Johnny Bananas, the long-running, six-time winner of MTV’s reality show “The Challenge,” has seen and done it all. And as we learned Thursday night, yes, even “tucking.”
“I know what tucking is. I have,” Bananas, whose real real name Johnny Devenanzio, told TheWrap’s Matt Donnelly on Thursday. “I did boy-lesque. I looked phenomenal.”
Bananas spoke on TheWrap’s Emmys Outstanding Reality Competition Panel at the Landmark Theatres in Los Angeles along with “Project Runway” executive producer Sara Rea and “RuPaul’s Drag Race” executive producer Fenton Bailey. So naturally, Bailey asked Bananas if he’d ever done drag and if he “tucked.”
“It was pretty interesting. Very liberating,” he said. “The stockings, the whole nine. It’s on YouTube if you want to check it out.
His drag name? Havana Banana. And of course Bailey took the time to ask him if he’d consider some day appearing on an episode of “RuPaul’s Drag Race.”
“I’d love to,” Bananas said. “I figured out how to put the fake lashes on. It took me a week to get the glue off. But I felt oddly comfortable dressed in fish nets and six-inch heels.”
“It’s like an armor isn’t it? You feel invincible,” Bailey responded.
Of course, Bananas has been a reality star for a long time, first appearing on “The Real World” way back in 2006. Now he meets fans who have grown up watching him on those shows for over a decade. So while his runway performance might turn some heads, Bananas is used to that.
“There’s a quote that says, ‘if everyone likes you or everyone hates you, you’re doing something wrong,’” Bananas said. “So I’ve kind of grown up with that in my head, and I know that I’m going to rub some people the wrong way and certain people are going to love me. I would rather be talked about negatively than not talked about at all.”
Check out the full video from TheWrap’s Emmys panel above, and check out Bananas’s comments at the 28:54 mark.