Las Vegan discovers fame, happiness as female impersonator

You know you’ve made it as a female impersonator when you get recognized in public.

Even when you aren’t in character.

“The fans are great,” says Las Vegan Martin Cooper. “I’ll be shopping at the mall, and some days it’s overwhelming, because you can’t really get through a store and shop like you want to because I like to give everybody the attention that they want. I’m very gracious with the fact that they actually enjoy the show.”

“The show” is “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and now its spinoff, “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” (8 p.m. Thursday, Logo), on which Cooper, 42, competes as Coco Montrese.

During a break from college finals in the early ’90s, Cooper and some friends went to a club to blow off steam. He was impressed by one of the entertainers but had no idea he was watching a female impersonator. “Then I got to meet her afterward, and she looked at me and said, ‘You’re a pretty boy. You’d make a pretty girl.’ ”

Soon, with her help and encouragement, Cooper entered a drag contest.

“I made a LOT of money. So I was, like, maybe I could do this on the side while I was in college, and I won’t have to call home to my parents for money. So that’s how I ended up being a female impersonator,” Cooper says. “I didn’t know it was going to be my career.”

Originally from Miami, Cooper spent 11 years performing in shows at Disney World — as a man; Disney’s progressive, just not that progressive — before coming to Las Vegas in 2010 for the preliminaries for the Miss Gay America pageant. Frank Marino, the grand dame of Strip drag shows, was a judge and invited Cooper to join his show.

“I was, like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ ” Cooper recalls. “I’ve always wanted to live in Las Vegas. It’s one of my biggest dreams to be a Vegas entertainer.”

Once he hit the Strip, Cooper performed as Janet Jackson, Rihanna and Dionne Warwick. But his career really took off in 2013 with the fifth season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race” — think “America’s Next Top Model” only with way, WAY more double entendres.

Cooper finished fifth that season, but the exposure allowed him to tour as Coco Montrese. She’s become a full-time job.

“Honestly, thanks to RuPaul, it’s a very lucrative job,” he says. “It’s pretty amazing to be able to do what you love and actually get paid for it.”

Cooper doesn’t get hung up on labels. He’s Martin to most of his family, Coco to many of his friends. “I’m very open. She, he, whatever you wanna call me. I’m just an entertainer. So I answer to it all.”

“When I am not onstage, I’m Martin,” Cooper explains. “When I clock in to work … it only takes me probably about an hour at the most to get into Coco completely from head to toe. Then Coco takes form.”

Being Coco isn’t easy. “There’s a lot of maintenance. A LOT of maintenance. … There’s always getting the nails done, the hair, getting the eyebrows plucked. Always making sure that I look the part, because it’s not just me everyday. It’s gotta be that character for everyone.”

It isn’t even a one-man operation: Cooper has an assistant to take care of his various costumes.

“ ‘RuPaul’s Drag Race’ has given me such a great platform, I actually travel all over the world now,” he says. “So I’m never really home as much as I wanna be.”

But when he is, Cooper still drops in to perform in Marino’s “Divas Las Vegas” and at the Saturday Drag Brunch at Senor Frog’s at Treasure Island.

And he’s noticed a distinct change in his audiences in recent years.

“It’s, I’d say, 98 percent straight people,” Cooper says of the Drag Brunch. “Husbands bring their wives. Wives bring their husbands. … They’re all straight people who never would have even thought to see drag or female impersonation as something that they would enjoy and respect. So I think it’s making lots of strides for the community and people understanding people, you know? And understanding that we’re all different, but yet we’re all the same. So it’s OK to be different.”

Contact Christopher Lawrence at clawrence@reviewjournal.com. On Twitter: @life_onthecouch.