People Of Bangkok: Dearis Doll
Photo: Dearis Doll
Interviewed by Timo Eckenfels, Veloura Gems · In conversation with Dearis Doll, drag queen and performer at House of Heals, Bangkok
Bangkok has one of the most vibrant drag scenes in Southeast Asia. Not because of a law or a policy but because of a culture that is genuinely more open than most places in the world. In many countries, what happens on stage at House of Heals every night would be hidden, underground, or quietly discouraged. Here it runs six nights a week on the 33rd floor of a hotel in the heart of the city.
Veloura covers the people who shape Bangkok. The chefs, the founders, the performers, the creators. People with stories worth hearing. Dearis Doll is one of them.
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Timo E.
Timo sat down with Dearis Doll at House of Heals in Bangkok. What started as a conversation about drag turned into a story about Germany, a mother's hospital bed, a sick colleague, and a curtain that opened sixteen years ago and never really closed again.
Dearis Doll has been doing drag for sixteen years. He is thirty-nine years old, which means he started at twenty-three, the same year he came back from Cologne. None of it was planned. Almost nothing in his life has been planned, and he seems at peace with that.
His real name is Supatrapon Kasikam. On stage he is Dearis Doll. His friends call him Dear.
From Akonbatom to Cologne
Dear grew up in Akonbatom, a province just outside Bangkok. He always felt different, always expressive, always drawn to performance even before he had stood in a spotlight. But he did not have the language for it yet. Growing up in a village in Thailand, the only reference point he had was the kathoey, the ladyboy. If you were not a straight man, that was the only other category he knew existed.
"I don't know what gay means when I was young. I know just only because I live in the village. So I know only Kathe is a ladyboy. So if you're not a straight man, you have to be a ladyboy. So I don't know what a gay means."
When he had his first boyfriend, he was genuinely surprised to discover that two men could love each other without one of them needing to dress as a woman. "Oh, you don't need to dress up like a woman? Oh, okay, a man can love with a man?" He was so young that the realisation came as a revelation, not a crisis.
His family was a different story. When he tried to be open about who he was, they fought. They kept fighting until he left for Germany. That was partly why he went.
He fell in love with a German man and followed him to Cologne. He lived there for six years, learned the language, studied cosmetics, worked in a spa. When I asked what he could say in German, he smiled and said: "Du bist wunderschön." You are beautiful.
The language was very difficult, he says, but the life was good.
Coming back was not his choice. His mother was diagnosed with cancer. Dear flew home for two months, told himself it would be temporary, checked that his mother was stable, and went back to Germany. Then his mother called again. It was getting worse. Dear came back for good and stayed to take care of her until she died.
"I kind of left my family here. So I have to stay."
After his mother passed, he had no reason to return to Germany and every reason to stay. He has been in Bangkok since.
Thailand's Got Talent
Photo: Dearis Doll
His mother did not give up easily. Even from her hospital bed, she was thinking about his future.
One day she told him about a new competition show she had seen announced on Thai television. Thailand's Got Talent, season one. You should be there, she said. It's the first season.
Dear's response was immediate and honest. "I don't have talent. I have cosmetica. I just do makeup and massage."
His mother said: sing something.
Dear had never trained as a singer. He took two weeks of singing lessons and went to the audition. His first song was Let's Get Loud. Jennifer Lopez.
He made it past the audition round. He told his Thai boyfriend at the time to keep watching because he would be on TV. The boyfriend watched every week for four weeks and never saw him. Maybe next week, Dear kept saying. Then one week the boyfriend needed to use the toilet. He got up, heard Dear's voice coming from the screen, and came back just as the segment finished.
Twenty seconds. The show had given him twenty seconds of screen time in the audition round and then cut away. His first appearance on Thai television, and it was gone before his boyfriend came back from the toilet.
"My first time on TV. Twenty seconds. I was like, oh my god, you're so mean to me."
He made it to the semi-final anyway. Sony Music and Worldpoint, the production company behind the show, both signed him. He thought his life had changed.
"There's only one thing that I have. I breathe enough to be on the stage. I don't know about my talent. But when I'm on the stage I feel like oh my god this is my place. When I see people look at me and the spotlight, I feel like I'm a superstar."
