Can RuPaul overcome Lizzo at PGA Awards after losing to her at Emmys?

Most of the 2022 Primetime Emmy wins were either generally expected or only slightly surprising, but almost no one anticipated the shocking Best Competition Program outcome. A whopping 91% of the thousands of Gold Derby users who made predictions for the race understandably thought “RuPaul’s Drag Race” would sail to its fifth consecutive victory, but the ones who ended up earning bragging rights were the 3% who correctly picked “Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls.” Five months later, RuPaul and his team are seeking their fifth PGA Award win for Best Reality Series, but they are once again faced with the challenge of having to fend off Lizzo’s squad.

These corresponding Emmy and PGA Award lineups are nearly identical, with the only difference being the exclusion of “Nailed It!” from the latter due in part to the producing guild’s set rule of five nominees per TV category. Even considering its Emmy loss, “Drag Race” holds 72% of the top choice votes in Gold Derby’s predictions center, followed by “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls” with 24%. The bad news for RuPaul is that, since 92% of our users correctly predicted his 2022 PGA Award win, Lizzo’s Emmy victory clearly impacts his chances here.

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Also in the running for this PGA prize but well off most prognosticators’ radars are “The Voice,” “Top Chef” and “The Amazing Race,” each of which has already lost this award to “Drag Race” at least three times. Last year, RuPaul’s show was chosen over the first two, as well as “Nailed It!” and “America’s Got Talent.” The only other non-previously mentioned show that has ever contended in this category since its establishment in 2019 is “The Masked Singer.”

The PGA Award-nominated 14th season of “Drag Race” aired on VH1 from January to April 2022 and, as usual, involved over a dozen drag queens competing against each other to survive elimination rounds. Willow Pill was ultimately crowned the winner, becoming the first transgender champion in the show’s history. The season’s slate of contestants was also noteworthy in that it was the first to include multiple openly trans women as well as a straight, cisgender man. For the eighth consecutive year, the panel of judges consisted of RuPaul, Carson Kressley, Ross Mathews and Michelle Visage.

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Although the “Drag Race” team delivered an entertaining and history-making season, “Watch Out for the Big Grrrls” made quite an impact with its body positivity messaging and disarmingly compelling narrative. All eight episodes of the Prime Video series’ first season dropped on the same day in March and detailed the training process 13 dancers went through in order to be chosen by the host to support her in headlining the 2021 Bonnaroo Music Festival (which was ultimately canceled due to Hurricane Ida). The uncertainty as to whether guild members will go for something new or stick with what they know makes this perhaps the most exciting PGA race of the year. Also in Lizzo’s favor is the fact that her song “About Damn Time” just scored a surprise win at the Grammys for Record of the Year.

The 34th annual PGA Awards will be handed out on Saturday, February 25 during a non-televised ceremony in Beverly Hills, California.

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