As she prepared to discuss a part in the upcoming Broadway show “Pirates! The Penzance Musical” with the director Scott Ellis, Jinkx Monsoon had only one outcome in mind. “I knew I was going in for a meeting, but I wanted to leave with that role,” she said in a recent conversation.
And she was not coy about it. “The first thing she said was, ‘I’ve never wanted anything more than this,’” Ellis recalled, laughing.
Now Monsoon is above the show’s title in playbills, alongside Ramin Karimloo and David Hyde Pierce. A lifetime of hard work has added up.
“I’ve done so many freaking things!” Monsoon said. “I’ve been a stand-up comedian, I’ve been a singer and a dancer and a stripper. I think auctioneer is one thing I haven’t done.”
A two-time winner of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” Monsoon, 37, a Portland, Ore., native, has an eclectic résumé that includes cabaret shows, guest starring on “Doctor Who” and a wildly popular seasonal bauble, “The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show” (created and performed with BenDeLaCreme). When she made her Broadway debut in January 2023 as Matron “Mama” Morton in “Chicago,” casual — or perhaps cynical — observers might have assumed she was just another TV personality crossing off another item on her wish list, like headlining Carnegie Hall. (Monsoon did that, too, in February.)
Instead it was a big step toward her end goal. She then took an even bigger step, professionally and personally, last year, when she was cast as Audrey in the hit Off Broadway revival of “Little Shop of Horrors” and ended up surprising even people who know her well.
“Earnest in the past was a challenge for Jinkx,” her longtime collaborator BenDeLaCreme said in a phone conversation. “She really got uncomfortable if people weren’t laughing for any duration. But when she performed in ‘Little Shop,’ she was willing to lean into the real pathos of this character.”
This new willingness to expose vulnerability may well derive from an increased sense of confidence in herself: Being cast as Audrey was a major step in Monsoon’s decision to medically transition. Her growth as an actress is evident in the new Broadway production of “Pirates” (in previews at the Todd Haimes Theater), which relocates the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta to New Orleans and adorns it with jazzy arrangements. She plays Ruth, a zany maid who cavorts with a merry band of pirates led by Karimloo and pines for the fetching Frederic (Nicholas Barasch). Monsoon did so well during rehearsals that she earned Ruth an extra number, “Alone, and Yet Alive,” on loan from “The Mikado.”
For Pierce, it was all a bit of déjà vu. “What springs to mind is what it was like to work with Bette Midler on ‘Hello, Dolly!’ he said over the phone. “Because Jinkx is a pro and she’s been around the block, and she’s gifted in so many ways. She’s an incredible singer and has found all the different ways to manage her particular style of vocal production. She’s a fantastic mimic. And she’s just funny,” he continued, with an expletive for emphasis. “Another similarity is that Jinkx is there for the collaboration, to work with everybody, as was Bette.”
Over the course of two conversations, Monsoon discussed what being an actress means to her, her relatively recent decision to transition and what grounds her performances. These are edited and condensed excerpts from those conversations.
What was the beginning of your acting career like?
I was told in high school I had to tone it down if I wanted to be serious as an actor. In college I convinced myself that I had to give up drag and focus on being malleable and versatile. Guess what? All I got cast as was female roles and some little-boy characters. No one was going to call me in for a female lead. I auditioned for the chaperone in “The Drowsy Chaperone” in Seattle, and I believe the consensus was there was no way I could do that eight times a week.
Why was that?
I think they thought I had party tricks but not sustainability, because the world has for a long time diminished the talent of drag queens. I did experience push and pull from people wanting to see me for female roles and other people in the creative team being like, “No, she’s a drag queen, she can maybe do it once but there’s no way she could carry a show.”
What did you learn from being in “Chicago”?
I noticed that with the actors, no two performances were identical yet the intention was always the same. I realized it’s not about learning the perfect way to deliver the line and then delivering it that way every time without fail — it was about learning the true intention behind the scene and then just having the conversation with the actors. Once I started doing that, I started getting to that nirvana place where I was thinking the thoughts of the character. You’re sitting there actually thinking, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe Roxie Hart just said that.”
Were you surprised to get the call for Audrey?
I’ve always thought I could play Audrey amazingly, but I never thought anyone would even look at me for her, so I had this dream of playing Audrey II, the plant. I wanted to play its voice until it was big enough, and then it blooms into a personification of the plant and I would be like Poison Ivy. So my agent calls and says they wanted me to audition for Audrey. I was like, “You mean Audrey II?” He goes, “No, Audrey.” And I was like, “Yeah, but the plant is named after her so they want me to audition for Audrey II.” And he goes, “No, Jinkx, they want you to audition for Audrey. Not the plant, the human being.” I was shocked and stunned.
What was it like landing this dream role?
Being cast as Audrey was what gave me permission to finally begin my medical transition. It was like, “I think the world’s ready to see you as an actress. They don’t need to see you as a drag queen, they don’t need you to perform maleness for them anymore — they see you as the actress you wanted to be.” The world is at a place where they’re ready to see me, and that’s thanks to people like Peppermint, Angelica Ross, Laverne Cox, Varla Jean Merman — all of these people who have been playing roles that weren’t expected for them to play, and doing it well and showing everyone we’re just actors.
So in a way a performance inspired a decision that meant ending a performance?
Drag gave a place for my femininity to live, and for a long time it was good enough. When I came out as nonbinary, it was because I realized I didn’t want to keep performing maleness. But being nonbinary I was still setting these rules on myself, like I was adamant about androgyny, about not being too masculine and too feminine. I’ve always been visibly queer and I was scared that taking it a step further was just going to make my life miserable.
It doesn’t look like it did.
Getting cast as Audrey was kind of like, “Oh, I’m an actress.” I started wearing dresses. I started walking my walk every day — there is something in my mind like, “This is the walk Audrey would do.” It was slurs being yelled at me and sometimes it was catcalls, sometimes it was lecherous looks. But it wasn’t any different from before I transitioned. Like, whatever, I’ve been called slurs my whole life. But I am now this person I imagined in my head my whole life, that I thought was inaccessible to me. And I just [expletive] love every second of it.
How do you see the character of Ruth?
She’s become a very relatable character in spite of her really kooky circumstances. She doesn’t really have big flowery speeches or big emphatic monologues like other characters, but I do have a couple songs that really allow for some storytelling and allow you inside the heart and mind of this iteration of Ruth.
You seem to have an unerring sense of how to land a joke while keeping Ruth grounded.
They trust me to know what’s funny, and that’s because of the years I spent doing what I’ve done. You don’t have to start at the very bottom and crawl on your belly through glass to get to the top — there’s plenty of ways and plenty of people have skipped that step. But I started at the very bottom. I was a drag queen performing in dive bars at 17 years old to audiences of four people with a dressing room full of cockroaches. I can’t think of more bottom [laughs]. I performed on the streets of Portland, Oregon, for coins and dollars.
Do you think that’s why your performances feel so lived in?
You know that song “I’m Still Here” from “Follies”? When I get to sing that someday, it’s going to be [expletive] real for me. It’s real for me now. [laughs] When I sing it at my next Carnegie show, or my last Carnegie show, it is going to be earned. And I’m really excited for that.
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