This was also the first time he understood something about what it meant to be gay on Thai television. Twenty years ago, the only way for gay or gender-nonconforming people to be on screen was through comedy. Over-acting, making people laugh, being the punchline. Nobody would hurt you, he says, but they would bully you. That world was already changing by the time he entered it, but he felt the weight of it.
One year later, Sony cancelled his project. During the show, a ladyboy contestant had become famous and the label decided to focus their resources on her album instead. The contract ran its course. Dear had one song of his own and nothing else to show for it.
"I thought if I get signed from Sony I will get a job. I will have an album. And then I have nothing from this show."
He was disappointed. He told his boyfriend. He grieved the version of his life he had imagined. And then he moved on.
The Accident That Started Everything
A friend introduced him to the copy show circuit. Copy shows in Thailand at that time meant impersonation: dress as a famous artist, sing live, entertain, talk, make the audience laugh. Not lip sync. Live vocals, live performance, live comedy. Dear joined, still performing as a boy.
He did this for almost a year. Then one night a co-worker called in sick. This co-worker was a straight man who performed multiple characters, one of them a famous Thai ladyboy singer. The organiser had already been told he would come. If he did not show up, the show would have a problem.
Dear's friend pushed him forward.
"My body was shaking behind the curtain. But when the curtain opened, everyone screamed for me before I did anything."
Dearis Doll
Could he do makeup? Yes. He had studied cosmetics in Germany. Could he walk in heels? He had never tried. Could he cover?
He said he would try.
"My body was shaking behind the curtain. But when the curtain opened, everyone screamed for me even before I did anything. And I was like, I cannot believe this."
The audience cheered everything he did. The comedy landed. The performance landed. He had not planned to be a drag queen. He was covering for a sick colleague. The audience screamed and he understood something about himself that he had not known until that moment.
His friend's advice after the show was practical: "If you work as a boy you can have a boyfriend. But if you work as a drag you will get money."
Dear thought about it. "I choose money. With the money, the boyfriend comes."
Characters, TV Shows and Drag Race Thailand
Photo: Dearis Doll
He became known for impersonation characters, including a famous Thai ladyboy singer and Baitai Asayam, another Thai star he discovered by accident when girls backstage told him he looked like her. He went to 7-Eleven, saw the album cover, and decided to add her to the rotation. That is how a lot of his characters arrived. Not from careful planning but from someone saying something offhand and Dear deciding to try it.
The copy show circuit was good to him. TV shows followed. At one point he was doing two or three competition appearances a month, sometimes knowing he would not win but going anyway because it meant people would see him. "I want to be on TV. And people get to know me."
He worked the circuit for six or seven years. He loved it for a while. The live singing, the comedy, the constant rotation of audiences who had no idea what was coming. Then he got bored. He went home to the provinces for a year to help his family with their shrimp farm, which is the kind of sentence that makes you understand the range of his life.
Then Cantana, a major Thai production company, called. They were producing Drag Race Thailand, the Thai edition of the global franchise. He auditioned. He got in. Season one, runner-up.
Now at House of Heals he does two full shows a night. His characters span everything: Britney Spears, K-pop groups, a Korean character he strips out of to reveal a Thai comedian underneath, Snow White played entirely for laughs, Spiderman. Most people who know him remember him as Britney. But if you come and actually watch the show, you see something different every time.
He loves to plan. He writes everything down on paper, sends the setlist to the team the night before. It is the German in him, he says, and he means it genuinely. "German people we plan alles. We write it down to the paper." But working in Thailand means adapting, and he has made peace with that. He tells me about Bunny Hills, another performer at House of Heals, who when he sends the setlist the previous night responds with: "Oh my God, why is it too fast? I forget. I will send my song this evening." And then decides that evening. He laughs recounting this. He is Thai himself and he knows the irony.
Getting ready takes one hour for Britney. Two hours for full drag. The costumes he makes himself, pays a dressmaker to build, or sources at Watergate market in Bangkok. This is where the observation about perspective comes in. Thai people walk past the Watergate stalls without a second glance. Foreigners stop and photograph things, buy them, take them home. And when they wear them, Thai people wonder why they would bother with something so ordinary.
"Thank God I'm here. Because we can do whatever we want."
Dearis Doll
"When I go to another country, I was like, this is so beautiful! Because they don't see it anywhere. But here they see it all the time."
