Honey Davenport Informations

Honey Davenport is the stage name of James Heath-Clark (born August 13, 1985), an American drag performer, singer and activist best known as a fixture of the New York City nightlife scene and as a contestant on season 11 of RuPaul's Drag Race. Davenport released her debut EP Raw and Unfiltered in 2019. She previously had a dance group, The Hunties, and fronted a band, ELECTROHONEY, whose 2013 album features her vocals. In October 2018, Davenport attracted national media attention for quitting her longtime job as a show host at The Monster, a Manhattan gay bar, in protest of racism she encountered there. Prior to appearing on Drag Race, she was active in the pageant circuit of the drag community, where she won 18 titles between 2013 and 2019.New York magazine named Davenport one of the top 100 Most Powerful Drag Queens in America in June 2019.

Heath-Clark was born James Clark on August 13, 1985, in West Philadelphia. He grew up in the projects, where he lost several family members and friends to gun violence. During his childhood years, he took up boxing as a hobby. He was in the Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) in high school. When he was 17, he moved to New York City to study musical theatre at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy. Two years later, at age 19, he came out as gay to his mother over the phone following a breakup. Her response was immediately supportive.

Heath-Clark began his career with a four-year stint as a backup dancer for Drag Race season 9 runner-up Peppermint. He also danced in music videos for Sherry Vine. While preparing to embark on a month-long tour of Europe with Peppermint in 2008, Heath-Clark wanted to earn some extra spending money, and he resolved to do this by organizing a performance of his own. He and a close friend thus began putting on dance shows as The Hunties, incorporating elements of drag into their work. After his friend left to pursue other endeavors, Heath-Clark decided to continue performing alone as a drag queen. Shortly before the group broke up, Heath-Clark had met RuPaul at a book signing, where the latter misheard the name of The Hunties and made out an autograph to "Honey". From this, Heath-Clark took Honey as his drag name, adopting the Davenport surname from his drag mother, Lady Deja Davenport, who had recently begun mentoring him. He later learned more from his drag aunt, Sahara Davenport, and Sahara's partner, Manila Luzon, both of whom he credits as influential on his drag. For a period early in his career, when his drag was more androgynous, Heath-Clark went by the name Sir Honey Davenport. He dropped the "Sir" as his aesthetic became more feminine.

Davenport has hosted regular drag shows in New York City, in New Jersey, on Fire Island and in Key West. She won 14 drag pageants between 2013 and 2016. Notable among them was the 2015 Miss'd America pageant in Atlantic City. That same year, she concurrently held seven other titles, including Miss Stonewall. In 2018, Davenport was crowned Miss Paradise in Asbury Park, New Jersey. She had been performing at Paradise, the nightclub that hosts the pageant, since Sahara Davenport first brought her there years earlier. By the time she appeared on Drag Race, she had won a total of 18 pageants.

In September and October 2018, Davenport was at the heart of a controversy surrounding racist practices at The Monster, a popular gay bar in New York City's West Village, where she hosted a weekly show called Manster for six years. The incident began in late September 2018, when bar manager Italo Lopez sent text messages to Davenport's manager, DJ Mitch Ferrino, indicating that a flyer for Manster appeared to be promoting a "black night" and that this was bad for business. Lopez also said that the two black dancers on the flyer needed to be replaced by someone "beautiful" and that the image of Davenport herself needed to be smaller. After Ferrino showed Davenport the messages, she reached out to bar owner Charles Rice with concerns about the racist overtones of Lopez's words, but Rice did not respond. Following this, on September 29, 2018, Davenport appeared at Manster as planned. However, instead of performing, she announced she would no longer be able to work at The Monster. She shared what Lopez had said with the audience and ended her roughly two-minute speech by stating, "I cannot be a part of this anymore. If you don’t want my people at the party, I won’t be here."

