially shark-infested waters. Read our full interview below, and watch The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula season 5 premieres at midnight ET October 31 exclusively on AMC+and Shudder.
The Boulet Brothers Step Into The Director’s Chair
A big change this season is that you are stepping into the director’s chairs. You’ve flirted with directing before, but this time you’re fully committing. What made you want to decide to take that on?
Swan: Well, it’s simple. We’re gluttons for punishment, sadistic, and brutal. Not only to the competitors, but to each other.
Drac: Yeah. Honestly, we had said at the end of Titans, that was sort of chapter one of the show, and so I think for chapter two of the show, we wanted to evolve the format, stepping into the director’s chair allowed us to do that. Part of it was wanting to make sure that the floor shows in this next generation were presented in the way that we wanted to.
The style of the floor shows from the previous chapter were more music video-oriented, which I think was fantastic, and I love. People always said they wanted to see more of the looks, which is important for us because we are drag artists, we know what it’s like to be on stage and what it’s like to perform in those spaces while you’re being filmed. We thought it was important for us to directly interface with the cast and the crew to make sure that we were presenting their drag in the best light possible.
Swan: That echoes a lot of people’s, a lot of feedback that we’ve gotten directly. So this year, we’ve come up with a transformed format. It’s almost a hybrid of a fashion show where you’ll see, for the first time, people come out, and we actually have a turntable built into the stage, so they get spun 360 degrees. You see everything from nails to shoes to hair, everything, and then they walk, and then it kind of devolves into the chaotic music video, super cut version of what people are used to seeing, and I think it really hits a sweet spot. It’s the best of all worlds.
Drac: Directing Halfway to Halloween allowed us to have full control over our project for the first time. It was so rewarding and honestly the most enjoyable time I’ve had on any of our sets before, so we wanted to extend that into this new chapter of Dragula. It made it very rewarding for us from an artistic point of view, which is important to do if we’re going to continue to do the show.
When you directed the Halloween special, were you guys thinking you’d dip your toes into directing this Halloween special with the intention of possibly directing season five?
Drac: Well, the thing is, we directed a lot of the show in the past, just uncredited. It’s just sort of how we did it because obviously, people can step in and direct scenes, but when I think of a director, they oversee the entire project. It doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily at every single minute, but they’re giving the overall vision, even in editing, how does it get put together?
With Halfway to Halloween, part of it was we wanted that 100% control, and I think that it, sort of we knew we were going to do that for season five, but I think the experience cemented that and aligned with a member of our crew that’s been there since the beginning that had to step away this year and it sort of created a bit of a vacuum. So I think it just magically everything happened the way it was supposed to. Halfway to Halloween was the most fulfilling project we’ve had.
What are the challenges that come along with bouncing back and forth between being in front of and behind the camera?
Swan: I think it’s trust. We are so fully realized when it comes to directing the competitors and getting the best out of them. We have to trust the creatives that we’ve brought onto the crew to give us that treatment so that we know we’re giving and looking our best when we’re on camera.
Exhausting but worthwhile? Because you both sounded very ecstatic about the way this turned out.
Drac: When we’re directing the floor shows, and we’re not in drag, or when we’re directing the death scenes and stuff like that, it’s lovely. I love it. It feels very natural and fulfilling.
Directing In Drag Is A Bit Of A Drag
Swan: There’s nothing quite more hellish than being in full Boulet drag because there’s a lot of levels of drag. Some of these young drag artists can come out and just slap a little thing that they order online, put a belt on it, eyelashes and some shaking go wig, and they’re very comfortable and they flip all over the stage. But then fast-forward to us where we’re larger than life, we can’t see, giant claws, corseted to high hell, and then we’re out in the middle of a haunted house somewhere in St. Louis, and it’s like, this is special.
Drac: There is a moment where we were shooting cinematic stuff and we were at this kind of abandoned outdoor haunted house, and the owners came and turned it on for us and just left. I mean, I’m talking acres of haunts, and I was walking by myself from the trailer and it wasn’t close and full drag with this machete because you’ll see where that comes in. But walking through this thing and all the animatronics are jumping out at me and shit, everything was turned on and I was just like, this is weird. My life is very weird.
Swan: Yeah, slash awesome, though, right? I had my own version of that, too. It was very silly.
This Season Has The Most International
Cast Members In Dragula History
You have 11 new monsters joining the cast, and it kind of feels like sort of a Miss Universe style season because you have drag contestants from all over the world. Is the most international cast members that you’ve had on a single season.
Swan: It is, yeah. There are three. We have someone from China, Argentina, and England.
