'Drag Race' Winner Dresses as Kathy Griffin, Complete With Trump Head

A “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winner took on the recent Kathy Griffin controversy with a performance piece of her own.

Sharon Needles, who won Season 4, appeared at the P Town Bar in Pittsburgh dressed as the comedian, holding a mock, bloodied head of Donald Trump. She performed a lip sync to “Heads Will Roll” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, all the while holding the Trump head out to the audience.

According to club kid legend James St. James, who wrote a post over at the World of Wonder website about the event — and is entrenched in the “Drag Race” community — Needles had a replica of Owen Wilson’s head lying around that she dressed up for the performance. The wig is an old Joan Rivers one styled into Griffin hair.

Also Read: Is Kathy Griffin's Career Over? Top Crisis Managers Weigh In

“It’s kind of mind boggling the levels to this story,” Needles told St. James, “that a female comic in this day and age, who was a friend of Joan Rivers, and who was on ‘Celebrity Apprentice’ with our president, is subjected to this type of abuse. I mean… if only Joan was still around. And the fact that we don’t hold our male politicians to the same standard as female comedians is shocking. ”

Needles is famous for her sometimes gory and shocking drag. In her stint on Season 4 on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” she constantly surprised the judges, such as when she dressed up as a zombie with blood pouring out of her mouth. She got a reputation among the other contestants for being a “spooky” queen. Regardless, she ended up winning the whole season.

Watch part of the performance below, which was posted by Needles’ boyfriend Chad O’Donnell over on Twitter.

Also Read: Kathy Griffin Isn't Alone: 8 Other Celebrities Who've Been Eyed by the Feds (Photos)

Destroy censorship pic.twitter.com/zfIPOIo9Lp

— Chad O'Connell (@ChadOConnellArt) June 6, 2017

Griffin became the subject of harsh critiques after a photo of her holding a decapitated and bloody Trump head made its way online. The stand-up comedian said since then, she’s received death threats and has become the subject of a Secret Service investigation.

She has since apologized for the photo. However, she’s been dumped by CNN and by Squatty Potty.

Needles isn’t the first public figure to support Griffin’s photo. Senator Al Franken said he still plans to appear with Griffin in July at an event to promote his book. Others, such as Jim Carrey and Ricky Gervais, have also come to her defense.

7 People Defending Kathy Griffin After Decapitated Trump Photo Shoot (Photos)

Kathy Griffin's photo of herself posing with the severed head of Donald Trump has been met with widespread condemnation and already cost the comedian her gig at CNN. But a few individuals are still publicly standing by Griffin, even if they don't entirely approve of her actions.
Jim Carrey came to Griffin's defense when asked about the photo at the premiere of his Showtime series "I'm Dying Up Here." Carrey told Entertainment Tonight that it's Griffin's duty to "cross the line at all times," adding that comedians are the "last line of defense."
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Ricky Gervais also defended Griffin in an interview with TheWrap, saying that the photo was in poor taste, but ultimately harmless. "The only way you could say she went wrong was that it was a bit crass," Gervais said. "It wasn't great art. But OK, let’s say it was bad art. So what? Nobody got hurt. That wasn’t a real head."
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The photographer Tyler Shields is also defending the photo as an artistic statement and an expression of his First Amendment right to free speech. "There’s the famous quote, 'I don’t agree with you, but I’ll defend your right to say it,'” Shields told Entertainment Weekly. "I might not agree with [Trump], she definitely doesn’t agree with him, but I’ll defend my right to be able to say whatever I want until I die."
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"I still love Kathy Griffin," Jamie Foxx told Entertainment Tonight, when asked about the backlash. "Don't kill the comedian! There's a lot of people out here doing really bad things and every time a comedian says anything, says something about peanuts, [people say], 'You're peanut-shaming!' [A comedian] says something about dolphins [people say], 'Oh my god, you're a dolphin-shamer.' We're the comics, we're entertainers, we don't mean any harm."
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Former CNN star Larry King took a similar stance, saying the image was “in terrible taste,” but ultimately expressing sympathy for Griffin as a friend. “She’s my friend. She made a mistake. She apologized. Let it go," King told TMZ, adding that he would not have fired Griffin had he been running CNN.
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‘Inside Amy Schumer’ writer Mike Lawrence came down on Griffin for apologizing for the stunt in a post on Facebook. “You know what you did and should own it. It wasn’t a riff onstage or a joke you had done once or twice," he wrote. "You wanted a reaction and got it. So live in it. Don’t apologize."
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Rosie O’Donnell tweeted about Griffin’s stunt by saying that she “didn’t find it funny at all.” But the longtime Trump critic has also retweeted a number of messages from users who say that similar actions — including people burning or lynching effigies of Barack Obama — have not been met with the same level of outrage.
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Civil rights attorney Lisa Bloom announced on Thursday that she will represent Griffin, and will host a press conference on Friday to "explain the true motivation behind the image, and respond to the bullying from the Trump family she has endured."
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Griffin has been criticized from both the left and the right, but a few people are standing by her

Kathy Griffin's photo of herself posing with the severed head of Donald Trump has been met with widespread condemnation and already cost the comedian her gig at CNN. But a few individuals are still publicly standing by Griffin, even if they don't entirely approve of her actions.

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7 People Defending Kathy Griffin After Decapitated Trump Photo Shoot (Photos)

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