Shortly afterwards, a number of other drag queens canceled their regular shows at The Monster. Ferrino also withdrew his weekly event LookQueen, which was started in 2014 by Bob the Drag Queen, from the bar. LookQueen's acting host, Shuga Cain, had urged Ferrino to do so. Rice initially blamed Ferrino and Davenport for the public backlash he experienced. He said that Ferrino should not have shown Lopez's messages to Davenport and chalked up their content to a miscommunication owing to Lopez's non-native English. Later on, Rice apologized, and Lopez resigned from his position.

After auditioning for RuPaul's Drag Race eight times, Davenport was selected as one of 15 contestants for the show's eleventh season, which premiered on February 28, 2019. The invitation to compete came at a difficult time for her: she was homeless and having troubles in her marriage, and one of her mentors was in a coma. She borrowed about $20,000 from friends in order to commission the runway outfits she brought to the competition. For the season's first main challenge, a photo shoot, she was paired with her mentor Manila Luzon, who placed as the runner-up of the third season of Drag Race and competed on the first and fourth seasons of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars. Davenport was eliminated in the series' first-ever six-way Lip Sync for Your Life, exiting in season 11's third episode as the 13th-place finisher.

One of Davenport's drag daughters, Monét X Change, competed on the tenth season of RuPaul's Drag Race and won the fourth season of RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars. Sahara Davenport competed on Drag Race season 2.

In September 2019, Davenport was featured on the cover of Get Out! Magazine. The issue included a piece she wrote about the ways her life changed after her run on Drag Race.

In the early 2010s, Davenport fronted the band ELECTROHONEY, with whom she released an album in 2013. After this, she acted in the Off-Broadway shows The Orion Experience and Trinkets. She has worked as a disc jockey at various venues in New York City. Since March 2019, Davenport has hosted a weekly YouTube series and podcast called Da Fuq.

Davenport's 2019 visual EP Raw and Unfiltered, produced by Chew Fu, treats the subject of being a queer person of color in America. Davenport released each of the songs from Raw and Unfiltered during the airing of Drag Race season 11. The corresponding music videos feature looks she would have worn in the episodes following her elimination. The first single and video combination off of the EP, titled "The Hive", came out during the second week of the season. One song, "Cocoa Butter", was produced in collaboration with Jayse Vegas, Kareem McJagger and Nedra Belle of The Voice season 13. McJagger is Davenport's drag daughter. Vegas, who works frequently with Davenport, has featured her in a song and two music videos, one of which she co-produced. The two co-wrote "The Hive". The final track on Raw and Unfiltered, "Worship Me", was written by Orion, whom Davenport featured in her 2015 single "T.R.O.U.B.L.E".

In May 2019, Davenport released "Stan for U", a Pride-themed music video featuring Drag Race season 11 winner Yvie Oddly. She appeared out of drag in the music video for Eureka O'Hara's song "Pretty Hot and Tasty" in August 2019. The following month, Lovari and Adam Barta featured her in their music video "No Day Like Today". Around the same time, Deadline Hollywood announced that Davenport will co-star in God Save the Queens, a feature-length film set to begin production in fall 2019.

Heath-Clark resides in New York City. He wed his husband John on December 31, 2012, at the Hartley House in Hell's Kitchen.

Though Heath-Clark's mother readily embraced him as a gay man, she was initially unhappy with his decision to pursue drag. After seeing him perform, however, she came to support him in his career. Heath-Clark's father learned he was a drag queen years later, in 2014, when he visited New York to see Heath-Clark act in The Orion Experience. He responded with enthusiasm and support.Lee Daniels, co-creator of the television series Empire and producer of the films Monster's Ball and Precious, is Heath-Clark's cousin.

Heath-Clark suffers from anxiety.

Heath-Clark has said it is important to him to use his career in drag to help others. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he stated, "I like to use my drag as a platform for the voiceless; for women, people of color, and those who aren’t being heard." He has been particularly outspoken about racial equality and gun control.

Complete article available at this page.