Behind Gloria Groove: Meet Daniel Garcia, the Brazilian Drag Superstar Dominating the World

A warehouse filled with playful allegories in a residential neighborhood of São Paulo is a glorious portal. At the end of a corridor at the back of the building, in a studio room, layers and layers of shine, glamour and boldness reflect on Daniel Garcia’s face, giving way to Gloria Groove. His long hair frames what’s to come. His body will soon don unusual costumes for his drag persona, which seduces with looks that highlight his silhouette.

This time, he opted for dandyism—classic tailoring. The style from the 18th century, originating from the term “dandy,” means something like refinement. It emerged in England, initially among white men, and later was claimed by enslaved Black people as a symbol of power and subversion. The movement was recently revived at the Met Gala 2025, with Doechii, Rihanna, Bad Bunny and Doja Cat attending. It was the inspiration for our man in red with a suit, in the exclusive production for Billboard Brazil.

“It’s an outfit that grants access to places where you might not normally go. So, how can I say that it doesn’t connect with my life? Once I embraced the elegance and exuberance of being who I am. This blend of masculine and feminine appeals to me; I like when everything gets mixed up,” Gloria provokes, setting the tone for the conversation.

His life is a dance between two worlds, where the spotlight diva is supported by a clever mind. Such duality, despite being complex, fuels his creativity to explore new horizons, whether on stage or in his personal life. And more recently, emotionally as well.

“It takes a lot of courage to look at yourself in the mirror. It’s crazy: I, who spend most of my time looking in a mirror, had to find other ways to do the same thing, but in a completely revolutionary way. So I emphasize how important it is for young artists who want to make the entertainment industry their life: we have to know ourselves more and more to handle the countless issues that will appear along the way. And I feel that only now, at 30, do I have the sense that I’m directing my own life,” comments the multi-hyphenate, sharing that he started a therapeutic process in the middle of last year.

His journey of self-awareness opened space for many discoveries, including understanding his own truth: “I’ve been listening to my inner voice much more. What I created from Gloria and what Gloria has now created in me… It’s a voice that’s been getting louder—the voice of my self-perception. Understanding my own issues has been very liberating. It’s something I love because it keeps my creative mind alive, interested, and in constant transformation.

“Feeling the weight of my own creation, of what I can or cannot do, sometimes makes me feel hostage—I think that’s even normal. Because, deep down, we end up seeing ourselves through the eyes of others. And when I realized this limited me, or made me believe I was a hostage to what I thought others thought… I found the biggest cage I built myself. So, I realized my biggest challenge is to keep freeing myself,” he confesses.

This quest for freedom and an authentic narrative has never been easy but has always been part of his path. When Gloria takes the stage, Daniel is the one analyzing everything from outside, “driving a fancy car” that always seems ready to accelerate. And when Daniel goes home, Gloria Groove becomes the button he can’t turn off—it’s the spark that ignites all his creativity, whether reading a sentence in a book and thinking, “Let’s see if this turns into a song.”

The applause comes as part of this entire process: “It’s the response I get from the universe after launching my life, my art, and my style into the world. It’s an indicator, a confirmation that it’s worth continuing to make a difference. Every applause is recognition that pushes me forward.”

Behind this playful universe, there’s another facet, often invisible, the one that takes care of what’s most valuable in his life: stability, care, love. “I have Daniel, the man of the house, whom I think people don’t see. It’s Daniel, Pedro’s husband, Lola and Nico’s father [his pets], Gina’s son, who bears all these responsibilities—making sure everyone is well, living well, and that I get quality time with everyone, even with shows and interviews. I believe this is the man behind this great diva who sustains this whole story.”

Ambivalence, which could be a battlefield, actually shows itself as fertile ground for mutual support. “The Diva also supports The Man of the House because she reminds him that, okay, it’s all very beautiful—lots of responsibility, serious things—but I want to give my close, I want to play, live the world a little. Let’s go!”

And for Gloria, it’s precisely the “Daniel CEO” side that shapes the dreams: “He’s the one who materializes — takes what’s in the realm of ideas and transforms it into reality. Success, right? Taking from imagination… and making it happen,” he explains with a laugh.

