While there could only be one winner in each category at the 2024 People’s Choice Awards, there were multiple champions vying for Competition Contestant of the Year.
Ariana Madix received the honor at the Sunday, February 18, awards show, which took place at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California. She could not attend due to her Broadway role as Roxie Hart in Chicago.
The category was rounded out by Xochitl Gomez for Dancing With the Stars, Charity Lawson for The Bachelorette, Theresa Nist for The Golden Bachelor, Keke Palmer for That’s My Jam, Iam Tongi for American Idol and Anetra and Sasha Colby for RuPaul’s Drag Race.
As for each person’s impact on their respective show, Gomez, 17, won season 32 of Dancing With the Stars, while Madix, 38, finished in third place. Tongi, 19, and Colby, 39, were the champions of season 21 of American Idol and season 15 of RuPaul’s Drag Race (with Anetra as the runner-up), respectively. Within Bachelor Nation, Lawson, 28, served as the season 20 lead of The Bachelorette, and Nist, 70, became the first winner of The Golden Bachelor. Despite her loss on That’s My Jam, Palmer, 30, wowed the audience with her vocal talents during season 2.
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Competition Contestant of the Year was added to the list of nominations in 2018 and has since spread the love to multiple shows within the genre. Past winners include Maddie Poppe for American Idol in 2018, Hannah Brown for The Bachelorette in 2019, Gigi Goode for RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2020, JoJo Siwa for Dancing With the Stars in 2021 and Selma Blair for Dancing With the Stars in 2022.
This year, more than one of the stars in the category has received recognition from the People’s Choice Awards on other occasions. For instance, Palmer previously earned nods for The Female Movie Star of 2022 and The Drama Movie Star of 2022 for her role in Nope, while Madix is also up for The Reality TV Star of the Year for Vanderpump Rules during Sunday’s ceremony.
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Meanwhile, Madix and Colby both made Us Weekly’s list of the top reality stars of 2023. The drag queen explained at the time why the victory on RuPaul’s Drag Race was so important amid anti-drag and anti-trans legislation.
“This isn’t just for me, this is for all those kids that are really, really scared right now,” Colby exclusively told Us in October 2023. “It was for me to be strong for them and use the platform and the privilege that I have to make people uncomfortable in the sense of really looking at yourself.”
