Because of their empty threats and bizarre behaviour, Tyra Sanchez has been exiled by the drag community. We take a look back over the past 15 years of peaks and falls, including their brief retirement from drag and the latest controversy surrounding The Vivienne’s tragic death…
By Bianca Guzzo
Five years ago, we wrote the widely read What Ever Happened To Tyra Sanchez? But a lot has happened since then…so we’ve decided to take another stab at it.
The American entertainer and drag queen known as Tyra Sanchez has always had a cloud of controversy surrounding their career, ever since she stepped onto the public scene after competing and winning the second season of RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2010. Despite being one of RuPaul’s chosen ones, Tyra Sanchez, also known as James William Ross, later pulled completely away from the drag community, even briefly retiring from drag altogether. Was this because of the string of controversies that have plagued his career, or was it something else?
While a lot happened leading up to Ross’s short retirement as Tyra Sanchez in 2020, information on the entertainer is hard to come by, so we’ve put together and updated a complete crash course timeline to help you navigate the highs and lows of the career of Tyra Sanchez – including what she’s been up to in the five years since this story was originally published and more on her vile comments on The Vivienne’s death and RuPaul cryptic response.
2010: RuPaul’s Drag Race: Season 2
We were first introduced to Ross as the 21-year-old Florida queen. As the last to enter the werk room on the second season of RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2010, Ross stuck it out to the very end of the competition. Season 2 was kind of iconic: it was the season that brought us Shangela (for the first time), Jujubee, Tatianna and Raven. Through his time on Drag Race, we saw Ross get into some drama with the other queens of the seasons. Whether it was sleeping in the werk room and being woken up by Ru herself, or not being a complete team player in team challenges, his journey on the show was a unique one to witness. Who could forget that iconic moment between Ross and Tatianna in their wedding dresses on the main stage?

Ross as Tyra blazed through the season being the queen everyone loved to hate. All of this aside, the “other” Tyra ended up taking the crown for the season, and the $25,000 prize – the first to win without ever being in the bottom two in the show’s history.
2016: The Tweets That Opened A Can Of Worms
Ross got into some hot water in 2016 because of some troubling exchanges on Twitter with fans where he tweeted “go kill yourself bitch” to respond to a Drag Race fan who had called him annoying. Later, he refused to apologize for his words, and stated he had no sympathy for those who chose to take their own life, calling them cowards who just gave up. In the same response, he later stated that he felt bad for the families they left behind. To make matters more confusing, in that same statement he told those who had taken offence to his words to direct their anger into energy to help those who are still struggling.

Confused? Everyone was at the time. Some fans believed Ross was using the term as loose slang, while others who were offended by the statement thought someone with a large following and some level of influence shouldn’t be using their platform to spread hateful messages. RuPaul addressed the T on his podcast and came to Ross’s defence. “People don’t get nuance on Twitter. You can’t do irony on Twitter; people won’t get it,” Ru explained at the time. And although it is very hard to decipher tone over a body of text, it still (rightfully) left drag fans divided on where they stood with Tyra.
2017: Morgan McMichaels Is DEAD?
In 2017, Ross posted an obituary for her fellow Season 2 queen Morgan McMichaels on the Tyra Sanchez Facebook page. When fans clicked on the link to the obituary, they were redirected to Tyra’s personal SoundCloud page, leading fans to believe she was using it to promote her own music. This obviously shocked fans and angered them – especially when they realized Morgan was still alive and currently performing at a gig. When Morgan confirmed she was very much alive – following a show she was playing that same evening – the whole thing started to unravel.

