Michelle Visage has opened up on her open marriage with author David Case as she revealed the brutal way her ex ended their four-year relationship.
The former Strictly Come Dancing star, 55, who has two daughters with David, said that their unconventional open marriage arrangements is what ‘makes them stronger’.
She confessed on the Origins with Cush Jumbo podcast that she thought she found ‘the one’ when she was just 21 but was broken up with over the phone.
And after a ‘summer of debauchery’, she met her life partner David in Central Park and got married in 1997.
Michelle, who is from New Jersey, said: ‘He works drag cons with me, and he comes to all these things with me, and listen, my husband’s quite good looking, so the gay men have let it be known that he’s quite good looking.’
Michelle Visage has opened up on her open marriage with author David Case as she revealed the brutal way her ex ended their four-year relationship
The former Strictly Come Dancing star, 55, who has two daughters with David, said that their unconventional open marriage arrangements is what ‘makes them stronger’
Cush added: ‘I can imagine they don’t mind David showing up.’
She quipped: ‘So he beams with pride. He’s got that thing down. I think you call it compersion.
‘We live openly, so he would get off knowing that I was so happy and no matter what it is that I do, and I’m not just talking sexually, whatever it is, I don’t know if I have compersion in me to be really excited if he’s doing something with another woman but I know that it exists and he is 100′ percent that.’
Cush said: ‘It’s like giving you the opportunity to have the space to feel like you never have to hide any piece of yourself.’
Michelle, who has a flat in Belsize Park, London, for when she visits the UK, finished: ‘And I don’t and neither does he. Sometimes that hurts, but that’s what makes us stronger.
‘The full transparency of the way we live our lives. Completely and, by the way, sometimes it’s not even necessary.
‘It’s just, meaning, we don’t do anything. It’s just the ability to be able to. […] And that’s what works for us.’
Before David, Michele was engaged to a ‘beautiful’ man from Antigua and admitted that she thought they would have had ‘gorgeous babies’.
She confessed to the Origins with Cush Jumbo that she thought she found ‘the one’ when she was just 21 but was broken up with over the phone. And after a ‘summer of debauchery’, she met her life partner David in Central Park and got married in 1997
She told the show host: ‘He was Antiguan and Filipino but I was too young. I was 21. We would have had gorgeous babies.
‘You know, you learn as time goes on and I realized that he was a lovely man. I just was not ready at 21. I needed to live my life.
‘So when I met David, I was 26. I got married at 27. Still young.
‘But this is how long ago. We’ve been together for 28 years now and I met him in New York City in Central Park and I had just gotten out of a relationship that was like the love of my life and he destroyed me.
‘He broke up with me on the phone after four and a half years.’
Michelle has won three Primetime Emmy Awards as a producer of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
She also applauded the impact the show has on children’s lives today, revealing that she believes she would not ‘have struggled the way she did’.
Michelle, who is a well-known judge on the show, said: ‘I don’t want to waste my time on this planet with the darkness, right? There could be no darkness in the presence of light, and we need to continue with that.
‘So that’s what Drag Race is to me like, if I had that growing up, I don’t think I would have struggled the way that I did and again, I am not a queer man, I am a cis, mostly heteronormative human being, and I struggled with who I was, with my identity, with my body. Oh my God, I still do.
‘But I’m at the point now where I’m learning all about self-love through therapy.
‘I can’t do it alone. It takes a lot of work.
‘You have to be ready to let the old self die, to let the new self be reborn. And that’s a tough thing.
‘So to have something like Drag Race on TV for these kids, It’s not just about these kids dressing up in pretty colours.
‘It’s about determination, and grit, and heart, and stick-with-it-ness, and vision, and love, and kindness, and how your words impact these kids.
‘You hear these stories and a lot of it has to do with, and I’m a parent, again of a kid on the spectrum, in the community, you name it.
‘This kid’s been through it all and I think a lot of time A lot of times parents don’t understand their child and so unconsciously, parents, I’m not saying consciously, it reverts back to you and you don’t know what to do with it.
‘So instead of understanding it or mourning the loss of the kids you thought you were getting and loving them for who they are in this moment will change everything and I think parents blame themselves or they think something’s wrong with the kid still blaming themselves.’
Michelle was also a contestant on the British reality shows Celebrity Big Brother in 2015.
Michelle had a successful run on the show, entering the house on day one and finishing in fifth place.
The Drag Race judge, who stepped into the limelight in the late 1980s in the States as a member of the girl band Seduction, endeared herself to the wider public in the 2010s as a judge on RuPaul’s Drag Race.
But after crossing the pond to the UK in 2019, Visage, who’s joked that she was ‘a gay British man’ in a former life, found a new fan base, taking part in Channel 5’s Celebrity Big Brother UK and remaining in the house for 30 days.
Michelle, David and their two children Lillie, 24, and Lola, 22
Four years later, she became an instant favourite when she strutted down the Strictly stage with Giovanni Pernice in 2019 after making a noted cameo on The Only Way is Essex where she surprised her long-time pal Bobby Norris.
The launch of Drag Race UK saw her rub shoulders with Graham Norton and Alan Carr and cemented her as a honourary Brit in the eyes of the public.
Michelle, who stopped working as a host for CBS radio to become an in-house judge on Drag Race, then won over more fans on Radio 2.
Origins With Cush Jumbo is available wherever you get your podcasts.
