Dragula’s Israel Zamora on coming out, his work on television and the process of creation.
BY VICTOR MELAMED | PHOTO BY DUSTI CUNNINGHAM
Dancer, actor, model and jewelry designer Israel Zamora reveals, in an interview with THE FIGHT, that people may be surprised to know that behind his beefy hunky masculine demeanor he is “really just a big nerd, I love comic books and love to read fantasy novels, I’m also a huge collector of art toys and vinyls and a huge fan of sci-fi and obscure horror movies.”
California born and raised, Zamora had somewhat of a difficult childhood. “My parents divorced early on when I was about 8-years-old, so I had to spend time with him, my father, in the summer, not ever feeling comfortable in that situation… he was not the most accepting man with anything I did.”
Needless to say the coming out process was a little rough. “I struggled for some time with who I was not ever really feeling comfortable in telling myself this is who I was going to end up being, back then being gay was not as acceptable. The only gay people you saw were the super flamboyant character in a show or TV and that was not how I was identifying, it’s a rather long story but I ended up getting outed in my school and it was a very conservative community, I lost a lot of friends in high school once I was outed…”
That was then. Today Zamora, perhaps best known as a performer on The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula reality show, reveals that “Dragula—the party—was and is my favorite event I have ever worked, the costumes and shenanigans that would happen during the night were epic, there was really nothing like it and of course that is what led to the birth of Dragula—the TV show. The show has not been easy… it’s been hard work and long hours but I love being part of the show and am very excited to see where it ends up going.”
Zamora says that out of all of his artistic endeavors he is most passionate about his jewelry design. “Sometimes I feel as though the pieces create themselves… When I work on a piece it is ever evolving into what it becomes during the process of creation. I will come up with a concept sometimes even having a dream about one and then I allow it to flow naturally, taking inspiration from the natural world, mineral, animal, plant, usually drawing on darker elements.”