The same is true for drag itself. I asked him about performing outside Thailand, whether drag was accepted the same way elsewhere. He lived in Germany for six years and barely encountered it. "I never see drag show in Germany before when I was there. But I saw a drag queen once. At that time I didn't know what a drag queen is. So I am a bit scared. Because like over makeup, hair, dress, everything." He heard there was a famous one in Hamburg, on the riverbank. He never went.
He has performed at private events in China and Malaysia, gay bars that could not call themselves gay bars, where no photos of anyone kissing were allowed inside. After the show, he would immediately remove everything. He felt safe, but careful. Aware. It is a specific kind of feeling he does not have in Bangkok.
"Thank God I'm here. Because we can do whatever we want."
Some of his drag queen friends go out in full outfits in Bangkok, he says, as bitchy and as bold as they want, and nobody hurts them. If someone does try, they give it back. That spirit, the refusal to shrink, is something he genuinely admires. In other countries, you cannot always do that. You absorb it and stay quiet. Here you don't have to.
What he is most proud of is not the characters. It is the connection. The moment when someone in the audience who came in skeptical starts laughing, starts moving, starts forgetting that they had plans to leave early. He has watched this happen hundreds of times and he still notices it every single night.
The Scar
His family did not accept him easily. There were fights before he left for Germany. He says the scar is still there.
"I still have that. But I try to forget. But I cannot forget."
His father saw him in drag for the first time on a TV show. Dear had asked him to watch. The host asked his father on camera how he felt seeing his child perform like this.
He said: "Wow, he's talented. He's a beautiful talent."
There have been harder moments. Once, a man walked onto the stage in the middle of his set, took the microphone from his hand, and called him a ladyboy into the mic in front of the whole audience. He froze. Five seconds of silence.
"I was stunned. I'm freezing. And then I just look at the audience. Everyone look at him. Everyone angry with him. And I was like, oh my god, I get saved from everyone here. I feel like I get protected from them already."
He has learned to read a room. At House of Heals, he says, the room is always with him. The monitor outside the entrance shows the audience exactly what to expect before they walk in. The people who come knowing what they are coming to are the ones who stay, and the ones who stay are the ones who leave surprised by how much they enjoyed it.
"I'm not looking like a woman. So you're not going to swear that you think I am a woman. You see me. I have tattoos too."
He says this with a smile. He has made his peace with all of it.
What Drag Is
Near the end of our conversation I asked him what drag means to him.
He thought for a moment.
"Drag is not only entertainment on the stage. It's a bridge."
Dearis Doll
"Drag for me is like a bridge to connect to people. We used to have one show where I go out and collect money from people walking by. If I go there with a boy look, no one will look at me. But I use drag, and people walking past stop and say, oh, what you doing? And they give me money. So drag makes people look at me. It's a bridge to make people interested in me and to see what I'm doing."
He paused.
"And when I'm in drag, maybe I'm more bitchy. Because you have to be. That's what I love. Bitching around with the people. Fooling them all the time."
In and out of drag he is essentially the same person, he says. The bitchiness is turned up. The entertainer is always present. The person underneath does not change. He is proud of that. Sixteen years of doing this and he has not needed to become someone else. He just needed to find the right stage.
"Drag is not only entertainment on the stage. It's a bridge."
The Closing Question
What would you tell someone young who wants to follow a dream like yours?
"Just break it. Just brave enough. I didn't learn how to sing before. I just follow my dream. Don't care no matter what happens. Don't wait until you're ready. If you wait until you're ready, maybe that opportunity is already gone."
Where does he see himself in ten years? Maybe not doing drag. Maybe back on the farm. The world of drama and series that kept him busy three years ago has slowed, production has pulled back, and he has had to adapt. Everything changes, he says. You have to adapt and think about the new thing.
At the moment he is single. He used to have a type, he says. German men. Not anymore.
"When you get old, your type is less and less. Only personality is important."
Ten years from now, he does not know exactly where he will be. But for someone whose whole life has been shaped by things he never planned, that does not seem to worry him at all.
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Dearis Doll performs at House of Heals, Bangkok, Wednesday to Monday. Find him on Instagram at @dearis_doll.
People Of is a Veloura series that gives people a platform to tell their own stories. Everyone has something worth hearing. These conversations exist because people were generous enough to share their time and their lives. We are grateful for every single one of them. Read more atveloura-gems.com/guide.
