Behind Drag Latina | Revry and LATV Co-Produce for the First Time

Revry and LATV, national television networks based in Los Angeles, have come together for the first time to co-produce the second season of Drag Latina.

Since 2001, LATV has been pushing social boundaries on air.

When Andrés Palencia was made CEO in 2019, alongside president Bruno Seros-Ulloa, there was a deliberate content shift that focused in on identity.

“We deliberately built a structure … to consistently make and develop and grow LGBTQ+ content, Latino content, content that accurately reflects the Latino community, and content that reflects the Afro-Latino experience,” Palencia says.

Damian Pelliccione was also interested in re-shaping queer identity on screen. So, in 2015, he co-founded Revry in his living room in Echo Park.

“I don’t stop being gay after June. I’m queer all-year round,” says Pelliccione, also the company’s CEO. “I thought: what if there was an opportunity to create a streaming network that was exclusively for people like me?”

Even after Pride season ends, LATV and Revry continue distributing diversified queer content that deepens and normalizes our stories. And the more they create, the more their audiences grow aligned with and celebrate representative creative output.

“The best way we can run [LATV] and make it successful is to create the kinds of shows, content, and programming our audience will love,” says Palencia. “Whether or not the advertisers catch on [is] kind of irrelevant.”

For so long, queer-oriented platforms have taken the form of non-profit institutions and charity orgs. Until recent years, many investors didn’t think enough queer people existed to support queer entertainment networks and, as such, didn’t see a return on investment.

The Black Lives Matter movement and the global pandemic changed the approach.

“The market started catching on to how much value there is to inclusive and genuine and organically-sourced content,” Palencia says.

BLM dramatically started holding companies more accountable around diversity, equity, and inclusion. Simultaneously, the global pandemic increased television viewership in homes across the country.

“Investors finally saw [Revry] as a viable opportunity to invest in,” Pelliccione says. “We saw even bigger opportunities post-pandemic because our audience just continued to multiply.”

One such opportunity was Drag Latina.

The show pulls from the Drag Race model, but has its own style, parameters, and features queens from an array of Latino backgrounds. Chiru Adams created and self-funded the first season in Texas. But, with neither the resources to finish post-production nor a solid plan for distribution, he explored partnering options to get the job done.

When Pelliccione watched the trailer, he knew the show would be huge. The visuals, the brand, the name: it was an easy yes.

“Immediately, Chiru flew to Los Angeles and met with us and we sat down together, and we just had this wonderful meeting of the minds,” Pelliccione says.

Revry acquired the show, finished post-production, distributed the first season, and committed to multiple seasons.

“LGBTQ+ is a culture but it’s also a mix of cultures,” Pelliccione says. “It’s not one language, it’s not one race, it’s not one gender, it’s not one sexual orientation. We are true diversity at heart, and that’s what excites me. [Drag Latina] totally aligns with everything we promote, what we put out, and what we stand for.”

As Pelliccione predicted, Drag Latina became the #1 watched show on the network last fall, and Guatemalan queen Vicky Chavarria took home the show’s first crown.

Looking to expand the show for its second season, Pelliccione turned to LATV as a complimentary platform and producing partner.

“Revry and LATV: we’re good friends,” Palencia says. “We’re both minority-owned companies, we both represent our communities really well, we both hire within the community, so we have a lot of values in common.”

Content-wise, it was a no-brainer decision. Palencia and Seros-Ulloa have been cultivating this kind of cultural overlap across their network’s pillars. So, LATV—already one of the biggest producers of queer content—joined forces with Revry to co-produce Drag Latina’s next season.

“It [had] to be bigger because we’re both involved, so we brought the production into our studios here in LA,” Palencia says. “If you have a great idea that’s been done so well on a smaller scale and you can provide the right kind of support, then you can just get more out of it. The core idea, the heart of it, the spirit, the sass, the magic of it is still there.”

Drag Latina sets a new tone for an age-old story.

Though RuPaul has triumphantly popularized drag, his universe is not the first. Drag is timeless and universal. It’s existed since before Shakespeare cast men in female roles. And every region has its own sources of inspiration.

As we see from the Drag Latina queens this season, drag can be campy, political, identity-based, or simply entertaining.

“We came together and [made] this a real true co-production, LATV and Revry … and it was a wonderful marriage. I think this season, with the resources they had, the resources we had, you really see it in the work,” Pelliccione says. “I’m really happy and really excited about the future of this show.”

For Pelliccione, the show uniquely highlights and bridges variations of Latin culture using a firmly queer lens.

For Palencia, the show “wipes the canvas clean” and provides a new jumping-off point for what drag can be.

“Companies like ours, companies like Revry: there’s only a handful. When we can find the right place to collaborate, that shows that you don’t need to be bullied out of spaces by [entertainment] giants gobbling everything up,” Palencia says. “I think that ends up being really good for culture, for audiences, and really good for people who like great content.”

New episodes of Drag Latina air on both LATV and Revry once a week. Tune in to catch the rest of the season.