The whole ordeal circled back to a booking at a Hollywood nightclub that Ross lost because of comments he had made about another Season 2 queen, Raven, which caused drama with Raven’s friend Morgan. While Ross did eventually apologize for posting the fake obituary for Morgan, he also was firm on never taking it down. Are you keeping up? Good, because this is going to be a running theme in the timeline.
2018: The Drama With DragCon
Ross’s DragCon controversy is probably what most people will remember about Tyra the drag queen. For a lot of newer Drag Race fans, this was their first introduction to Tyra, and it was kind of a mess. Ahead of the Los Angeles RuPaul’s DragCon, Ross was infamously banned from attending the weekend-long event after he made online threats against fellow queens Tatianna and Phi Phi O’Hara ahead of the convention. A countdown was also posted to the Tyra Sanchez official website with the acronym “B.O.O.M,” counting down to the date of the event. This created a lot of worry for queens and fans alike on the internet, specifically on Twitter, where fans were pleading for people attending the event to take extra precautions, or to not go at all.

Thankfully, nothing ended up happening, but it was enough for Ross to be exiled from the community completely. After he was banned from attending the event, he posted an email that World of Wonder had sent to him stating that they wanted him to make an apology. “This apology has to make it clear that you do not condone violence against another person (including other queens) and that you will in no way encourage others to act violently (or otherwise inappropriately),” the email stated. When it came out that the video apology Ross recorded wasn’t good enough to get him back in the good books at World of Wonder, he responded again…with a refusal to re-apologize. “I will not be apologizing again for something that happened last month. I apologized then for my anger, my temper, my behavior and my choice of words.”
2019: A Public Apology (Finally?)
Following the worrisome threats and behaviour Ross had shown as Tyra, he ended up making a public apology via social media in early October 2019, more than a year after the initial incident. The apology outlined that while he was sorry for what he had said, his anger came from feelings he had been burying and masking for years. “To each of you reading this I humbly apologize for the online behavior I have displayed in recent years. Though it represents emotions I may have felt, it does not represent my true character. I have failed you and I know I am much better than that,” she stated.

While the apology seemed sincere, more drama quickly followed, as well as backlash from fans who continued to crusade for Ru to take back Tyra’s title and crown due to her behaviour.
2019–2020: Retirement From Drag
In the October 2019 formal apology, Ross explained that the past few years had been a rollercoaster journey with many ups and downs. He stated that the anger he had displayed came from a very dark place. Through soul-searching, he had come to realize that the best decision going forward was to retire from drag altogether.

In an Instagram post published in March 2020, Ross expressed his desire to retire from drag. “For those asking, Tyra Sanchez has fulfilled her purpose in my life. I, James Ross, no longer want to be referred to as Tyra, Tyra Sanchez, her, she, girl, or queen.” Thus ended (it seemed) the once triumphant, and as of lately tumultuous, career of Tyra Sanchez.
2020–2024: The Bitch Is Back
After announcing his retirement from drag in March 2020, Ross returned to drag exclusively on OnlyFans sometime in 2022 as “King Tyra.” In August 2020, TMZ reported that Ross had been arrested and charged with vandalism in Atlanta for spray painting “Don’t Move Here Ever!!” on the side of a building. In July 2023, it was revealed that Ross had been arrested again, this time in Florida, for protesting an arrest he had previously resisted following a car accident on May 17. He was arrested for allegedly “breaking the peace and causing disruptions” in a construction zone. According to Entertainment Weekly, Ross was arrested while wearing a dildo, which caused the distraction of traffic to become dangerous.
In an Exposed interview posted on April 5, 2023, Ross spoke publicly of how he had been treated by the RuPaul’s Drag Race and World of Wonder teams, positioning himself as a victim of abuse and disavowing his Drag Race win. Ross claimed he hadn’t had contact with either business since the 2018 DragCon incident.