The Boy Who Dreamed of Drag

To understand Gloria, who writes her own life story, you have to go back to the beginning — to the child who looked at the stage as if seeing a destiny, and who learned early on to hone her vocation.

“Growing up in the spotlight is crazy. And at the same time, it’s a madness that’s impossible to avoid. Looking at a camera, holding a microphone… For me, these things are so vital, so part of my life. Since I was seven, when I left school and started hanging out at SBT, then at band at age 10, those moments are my routine,” he notes.

Daniel experienced childhood and adolescence in TV environments, from talent shows to participating in Turma do Balão Mágico. He matured his art, lent his voice to characters (one of them is Doki from Nickelodeon) did backing vocals and more. In adulthood, his drag power emerged from the ability to never stop playing, reinventing himself, and being beyond what others expected.

He dreamed big and made his desire come true: “I’d just take my dubbing money, go and build my Gloria Groove collection. And when it was time to tell my mom, it was a very important day. ‘Look, I’m doing this, I really love what I do, and I believe in it,’ I told her.”

Even without fully understanding at the time, she made it clear she trusted. “Daniel is just one of the crowd, but I’m going to do something that will stand out and find its place,” she assured.

“Since that first step, my story has been built with the courage to be who I am. I remember Pedro Luiz [husband], who’s been with me for 10 years, and when I first met him. When I started to get ready, it was months in, and I told him the first time: ‘Look, I do drag, and I want you to know that.’ It was an act of resistance, of affirmation: I knew that was my truth, even if back then it seemed crazy or risky.” Daniel recalls a conversation with Ika Kadosh, a pioneer of the scene whom she calls her drag mother: “Girl, back in the day when I started to get ready, doing drag was social suicide.”

Despite the risks, the young artist followed his impulse to break barriers, guided also by another fundamental reference. “RuPaul talks about becoming the image born from your own imagination — one of the most powerful things I have,” he shares on the importance of the American host, whose show RuPaul’s Drag Race has been and continues to be a catalyst for queer culture.

Gloria emerged as a desire for the masses. And it didn’t take long for him to recognize the power of his own work: “She lives in people’s popular imagination, by the strength of the imagination within my CPF [Brazilian Individual Taxpayer Registry ID]. Definitely, it’s marked in history. Not necessarily for what I’ve done, but for the way people received it.”

At this point, the pen begins: “I don’t remember wanting to write phrases and rhymes before becoming a drag queen. No wonder that O Proceder, my first album, has that vibe, that style. Because the first Gloria, the first place where I understood ‘this is where I will free myself,’ was in rhyme, in rap, in building many bars — 16 bars, 32 bars. I arrived at the studio eager to let it out, right? Nothing better than having rap as my tool to do that…”

Along the way, he recognizes himself in the strength of women who use words to assert themselves and transform their experiences into art, like Ms. Lauryn Hill, Erykah Badu, Nicki Minaj, Karol Conká and Flora Matos.

“Those are female figures who brought rap as a strong and very present tool; they empowered me in that sense because they showed me there was a way to use rap within the aesthetics and stories I was trying to tell. As an effeminate gay guy, it wasn’t normal for me to feel that rap was a place for me,” he confesses.

With this new skill, his artistic persona starts to write the life he wants to live: “When I’m composing, the excitement comes from the feeling of already being in the future, being my best version, and sharing that moment with the world. It’s like fantasizing about the future and trying to capture it in an image.”

The creative process is intuitive, based on attentive listening and observation: “The direction can be a word, a theme, a poem, a sample, a BPM, or a recorded voice note on the phone. I believe that the first spark of a song wanting to be born can start from any of these ‘channels’.”

From Lady Leste to the World

Gloria Groove’s journey is marked by the territory that shaped her and that she calls home. “Lady Leste will always be in my heart because what this album represented for me is that I was finally putting an extremely personal identity into my music. When I managed to build this concept, Lady Leste, telling the true side of everything I can be and want to be — my side of Vila Formosa, of the East Zone, of what I’ll never deny, that leaves its mark on my story — I felt I had found a way to reaffirm my roots. My alter ego has an alter ego. There are many layers, many unfoldings,” she jokes.

