You’re best known as the only two-time winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, having taken home the crown in 2013 and 2022. More recently, you’ve been busy with theater. Since your debut in Chicago, in 2023, you’ve been in several shows, both on and Off Broadway. This fall, for an eight-week engagement, you took over for Cole Escola as the star of Oh, Mary!, an irreverent comedy about Mary Todd Lincoln. How did it feel for you, as a longtime Broadway fan, to finally live your Broadway dreams?
I think the upward positive trajectory I’ve been on is directly correlated to [the drag performer] BenDeLaCreme and me creating The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show. When I realized I was already creating the work I wanted to see in the world and doing the job I wanted to do as an artist, the pressure to “make it” dissipated. It’s poignant that I was in Oh, Mary! because it’s such a similar story for Cole and Sam [Pinkleton, the director of Oh, Mary!]. They created something that meant something to them, and then the success followed because they stayed authentic.
How did you differentiate your version of Mary Todd Lincoln from Cole’s?
I didn’t focus on differentiating my performance from Cole’s as much as I focused on the common threads between Cole and me that linked us to this character. Mary doesn’t have a lot of agency in her life. All of the agency she has, she has to fight to gain. That’s something a lot of disenfranchised people can relate to.
After seeing Oh, Mary! for the first time, you told Cole you eventually wanted to take over the starring role. Did the experience match your expectations?
It was 10 times more than I could have dreamed. I learned a lot about how to survive in this world currently by living in Mary’s world in the 1880s.
What specifically did you learn?
That sometimes being a cunt is the only way to be heard.
One small move of your eyebrow made the whole theater roar with laughter. How did it feel to control a room like that?
It’s something Cole and I share, having both spent years on the cabaret circuit. In the show, there’s a line: “The only difference between theater and cabaret is fewer feathers and flatter shoes.” But in my opinion, the main difference between theater and cabaret is that in most cabaret shows, there is no fourth wall. You’re completely cognizant of the audience, and the audience is aware that you know they’re there. Cabaret is all about having a direct conversation with the audience, looking them in the eyes, talking to them, and singing to them. In that, I have learned the power of facial expression.
Let’s talk about Drag Race. Have you found that the reception to Drag Race, drag queens, and you, specifically, has changed since your first season?
Yes, absolutely. I’ve been saying this for years: Drag is the medium we choose to share our talents, but drag is just one of our talents. I’m a drag queen and an actress. Sometimes I’m acting in drag; sometimes I’m acting out of drag. Drag queens have been subcategorized for so long. You can’t deny our impact anymore. Pop stars dress like us. Female celebrities use our makeup routines—look at Kylie Jenner. She’s wearing a full face of drag makeup. I’m not being hyperbolic here. I watched her makeup routine once, and I was like, This is the Drag Race workroom. She’s doing all of the same steps we do. At some point, heteronormative culture became as fabulous as drag culture. The idea that drag queens are bigger or more ridiculous than any other celebrity is gone. We have shown you that everyone in the public eye is doing drag in some form. We’re just owning it.
Would you ever go back for a third season?
Competition brings out wonderful and terrible things in me. It’s not that I become competitive with my drag queen sisters—I become really critical of myself. So I don’t know. The reason why I went on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season 7 is because all the circumstances were right for me to do my best work. If they come to me with circumstances where I feel like, Yeah, I can do my best work in this environment, then, yeah, I’ll consider it. But that’s a lot of caveats.
Hair by Davey Matthew for Milkshake at the Only Agency; makeup by Jamal Scott for Mac Cosmetics at Art Partner. Photo Assistant: Patrick Lyn; Fashion Assistant: Cipher Knows; Tailor: Lindsay Wright; Special Thanks to the Lyceum Theater, currently home to OH, MARY!.
Source: W Magazine
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