Mercedes Iman Diamond
Kenyan-American dragqueen
Mercedes Iman Diamond is the stage name of Curran, a Kenyan-American drag performer who competed on season 11 of the American television series RuPaul's Drag Race. Curran was born and raised in Mombasa, Kenya, and moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where he created the drag persona Mercedes Iman Diamond and competed in pageants. Mercedes Iman Diamond was the first Muslim contestant on Drag Race; Internet memes of her appearance on the show went viral, and her lines in a parody film challenge inspired a dance remix by Adam Joseph.
Early life
Curran was born on December 12, 1987, in Mombasa, Kenya. He moved to the United States at the age of eleven and created his drag persona Mercedes Iman Diamond at the Minneapolis club Gay 90s a decade later.
Career
Mercedes Iman Diamond has a background in pageantry; she won the Miss Gay 90s pageant in 2016. She was also named Miss City of the Lakes, and was the second alternate in the pageant Miss Minnesota Continental.
Mercedes Iman Diamond was the first Muslim contestant on RuPaul's Drag Race; she competed in season 11 (2019). In the premiere episode "Whatcha Unpackin?", she performed poorly in the photo shoot mini-challenge and wore an outfit for the runway that was inspired by former Drag Race contestant Bianca Del Rio. The acting challenge on the second episode "Good God Girl, Get Out" required her to dance and recite dialogue in a parody of Get Out (2017) that was inspired by the film Paris Is Burning (1990).
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This entry incorporates text from “Mercedes Iman Diamond” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.