On November 16, 2024, Tyra posted a message on X asking fans to drop the “King” and just call her Tyra again.
2025: The Vivienne’s Death and RuPaul’s Response To Controversy
Back in 2020, Drag Race UK and All Stars 7 queen The Vivienne had mentioned Tyra in a tweet, writing, “Bet Tyra was fuming when she Realised Netflix Spoiled the win Too. Sorry gal. You Tried though,” seemingly referring to the time Netflix spoiled the announcement of the All Stars Season 5 winner on a promotional banner via socials by accident. On January 5, 2025, it was announced that The Vivienne had tragically passed away. Within hours of the announcement – while queens all over the world were publicly sharing their grief of an immeasurable loss – Ross had gone back five years in his Twitter mentions to reply to that very tweet, saying, “Yet it doesn’t compare to the fumes of the crematorium.” shocking both Drag Race fans and past competitors of the show.

Season 13 queen Kandy Muse replied to the post, saying, “I’ve defended you for years but now you can absolutely go fuck yourself and if our path were to ever cross it’s absolutely on sight bitch, it’s not a threat it’s a promise. you disgusting person.” Tyra responded, saying the threat had been received and for Kandy to “prepare your funeral.”
Ross doubled down a few days later, posting a video to their X account. The video was a stock image of a crematorium with an on-screen caption that read, “songs I would play if I owned a crematorium” while Alicia Keys’ This Girl is on Fire played.
Many fans of the show have once again called on RuPaul to strip Tyra of her title and cut her ties with the franchise for good. RuPaul, after posting her own text tribute to The Vivienne, posted a short clip of her slapping Tyra during a Season 2 challenge with no caption, letting the action speak for itself.

Ross responded with a string of posts on X, mostly thanking people for running up the engagement on their page with replies, a cartoon of her leaning on a tombstone that reads “Here Lies She Who Came For Me,” as well as a cartoon image of RuPaul wearing a Confederate flag gown being held up by puppet strings in front of a crowd of protesters. At the time of writing this update, there are more than a dozen new posts on Tyra’s X page, including posts of her continuing to poke fun at The Vivienne’s death and promoting her own web series.
Where We Are Now?
Fans and Drag Race alum largely remained divided on this specific chapter of the show’s history, until the incident following The Vivienne’s death in January 2025. While many up to that point believed that perhaps Tyra had been judged too harshly, pushed too far, or simply misunderstood, even following threats of violence to other queens and the public at large, this specific episode made them second-guess their previous support. Even those who had backed the controversial figure have come out and said this was behaviour that could not be overlooked or defended.
Whatever time goes by, “Tyra Sanchez” will always have fans and supporters, though the latest stunt has caused many to switch their allegiance. Controversies like these give us the chance to take a critical look at how we allow people with public platforms to deal with the mistakes they make, and how they respond to criticism for their actions. Currently, Ross doesn’t seem remorseful about the posts, continuing patterns we’ve seen him follow over the past 15 years, and behaviour that fellow Season 2 queen Tatianna tried to warn us about back in 2010.
Only time will tell if Tyra Sanchez is stripped of their title, as fans and other queens are demanding of the show. It’s been seven years since the DragCon incident, and Tyra Sanchez still seems to be terrorizing the drag community with public threats. Many fans and queens continue to argue that the behaviour Ross has demonstrated over the last 15 years does not reflect the core ideals of safe spaces and inclusivity that they try to maintain in places like their fan bases, and DragCon. And while it seems that the world of drag may be ready to cut ties with Tyra Sanchez for good, Ross’s legacy of being the first to win Drag Race without ever being in the bottom, the youngest Drag Race winner prior to Krystal Versace’s crowing in 2021, and the first Drag Race queen to (briefly) retire completely from drag will never be taken away from him.
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Adam / 14 January 2025
Keep the story up. Remove any links or images that could give this person promotion. We don’t need to know about his Onlyfans, we don’t need to see his twitter/x handle. I don’t want to know about his webseries. You’ve just given this horrible person 3 more avenues of income. I didn’t know about his Onlyfans or webseries before reading this article. Any publicity is good publicity as they say.
Delete him from the group chat forever. I agree with the other comment. Do better.
She / 14 January 2025
Giving this terrible person more publicity is just gross. Do better.