Released in 2022 with 13 tracks—including hits like “Vermelho,” “Bonekinha” and “Queda”—Lady Leste is a manifesto that combines pop power and avant-garde. This work marked a turning point in her career, establishing Gloria as a nationally relevant artist—now with the potential to reach the world.

Prior to this, the pop star had been building her career with hits that blended influences from R&B, rap, pop and Brazilian music. Her debut album, O Proceder (2017), showcased her versatility. Later, the EP Affair (2020) solidified her romantic side with more introspective compositions like “A Tua Voz” and “Suplicar.”

In 2024, she shifted gears again with Serenata da GG, a pagode label—featuring a live album released in two volumes, with repertoire designed to melt hearts.

“My art challenges me before it challenges others. I don’t do anything that doesn’t make me step out of my comfort zone. I like to play with the new,” she summarizes. Serenata da GG is a love letter to her own story — loud, harmonious, full of groove, and heart.

The Many Layers

Who is Gloria Groove—and how many layers are there between her and Daniel?

“Too many to count!” she laughs when asked, but quickly dives deeper, and what emerges isn’t just a number but a consciousness: that each layer is translucent, untransferable, and revealing.

“Together, all are fractals of my soul,” she reveals. The fact is, there’s still much to discover about where Gloria came from. “I don’t limit my possibilities at all. I’m dying to act again, to produce music for others… Gloria was one of the dreams I took out of my little folder, and she ended up becoming my whole life. Then I looked inside and asked myself: what else is stored here?”

What drives Daniel—and consequently Gloria—is the pursuit of more honesty. Believe it or not, the emotion they both want to learn to perform better is audacity.

“To take off the filters, press that F button. Be more honest with myself, with what I feel, with what I want. Because it’s when I talk about myself like that that I create a mirror — and I hold it for you to look at yourself too.”

The “living art installation,” as she once described herself in an interview on the program Provoca with Marcelo Tas, has reached the level of being one of the most listened-to drag queens in the world, according to Spotify data.

But this rise came with a price. For a long time, she accepted packed schedules, exhausting marathons of commitments, in a constant attempt to prove herself.

“I think the biggest mistake I’ve learned from is my difficulty in saying no. I learned that saying ‘yes’ was a ‘yes’ for me,” she reflects.

Especially being who she is: “We have to prove ourselves, do three times better than a straight artist to guarantee space… to explain that that space is worthy….”

Maybe that’s why, during LGBTQIAP+ Pride Month this year, the pride carries a different weight, a different warmth.

“It’s feeling different,” she reflects. “It’s revolutionary to feel proud of absolutely everything I’ve chosen to do. Of my lifestyle, of how I want to be seen in the world, and of the person I am becoming every day. It’s about embracing all parts of myself, without shame or fear, and celebrating that authenticity — that’s the real power of pride.”

However, the revolution doesn’t only happen on stage. It also resides in silence, in the breaks, in Daniel’s everyday life—breathing between one project and another.

“For a long time, I thought I only deserved to be seen if I was doing something spectacular. But today I understand: living while waiting for the extraordinary kept me away from what’s most powerful—the ordinary. The ordinary is Dani, in loose underwear, sandals, this way of living I now seek in places where I can have that tranquility. It’s creative leisure, the time to process, reconnect,” he reflects.

In this reconnection, spirituality has become a shield and talisman: “Before going on stage, I say a prayer, talk to my essence, to my deepest self. I ask to enter without fear, shame, or inhibitions. And to truly enjoy it. When that happens, everything flows.”

And so it flows, like an eternal playful being who still promises great flights: “The world can expect from Gloria Groove a great adventure within the music industry. I haven’t stopped playing with dolls yet. When I was a kid, it was super controversial to play with dolls because, at the time, people said it was a girl’s toy. And today I play on a big scale, in front of the whole world. That’s what makes people follow my wave. So I want to play more with dolls. I just need a little more time…”

Pause, then a plea: “Mom, let me play a little more?”

It’s hard to say no. Even harder not to accept the invitation—because, deep down, it seems like the game is only just beginning.