On her first night playing Audrey in Off Broadway's Little Shop of Horrors, Jinkx Monsoon stopped traffic. "I've been rehearsing this for weeks now," she tells Mashable over Zoom, but "I still forget that there's moving set pieces and it's tight quarters backstage." The most challenging choreography, it turns out, happens behind the curtain. "If I'm not out of the way," the two-time RuPaul's Drag Race winner adds with a charming cackle, "I actually could cause huge traffic jams."
For Monsoon, cramped corridors compound the charm of performing Off Broadway. "It has just enough of that DIY, get-your-hands-dirty experience that you feel like, 'Yeah, I'm a real New Yawk actuh here,'" she laughs. This particular production of Little Shop of Horrors has seen more than half a dozen Audreys since it opened in 2019, from Constance Wu to Evan Rachel Wood. Monsoon is the first trans woman to take on the role, and she's doing it opposite another icon of the silver screen: High School Musical star Corbin Bleu.
A few days after her debut as Audrey, Monsoon sat down with Mashable to share the YouTube videos she's been watching during rehearsals and unpack her identity and ideals in the process.
1. "High School Musical: A Bad Lip Reading"
Jinkx Monsoon: I love Corbin Bleu. I was not expecting for him and me to be the same person offstage. We have such a parallel story about wanting to be performers pretty much our whole lives, but really wanting to do what we're doing right now. This is where we feel alive. It's a lot of fun because you don't feel like such a dork for caring so much. In theater, almost everyone's a huge dork. It's like being queer and finding your tribe.
When High School Musical happened, I gotta say, I had a huge crush on him. Because I love guys with big hair. I just do. Meeting him in person, he is such a dreamboat. He is such a charming, delightful person. Both he and [co-star James Carpinello] treat me like a princess. Here I am at the beginning of my medical transition, playing a female-assigned, female-intended character. And I've got these two straight guys on either side of me, treating me like a fucking queen.
This video is something I've seen before, and that I had to go back to [while] working with Corbin. I freaking love the concept of bad lip reading. It's hilarious to me. My two favorites are the Twilight compilations and Beyoncé singing the national anthem.
I try not to bring up High School Musical because I figure that's [Corbin's] whole life. He and his wife are Drag Race fans. We had dinner the other night and did our compulsory gushing over each other. And that's how I learned that he and his wife and me and my buddies, we are all just gamer dorks who like cartoons. I play Overwatch constantly. I'm a PS5 fantasy RPG girl.
I started drag because I wanted to play roles like this... to play all the characters that I didn't get cast in… to get that fantasy fulfilled for myself. Now I get to play these characters. And I just didn't see it being a possibility in my lifetime, which is why I so fervently fight for the trans and queer community these days. I'm fighting for myself. I don't want to lose this… to lose the progress we've made. And I don't feel like we will. I have so much hope. But that doesn't mean I'm not filled with white-hot rage at almost all times.
I started drag because I wanted to play roles like this... to play all the characters that I didn't get cast in… to get that fantasy fulfilled for myself. Now I get to play these characters.
When I meet people at the stage door... young trans [people say that] seeing me on stage makes it feel more possible for them to one day be on that stage, playing the roles that they know that they are meant to play, not the roles that society told them to play because of what's between their legs. I think the most important thing [about being cast] is that it shows producers that this can work and not to be afraid of gender-blind casting. It's cool to see a show like Little Shop that is so beloved, so ingrained in Americana, be reinterpreted with Seymour as a mixed-race person and Audrey played by a trans performer. Until there's true equity of roles, we've got to be open-minded to seeing characters reinterpreted by many different people.
2. "Patti Labelle - Where My Background Singers?!"
I seriously watch this clip almost daily because it makes me feel so much better. I have been in those nightmare performances, where everything's going wrong. I really relate to her inability to let it go. I don't know if she's a Virgo, but if you told me she was a Virgo, I would not be surprised. I see a performer who loves performing, who loves doing what they do, and everything's going wrong. And she cannot accept it. She keeps trying to fix it in the moment.
Mashable: Are you a Virgo?
I am. The big thing is having people you trust to delegate things to who are really good at their jobs. And I'm lucky that I'm surrounded by a great team. And I work with wonderful collaborators. What I love to do these days is be really clear about what my job is that day. Then my brain tunes out everything else, and I just let everyone else do their job. And if my job is to be a perfectionist, micromanaging control freak, I'll do that. But if my job is to be a pretty model that day, and I see something that's not happening the way I would do it, I try to let people just do their job. Because to micromanage is to tell a person you don't trust them. But I will, occasionally, when it is important enough to me, ask a person if they would like my opinion.
I say, "Would you like my input on this? Are you feeling really good about how it's going?" I know that sounds loaded but most people can hear it for what it's worth. What I like to say to other drag queens after they perform is — it's a joke, of course, I'm being a bitch — "Are you at a place where you could receive notes?"
Has anyone ever said "yes?"
Usually, they just say "fuck you." But that's why you do it. You gotta keep drag queens' [feet] on the ground.
