Episode #404
Jinkx Monsoon is a comedian and singer best known for becoming the first performer to win two seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race, first in season 5 in 2013, followed by the all-winner all-star edition in 2022, where she was crowned “Queen of All Queens.” She began touring annually over the holidays in 2018 with fellow Drag Race star BenDeLaCreme, and you can watch The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Special on Hulu. Jinkx has released multiple albums, been the subject of two documentaries, and has appeared on TV shows such as Blue Bloods and AJ and the Queen. In 2022, Jinkx filmed her first solo comedy special for Comedy Dynamics at the Tribeca Film Festival, and is the creator, writer and star of the sketch comedy series, Sketchy Queens, debuting on WOWPresents Plus in September 2022. Jinkx joined me over Zoom to talk about the evolution of her life and career, and what comes next.
Here’s a peek at a sketch from the first episode of Sketchy Queens, which we talk about!
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So we both have birthdays coming up. Yours is on the 18th. Mine is on the 26th. Eight days and 16 years apart.
Yeah, so you’re a Libra. Do you wish you were a Virgo?
Funny you should ask that because I was born three weeks past my due date. So I guess I should’ve been a Virgo.
I was born a week past my due date, but I still would have been a Virgo. I was meant to be a Virgo and I’m quite the Virgo. I don’t know how much stock you put in all of that. But as far as Virgos go, I’m quite Virgo-y.
Have any big plans for this birthday?
No, actually my plans for this birthday. So I co-produce a cabaret series with my friend Katya in Portland, and Katya decided that she was going to have a Jinkx Monsoon themed show the day before my birthday, not even knowing I was going to be in town. So I’m gonna go in disguise and watch all these Portland performers perform as me the night before my birthday, then on the day of my birthday, I have a house in Portland. My plan is to set up on my couch, Jabba the Hutt style. Stay in one place all day. And if anyone wants to come through, they can. But I’m not going to move. They have to come pay homage to me at my house. I’ll order food. I’ll set up a buffet, you know, a tasting buffet. But I plan on just being on my couch all day long because I have been on the go for the last two months and all I want to do on my birthday is sit and play video games, and people can come visit me. My friend Emerald has agreed to wear a gold bikini and lay at my feet so…
A la Princess Leia, yes.
The day’s already shaping up.
Well, I guess that’s befitting the Queen of all Queens though, isn’t it?
Yeah. Are you really a queen if you can’t just stay in one place and Jabba the Hutt your way through life. I’m more like a Queen Aunt.
(NOTE: We pivoted briefly into jokes about the late Queen Elizabeth II and the nature of “too soon,” which got cut from broadcast, but segues into this question)
For someone who started performing drag at 14/15 and performing on RuPaul’s Drag Race by 24 — I mean, how could there be a “too soon” for you, right Jinkx?
Are you reading my Wikipedia? Listen. The reason why it’s 14/15 is because I literally can’t remember. I know I did some drag before I was doing drag. You know? Like I played some drag roles in ballet. As in I played the female roles. I played the female comic relief roles in ballet a few times. And that was technically my first drag, but I think of myself becoming a drag queen when I started working in the nightclubs, which was at 15.
This gets into my next question actually, because, you know, I mentioned we have a 16-year age difference. So to put this in perspective you are 24, you were on national TV, competing for RuPaul’s affections and attentions. When I was 24 — I’m living in Queens now — when I was 24, I moved to Seattle. And by the end of my age 24 I started getting involved in comedy improv and stand-up at the Comedy Underground. But before that, I was going out dancing. Two nights a week I would go out Thursdays to Rebar
Mmmhmmm
which was the disco night, and Wednesdays I would go to Neighbours
Mmmhmmm
and that was my first real life in-person, drag experience for me. I was 24 before I experienced that in person. What was the first time you experienced drag? Had you done it? Had you experienced it before you did it yourself?
I started spending a lot of time at SMYRC in Portland, Oregon, the Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center, which was a recreational and Resource Center for queer youth. I don’t know what you’re laughing at.
I’m smirking, because SMYRC. Just the pun of it all.
So we often had open mic nights and drag shows. And when I was new there, you know like the first drag show that happened there. I was so excited to see drag for the first time in real life. I think I had seen Peter Paige’s character Emmett do drag on Queer As Folk. And you know, the occasional drag queen on Queer as Folk but and of course Rocky Horror, which isn’t quite drag, but it’s drag, you know. At any case, I had limited experience and the first time I saw a drag queen, her name was Abby, she pointed directly at me in the audience and it was like she was passing the baton. It was like she pointed at me. Our eyes locked and I swear it was like a month later I was a drag queen. She passed it on. And I do have a theory that drag can be transmitted like werewolves. I can’t tell you how many one-night stands I’ve had where like two weeks later, he’s a drag queen and I’m like oh no, we should’ve wore a condom. (laughs!)
