'RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 10 'premiere pays tribute to Jiggly Caliente after queen's death: 'Forever fabulous'
RuPaul's Drag Race is paying tribute to one of its lost stars.
The end of the All Stars 10 premiere episode on Friday included a visual memorial to season 4 and All Stars 6 queen Jiggly Caliente, who died on April 27 at age 44.
"Forever fabulous," the tribute card read, along with the late queen's name and the years 1980-2025. It also included a photo of Jiggly looking stunning in a knee-length red dress, a promo look from when she was announced as a permanent judge of Drag Race Philippines in 2022.
The news of the fan-favorite queen's death came as a shock to Drag Race fans when her family announced it on Instagram late last month.
"It is with profound sorrow that we announce the passing of Bianca Castro-Arabejo, known to the world and cherished by many as Jiggly Caliente," they wrote on Instagram. "Bianca passed away peacefully on April 27, 2025, at 4:42 a.m., surrounded by her loving family and close friends."
A cause of death was not shared, but the news came just days after they had posted that Jiggly's leg had been amputated following "a severe infection" and she would have to bow out of her judging duties on the international offshoot's upcoming season.
Including Jiggly, six Drag Race franchise queens have died since the series launched in 2009. Drag Race UK inaugural winner The Vivienne died earlier this year of cardiac arrest caused by ketamine. Previous to that, Drag Race Thailand competitor Bandit died in 2023, Drag Race UK's Cherry Valentine died in 2022, Drag Race season 8 and All Stars 3 star Chi Chi DeVayne died in 2020, and season 2 queen Sahara Davenport died in 2012, just two years after her show debut.To many RuPaul's Drag Race fans, season 4 was the beginning of a golden era of the competition series. Jiggly cemented a place in viewers' hearts on the very first episode, in which she won the mini challenge of posing on a spinning platform while being doused with "hazardous waste" and strutted down the Apocalyptic Couture runway wearing a delightfully bad design that would become known as "baked potato couture."
As if that weren't enough of a memorable debut, Jiggly also got into a heated exchange with Lashauwn Beyond during Untucked that prompted her season 4 sister to utter the famous line, "This is not RuPaul's Best Friends' Race."
Beginning on season 4, RuPaul made a habit of asking, "May I call you Jiggly?" after saying the queen's giggle-inducing name. The loving bit extended when the "very Saint Tropez" entertainer returned for another stint on All Stars 6 in 2021.
Although she sashayed away in the second episode, she once again made quite an impression. In a season twist that saw eliminated contestants battle the next-out queen, Jiggly returned for a lip-sync against her good sis Silky Nutmeg Ganache, but it was their hilarious banter before Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Want to Have Fun" had even started that was a stand-out moment.
"Oh, it's Jiggly," Silky immediately declared in what was supposed to be a beat of suspense as only the opponent's silhouette was shown behind a wall. "Two fat bitches in f---ing leopard print, I can't," Jiggly exclaimed seeing Silky's matching outfit, before keeling over in howls of laughter. "How did this happen?"
Outside of her experience with Drag Race, Jiggly, worked as an actress, appearing in a 2018 Saturday Night Live sketch about a drag queen–centric GPS device and performing small parts on Broad City, before starring on Ryan Murphy's Pose as Veronica Ferocity of the House of Ferocity.
"There's a stigma with reality TV personalities who want to be actors, and that's why, when I auditioned for Pose, I didn't audition as Jiggly Caliente, I auditioned as Bianca," she previously told Entertainment Weekly. "I didn't want people to box me in as a reality star. I wanted people to give me a fair shot.... When I got the call from All Stars, I couldn't possibly turn it down. I'm in a different space in life. It just felt like it was time for me to do this and compete in a whole different mindset, the right mindset to actually compete — and I got my teeth fixed!"
RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 10 airs Fridays on Paramount+. The first two episodes are available to stream now.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
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