3. "Auntie Mame (1958) Official Trailer"
[Auntie Mame] was a book and then the book became the movie Auntie Mame. Then someone had an idea to write the musical, [Mame]. I watched the original movie with my assistant. He is not that much younger than me, but we have an Auntie Mame / Patrick vibe, where it's very much like I kind of picked him up out of his life and started making him tour with me and showed him all the wonders the world has to offer, and I very much believe that if he ever has a kid that I'll get to spend summers with him [laughs].
There was a time when I thought I was gonna raise my own children. That thought is kind of waning these days. But I know I can be a great "Auntie Mame" to my niece, Chloe, and any other children my siblings have. I was pretty much raised by my Aunt Mimi, and I know that special relationship between aunt and uncle and their siblings' kids because you're a little bit removed. You're not the disciplinarian. You just get to be the person who fills them with knowledge and gives them gifts. And that's a really privileged position.
My niece is just so freakin' cool. Not an ounce of prejudice in that perfect being. I explained gender nonbinary pronouns to this kid at seven, and then they turned around and explained it to other people. Like, that's what kids kids are. I mean, I'm sure that sounds like grooming. But kids do not come pre-dispositioned to hate people. My niece meets everyone with the same open heart and the same open mind, and it is what gives me hope.
Isn't it messed up that you think some people might think about that as grooming?
Exactly. And that's what fills me with rage the most is how much I now distrust myself, or distrust my own actions or how they will be perceived. I think it's a beautiful thing that my niece had no trouble understanding that some people don't identify with the binary. But I think about you printing that and someone thinking like, "Wow, you really brainwashed your niece at an early age." Whereas I feel like prejudice is the brainwashing. That's conditioning a child to hate someone before they've even met them. Any way you teach a child love and open-mindedness and open-heartedness… that can't be bad, right?
We're just at a time where, if you're queer, you're scared to be part of that. I'm candid for a reason. I want people to know that this is what's going through my brain. I want people to know that queer people are thinking this way. Because J.K. Rowling is out there saying that every trans person is a predator... politicians are continually lying to the public. And that is why queer people are now second guessing their own nature. That's the effect it has.
4. "Elizabeth Taylor feeling merry at the Golden Globe Awards"
I don't want to presume what was going on with Liz Taylor this night. You could put two and two together. It seems like she had a couple. I have zero judgment because I'm a recovering alcoholic myself. But to have captured this moment in time, where Liz Taylor almost ruined the end of the Golden Globes is just hilarious. She plays it off like such a queen, like such royalty. She makes a joke. She's charming and effervescent the whole time. And then she steals Dick Clark's final line.
I just relate to it. I've been on stage and realized I was too drunk to be on stage and tried my best to keep things charming and effervescent. I do not recommend it. But some people need a shot of liquid courage to get on stage. Again, I do not judge. I think when you're mixing alcohol and performance, you're walking a slippery tightrope.
With the darker things in life, when you can get to a place where you can laugh at it and poke fun at yourself about it, it's a better place to be because there is a lot of guilt and shame that comes with alcoholism. And I'm not saying don't learn from your mistakes but, when you can, laugh at it a little bit. I just can feel that clip. I remember living that.
5. Carol Burnett - The Family: "The Flashback" (Uncut)
Your final video is from The Carol Burnett Show, and it's actually part of a playlist of skits between the same two characters.
I sent you the playlist because I recently watched this whole thing when I was recovering from my facial feminization surgery. I love the show Mama's Family, which is a spin off of The Carol Burnett Show. Betty White and Rue McClanahan were guest stars on Mama's Family right before they got offered Golden Girls. That's a fun little fact.
The Carol Burnett Show [was broadcast] in the '70s. There are moments that do not hold up, that don't age well. However, the women on the show are spectacular. Carol Burnett and Vicki Lawrence can do anything. Carol Burnett played the character of Eunice who is this dejected black sheep of her family and constantly plagued by her overcritical, grouchy mother played by Vicki Lawrence. The reason why I sat and binge-watched all these sketches is because I realized it was my family. If anyone wants to know what it was like growing up in my [biological] family, they need only watch Mama and Eunice.
In the same way that these sketches don't hold up, some parts of Auntie Mame don't either.
What sucks about Auntie Mame is that she's this character who is a good person and even she's not immune from casual racism. Being someone who loves Old Hollywood and who loves this "yesteryear" aesthetic, and [you're] constantly being like, "Oh, my god, I forgot about this part." But I don't think we should forget that. It's not making an excuse, it's saying, "This existed in our history."
We need to be able to look at the past and have history of the good and bad to learn from it. And that's why banning books [and] destroying culture is not good for culture. Cancel culture is bad for culture. I truly believe that we, as the community consuming entertainment, decide what we want to consume. But to try to erase its existence is like saying it never happened. And we need to remember it happened. We need to educate ourselves to make sure it doesn't happen [again]. Consciousness doesn't shift without this trial and error.
I'm really ready to talk about what's wrong with the world from where I see it. I'm really ready to get all fired up on these issues. But I hope that you hear how much hope I have. I see younger people seeing through the lies that we're told about our gender, about our race, about our limitations. I was really a product of this system until I started to see how corrupt it was. We've learned so much in the last five years that we can't go back. The young people of our generation are the ones who are going to say, "We are so done with this." We won't know until we're there. So all we can do is keep fighting until we have to plot a new course.
