Michelle Visage

Michelle Lynn Shupack (born September 20, 1968), known professionally as Michelle Visage, is an American singer, television personality, broadcaster, producer, and actress.

Visage also met her future friend and co-star RuPaul for the first time in the late 1980s, when she attended club nights and parties hosted by Susanne Bartsch.

She attended South Plainfield High School in South Plainfield, New Jersey, graduating in 1986.

When Visage was 16, she won a Madonna lookalike competition.

She then moved to New York and attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in Manhattan for two years.

Growing up, Visage looked up to Madonna, Belinda Carlisle, Pat Benatar, Stevie Nicks, Cyndi Lauper and Dale Bozzio.

After finishing her studies she stayed in New York City to pursue a career as an actress.

In New York she was active in the club scene.

Her mother Arlene gave her a fake ID so she could make connections to help further her career.

Visage's mother died when she was 30.

Visage became prominent in the New York drag ball scene and learned voguing from various people including Willi Ninja.

She also became involved with Cesar Valentino and the pair appeared voguing together on the television show The Latin Connection in 1988, which they said was the first time voguing had appeared on national TV.

Michelle adopted her surname, Visage, after gaining the nickname "cara" ("face" in Spanish) from the people she spent time with in the New York ball scene.

However, because people pronounced it incorrectly she decided to change it to "visage" ("face" in French - a language she studied during middle and high school), She has kept the name since that time.

She first gained recognition as a member of the dance-pop girl group Seduction, who charted five singles on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1989 and 1990.

In 1989, Visage performed at "The Love Ball", which was organized by Bartsch as a benefit for the Design Industries Foundation For AIDS.

It is said that The Love Ball is where Madonna first witnessed voguing, the inspiration for her song "Vogue".

During the day she worked as a receptionist at the shop Casablanca and Fundamental Things in the New York garment district.

Visage auditioned and won a place for Seduction, an R&B and dance vocal trio assembled by Robert Clivilles and David Cole that signed with A&M Records in 1990.

The group had several hits, the most famous being "Two to Make It Right".

After the group's breakup, Visage collaborated with the freestyle dance act TKA as a guest vocalist on the song "Crash (Have Some Fun)".

Visage provided lead vocals and was the recording artist of another dance act assembled by Clivilles and Cole, The S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. The song "It's Gonna Be a Lovely Day", which was a cover version of the Bill Withers song "Lovely Day", was included on the soundtrack to The Bodyguard.

She later served as lead vocalist of the R&B and dance group The S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M., who reached the top of the dance charts with the single "It's Gonna Be a Lovely Day" in 1993.

"It's Gonna Be a Lovely Day" became a number-one dance single and peaked at number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1993.

Visage was the co-host of the morning show on WKTU in NYC from 1996 to 2002 where she and co-host RuPaul started working together professionally.

When RuPaul left radio, Visage continued on to many morning shows including: Hot 92 Jamz (KHHT) in Los Angeles between 2002 and 2005.

In 2011, Visage joined the American reality competition series RuPaul's Drag Race, and has served as a permanent judge since season three.

She is also a permanent judge on its spin-off series RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, RuPaul's Drag Race UK, and Drag Race Down Under, also hosting the latter.

Visage has won 3 Primetime Emmy Awards as a producer of RuPaul's Drag Race.

In 2015, Visage was a contestant on the fifteenth series of the British reality show Celebrity Big Brother, which she finished in fifth place.

Visage has also been featured on several of RuPaul's music albums, and appears in the music videos for "New York City Beat" and "From Your Heart", which originally premiered on RuPaul's Green Screen Christmas Special (2015), and were later uploaded to World of Wonder's YouTube channel.

Visage has also made guest appearances in the videos for RuPaul's songs "Glamazon", "Responsitrannity", "The Beginning" and "Nothing for Christmas".

In February 2021, it was confirmed that Visage had teamed up with Steps on a reworked version of "Heartbreak in This City".

From 2018 to 2019, she was a judge on the talent competition show Ireland's Got Talent.

In 2019, Visage was a contestant on the seventeenth series of the British dancing competition show Strictly Come Dancing.

Visage grew up in New Jersey.

She was adopted and was aware of this from an early age.

Visage, adopted by two Jewish parents, was raised Jewish.

Her biological father was also Jewish, while her biological mother was Irish and Italian Catholic.

Despite living in a lower middle class town without many Jewish people, her parents worked to make sure she could attend Hebrew school and have a Bat Mitzvah.