"No box has ever been the same on RuPaul's Drag Race," alum and surprise contestant Shangela told Exposed: Dragged Out host Joseph Shepherd. And she's certainly right — despite being eliminated early during Season 2 of the series, the queen cemented icon status returning in Season 3... and by following up that appearance with a role in The Star Is Born and a series on HBO, We're Here.

But how did she get there? She tells all to Joseph during The Dipp's latest episode of Exposed: Dragged Out, which you can listen to below, or on Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts! Sashay your way to that play button, and read below for the entire, unedited video.

Joseph:
Hey everyone. And welcome to Dragged Out. It's the podcast where you know, I have one-on-one interviews with some of those Queens who may have went home a little bit too early on a Drag Race franchise. This one went home on the second season of RuPaul's Drag Race. She came back for season three and since then she has been this unstoppable force. She is just one of the most successful drag queens of all time. It is Shangela. How are you doing?

Shangela:
Well, hello and halleloo. And I love that intro. Thank you so much. Hi.

Joseph:
I'll start recording them and then giving them to you and you can just play them at your shows, anytime the top of the hour.

Shangela:
I will drop it right into a Joella post remix, and we will go ahead and knock it out.

Joseph:
Now, Shangela, your career is so extensive and it's so crazy to me looking at it from where it started. I remember the first time I saw you, it wasn't on Drag Race. I was addicted to Dance Moms. I do not know why I was addicted to Dance Moms. It probably was Abby Lee doing some tomfoolery. But when you came out for Nia and you were teaching her to do the shablam and doing the death drop, it was so crazy to me. I was like, wow. Then slowly after I caught up on my Drag Race and I was like, this is who Shangela is. Let me ask you, when did you audition for the second season of RuPaul's Drag Race? Do you remember that?

Shangela:
Yes. Yes, I do. Well, first of all, thank you so much for watching Dance Moms as well. I had a lovely time over there and I was also addicted to watching Ms. Eberly and the girls and the moms, it was just a perfect storm of everything. And then I remember I loved all the performances on the show. When I had a chance to go in there, I was like, oh honey, sign me up. Oh, they are using my music too, halleloo. Let me go over here. That being said, in 2010 I had just been doing drag for about five months. I'd only done drag on stage 10 times at the time, because I was doing a show once every two weeks at the Here Lounge in West Hollywood. Just fallen into doing drag and I remember that the casting people from Drag Race, they were at one of my shows and they're like, oh my God, you need to audition for our show. We have a show called RuPaul's Drag Race.

And I was like, Ooh, I remember telling my friend, Ron, no, I don't think I'm meant to be on TV as a woman. Nope. Not going to do it. He was like, what do you mean? I was like, I haven't even told my family I was doing drag. I've only done it 10 times. No way. He was like, well, let's do it. Let's go for it. Let's try it. I remember thinking they're not going to pick me, but sure I'll do the audition. Sure. And they ended up selecting me and I was like, oh my gosh. And then I thought, okay, well, you know what? The prize at the time was $20,000. I said, oh babe, I'm about to win this 20 grand and make all my dreams come true. Okay. This is what's going to happen.

And so I prepared. I was winning, you couldn't tell me I wasn't winning. I went over there to season two. And within two days I was back at the house with all my bags and all my things. And I said, what have I done? What did I do? But I didn't give up. I just kept working. That's the thing about Shangela, I came into the experience of Drag Race. People say like, why do you think Drag Race works for you? And it's just for me, and it's different for everyone. But for me, I was a worker. I had a worker mentality going into Drag Race. That's how I was raised. That's who I was. And so afterwards, when it was out, Joseph, we used to have three months lead time between when they made the announcement, all right, here's the girls, they put that up in Novembe