There is one question on my mind when I begin a Zoom call with Suzie Toot. While I only fell in love with the up-and-coming drag superstar when she first graced my TV last month, as a long-time fan of drag and “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” there were many topics I should have been focused on. Her experience on the Emmy Award-winning show, for one. Her philosophy on the art of drag, another good option.
Instead, my only objective for the call is finding out who an 8-year-old Suzie Toot portrayed in her summer camp production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”
“I was tragically in the ensemble, but let me tell you, I wanted to be Motel so bad, but it didn’t happen,” the 24-year-old tells Hey Alma.
“It’s not too late,” I say, as we agree that a future Suzie Toot should portray the star-crossed love interest of Tevye’s daughter Tzeitel in a “Fiddler” revival someday.
Revival is at the center of Suzie Toot’s drag. Vintage-inspired and always filled with references, she has combined 1925 glamour with 2025 humor to create praise-worthy performances. Miss Toot (born Benjamin Shaevitz) has been eating up the competition in the first six weeks on the 17th season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” notching two wins and another high placement.
Much of her flowers can be attributed back to that camp production, her first, which kickstarted a lifelong love of theater. Combining out-of-the-box fashion with stellar vocals and dancing skills, Suzie’s versatility has wowed the judges. Tap dancing the Gettysburg Address in Morse Code to portraying RuPaul’s former “cigarette mom” nanny on RDR Live have made for many memorable moments early in the season — all of which come from her theater background.
Suzie’s love of the vintage stems back to the tap dance classes she began taking in high school, which quickly became an obsession. She began watching videos of Golden Age of Hollywood tap It-Girls like Eleanor Powell and Ruby Keeler and wanted to emulate their glitzy elegance.
“That era, it’s glamorous, it’s exciting. It’s just the most beautiful thing in the world,” Suzie says.
Theater and vintage-inspired queens have often struggled on “Drag Race” with breaking out of the schtick. However, each week the Suzieverse grows as the Floridian shows off new talents far beyond a shuffle ball-change and a little jazz number.
In Week 4, Suzie showed off her love for rock music with a head-banging solo that landed her a top placement for the week, defying expectations from the other queens. She enjoyed experimenting with a different genre, which gave her perspective on what Suzie could be.
“It was fun to do that challenge on ‘Drag Race’ and lean into the rock ‘n roll because it’s a part of me, but isn’t always a part of Suzie,” she says. “On the show, I discovered that everything that I love and is a part of me can come through the Suzie Toot character. It doesn’t just have to be a specific thing.”
“The best art is made when you’re playing and when you’re receptive and open,” she adds.
Years before she graced the Werk Room herself, watching “Drag Race” gave her some of her first exposure to drag and the different types of performers that make up the art. But it was with further research on older performers that got her interested. Artistic, multidisciplinary queens like Varla Jean Merman and Charles Busch inspired Suzie to try out drag — first as a Halloween costume — as it allowed her to delve deeper into her love of theater.
“I discovered the drag that existed prior to ‘Drag Race,’” she says. “These foundational, very theatrical queens. I was like, ‘That’s a group that makes sense. That’s what I should be doing.’”
Suzie joins a long tradition of phenomenal Jewish talent on “Drag Race,” including season 16 finalist Plane Jane and season 9 winner Sasha Velour, who both integrated their Russian-Jewish identities into their drag. Fan-favorite Miz Cracker’s drag is centered on celebrating Jewish beauty. And “Queen of All Queens” Jinkx Monsoon used her drag persona to become connected with the Jewish heritage she didn’t know she had until adulthood.
Suzie, who descends from Fort Lauderdale, FL, looks fondly on her Jewish childhood and time singing songs and doing Shabbat at her Poconos sleepaway camp.
“My dad’s side of the family is Russian-Jewish, and my mom’s side is Irish Catholic, but we were raised Jewish. We went to Hebrew school and we did the whole gambit. I had a bar mitzvah. It was my mom’s choice to raise us in the Jewish faith,” Suzie says.
Her drag name was actually stolen from her mother’s maiden name because she liked the sound. She says the elder Suzie Toot is her biggest fan, and the feelings are mutual.
“Her name is so cute, so good on its own… My mom is a complex female character, and I find her hilarious. She doesn’t always know that she’s telling jokes, but I find her so funny,” she says. “And so there’s a lot of that sense of humor carried over from one Suzie Toot to another.”
Her mother has taken it in stride that she’s now the less famous Suzie, sending her son recaps of the latest “Drag Race” episodes and giving her support through commentary.
“She’s obsessed with it. When I first told her, she was so excited and couldn’t believe it. Didn’t believe me for some time, until she was like, ‘Oh, people were calling you Suzie,’” she says.
While Suzie doesn’t practice Judaism religiously, her Jewishness remains an important part of her identity: “I don’t identify religiously Jewish at the moment. Culturally, absolutely I do, because that’s where I come from.”
That Jewish culture shined through during the season 17 press week in New York City last December. The cast was told that they had to do a holiday-inspired outfit. Looking around the room and realizing that she was the only Jewish contestant, Suzie scrapped her original Rockettes-inspired idea for a “Ziegfeld Follies Menorah” dress worthy of kvelling over for all eight nights.
“Once the vision came to me, of the wingspan being the menorah, and the feathers… I was like, ‘This is gonna be gonna be so good,’” she tells me, adding that it was special to edit the dress and add more feathers to the menorah, symbolizing lighting a new candle.
Since she wore that dress, Suzie’s been overwhelmed by the support from the Jewish community as people reproduce the dress and share it widely, giving it a life of its own.
“A lot of Jewish people can relate to feeling kind of distant from the culture … and to feel reconnected in that way. Queer Jewish people respond[ing] to this character is so exciting,” Suzie says.
Since recording the show, Shaevitz has left Florida and moved up to New York City. The drag artist explains that the experience of meeting new designers and other creatives has helped expand the Suzie characters and give new ideas of where to take the act.
“My weirdest number back home is my most normal number here, because in Brooklyn, drag is crazy,” she says.
During her time on “Drag Race,” Suzie has quickly become one of the show’s best talking heads and has been seen asserting her confidence during challenges — even if it’s to the chagrin of her competitors.
Asked where that outspokenness comes from, she quickly replies “I’m a double Aries with a Pisces rising.”
But she was not always confident in her talent and had to work on speaking up and feeling proud of what she can do. High school theater was one of the biggest spaces that provided that place to grow and feel accomplished for the young performer. Getting lead roles and exploring the bounds of theater made her feel like she had found her calling.
“I have to be confident in [my theater talent] if I’m gonna say it’s my whole world,” she says.
Walking into the Werk Room “certain I was going to win,” she has not been shy about voicing her opinions and making sure that she will shine in challenges. However, Suzie’s confidence and input into group challenges has rubbed some of the other queens the wrong way over the past two challenges.
As someone who was not a pageant queen or what most “Drag Race” viewers would consider a dancing queen, Suzie was used to confusing other drag queens in Florida. Since she began on the hit TV show, her talents and her fashion choices have been lauded by the judges and fans alike, even landing her on Vogue’s “Best Beauty Looks of the Week” list, ironically the same week her competitors called her unfashionable.
“What a week for Vogue to feature me after that ‘Untucked.’ It’s poetic. It was really validating,” she says.
Audience members don’t know if, or when, Suzie will be eliminated from “Drag Race,” but her run on the show has opened up a breadth of new ideas and opportunities for the young queen.
“Know that my career and my journey does not begin or end with ‘Drag Race.’”