As far as drag styles, obviously every season, every contestant has their very specific style, but culturally speaking, do contestants kind of embody that and it bring different flavors to the mix?
Swan: I think it does matter. I mean, each of them, not just the international too, the ones from the US are all very established in their own vibe. But to me, part of the most exciting, one of the most exciting ways that the internationals kind of manifest is that their inspiration is usually different. So what might be haunted, a classic ghost or haunt in the US is different than a Chinese spirit or the way that they look at the supernatural in South America. So you get these kind of really interesting perspectives that are unexpected and curve vaults for the other people too. Like, whoa, all the inspiration is so varied. What’s going to happen? Anything goes.
The Exterminations – Keeping It Filthy, Legal, And Safe
Exterminations are a huge part of the show, entering the fifth season, how do you come up with the challenges and keep it fresh?
Drac: That’s the easy part. The ideas are easy, but then sort of making sure you can do them safely and within budget, that is not as easy. You can do lots of things to do to people, but you have to think, how does it tie into and relate to the main challenge of that episode, and then how do you do it without spending $10 million and doing it safely? So I think that’s where the real challenge is. Ideas, we’re not lacking in. Practicality, we are.
So what I’m hearing is you’ve got a list of 5,000 extermination challenges. It’s just a matter of logistically which season those will work for and budget for.
Swan: Yeah. And some of them are even limited by the time of year that we film because if we want snow or we want animals, whatever, it might be. Like, oh, you can only do that in November, or you can only do this in the winter, or whatever. So those kinds of things come into play, too.
Drac: Or sometimes you’ll actually be prepared to go drop people off in the ocean in the middle of the night, but then you discover closer to the date that there are sharks in the water and you can no longer do it.
I mean, does that up the ante a little bit?
Drac: Well, I think that pushes it a little bit, having them get eaten by the sharks.
You’re very sweet not to drop off the contestants in shark-infested waters in the middle of the night.
Drac: That almost happened in season four. I’m just kidding. There’s also camera malfunction, that’s another thing we’ve run into where you take cameras into these weird spaces and temperatures and climates, and you’re like, “oh shit, the cameras are frozen.” Or when we’re in a tropical storm in Louisiana, and the camera is fogged to hell, we have to literally blow dry them to dry them out and get them to work.
Is there anything that you would love to include in an extermination but you can’t for legal or safety reasons?
Drac: Yeah, there’s lots. And usually Swan and other more practical producers will say, well, we can’t really do that because they might die. So yeah, there’s lots of things.
What’s an example of one that you would love to do, but maybe someone might die, and that would not be great?
Drac: I wanted to drop people off in the ocean in the middle of the night, drive the boat away and leave them there, and then come back and get them later. But what if we lose them, come back and they’re gone? We were told “Well, the Coast Guard says there are a lot of sharks out there because it’s cold during this time, and they might get eaten.” But that would be scary, right? If someone dropped me off in the ocean just with a little buoy or something and pulled away, and I was just in total darkness. That would be terrifying. That’s one I would love to do.
Maybe you should do that one as a film.
Drac: Well, then that’s fake.
Snuff film or bust?
Drac: There’s something with Ipecac that induces vomiting. I think the medic team said no, they can choke on their vomit.
Swan: Well, then we found out they don’t make it anymore because there was some concern. But we definitely wanted to, there were many, many talks about inducing vomiting.
It’s Halloween week, what’s the best horror thing that you’ve seen this year?
Drac: Well, I don’t know if it’s the best, but there are certain genres of horror that have, for whatever reason, escaped us over the years. So we have decided to become the masters of Child’s Play. We have watched every single piece of Chucky-related content in the past month. Now we’re experts on Chucky and everything Child’s Play.
I’m going to have to tag you in as the Child’s Play expert correspondents on something.
Drac: Yeah. I also want to get Don Mancini on to judge a specific challenge and Jennifer Tilly, so maybe you guys can help us make that happen.
Swan: Oh, yes, that’s the dream. Let’s put it out there in the universe, and it’ll come back to us and happen. My favorite horror movie, though, that I’ve seen in a really long time is Talk To Me. I thought it was amazing. I just loved it and I really loved the way they portrayed the idea that the supernatural could sort of manipulate and play tricks on the living. I just thought it was so successful and fresh and really cool.
I bet it’s going to sweep the Chainsaw Awards, I’m calling it right now. Is there anything else that you want to share about this season?
Drac: No, but you can have us host the next Chainsaw Awards if you want!
Stay tuned for our weekly interviews resurrecting the exterminated competitors.