No no, always wear condoms and take PrEP! Get on PrEP! Anyway. was the question? That’s what I first saw drag. You saw drag at 24 and I’m just thinking how much better my life must have been than yours because I saw drag at such an early age.
OK, to be fair, I mean, I had seen drag/trans, because for me growing up Generation X, those terms were kind of interchangeable in the 70s and 80s. I mean, there was a character on the TV show M*A*S*H. There was Tootsie, or Monty Python, Kids in the Hall…
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why. My friends and I talk all the time about Chandler’s dad on Friends. How the writers clearly had no idea — the writers didn’t even know, and that’s, you know, that’s what bugs me the most about that whole storyline in an antiquated show about white people. But in Friends, they really don’t ever decide if Chandler’s dad is a drag queen or she is a trans woman. And they never make that distinction. And I think a lot of that ignorance comes from the straight community misinterpreting what they see in our community, where, as we have been talking very loudly, in just the span of Drag Race, we’ve been talking very loudly about how trans women have always been a part of drag. Trans men have always been a part of drag. They’ve always been there. It’s not a new concept that a trans woman might also do drag. And you know, I think straight people as outsiders looking in, they see trans women and they see drag queens and they just conflate it all together. You know, and I think that poor conditioning is a result of straight people trying to understand the queer community from the outside. So I think that’s why maybe those words were interchangeable back then.
I mean, RuPaul’s “Supermodel” came out when I was in college. And then I remember going with my friends a year, I was only a year out of college when we went to see Priscilla Queen of the Desert. And those kinds of real annual as a cis het, white guy that really kind of opened my eyes to the drag world and how was something completely different from trans.
To Wong Foo really like took it to another level. Priscilla shows you the human beings under the drag, and I think To Wong Foo does, too, and don’t get me wrong, I love To Wong Foo. It’s compulsory viewing for every queer person. But To Wong foo further confused the straight world about what drag queens are and the difference between being a drag queen and being a trans individual. Nowadays, I think we’re just realizing that everything, all of it is so much more fluid than we were told, and the way media’s presented it for so long. And we’re talking about when in our lives did we first see drag queens and then it got me thinking about you know, the uproar, the fighting and the very strong opinions on drag queen story hour, you know, drag queens interacting with children. I was just thinking about this last night because my show, my act, my drag persona is not for children. I don’t want children at my shows, because my shows are filthy. When there are children at my shows, I point out that your very responsible guardians have their work cut out for them, conceptualizing everything you see here tonight, small child but I’ve still got a show to do for the rest of the audience that paid to do my shows. So please don’t repeat anything I say. Now on with the show…when I get fucked in the ass! You know. I’m like, I don’t want kids at that show! I don’t want to do that material in front of kids. But that’s not to say that drag can’t be for kids. You know, my show isn’t, but there are drag queens who do shows appropriate for children, or there are drag queens who know how to tone it down for kids. And there is nothing inherently wrong with a child meeting a drag queen. Drag is not inherently filthy, dirty and sexual. You know? And I was thinking about this last night in terms of like, parents wanting to ban all interactions with children and drag queens. But then you would you ban all interaction between children and musicians just because some musicians aren’t for kids? You know, Snoop Dogg’s not for kids. But that doesn’t mean like there isn’t music out there for kids. And when you think of drag as an art form, you can compartmentalize things and say this kind of drag isn’t for kids. But Nina West singing a song about Pride on Blue’s Clues, that absolutely is for kids, and there’s nothing inherently about it that makes it not for kids. And the reason why I think people should experience drag even earlier in life is when you meet a drag queen for the first time and when you see drag for the first time, it unlocks that part of your brain that has been locked by society that tells you that gender is binary, and gender is dictated to you by your genitalia. And gender is finite. You know, drag teaches us that our gender expression is 100% in our control, and I don’t know that you asked me anything that led me on that train of thought but it felt very important to share it with you.
It is very important and it reminded me that in I think this is in Drag Becomes Him, the docuseries that became a film. You mentioned back then — comparing drag to Commedia dell’Arte, right? And so with your example, of what would stop people from separating kids from musicians? Obviously they should be separating the kids from the clowns!
Clowns are fucking freaks! No.
With the makeup and the wigs and the costumes.
Yeah, yeah,
It’s an abomination, clowns are.
If the problem is that the wigs in the makeup and the costumes are going to confuse the kids about what’s real then, yeah. Why do you have birthday clowns? Why do you have Barney the dinosaur?
McDonalds: Ronald McDonald?
The mental gymnastics that conservative assholes will go through to support their own backwards thinking is really incredible. But then I think about the mental gymnastics I go through to justify ordering Taco Bell a third night this week. You know, we all are assholes. Everyone’s an asshole.
Isn’t the only mental gymnastics at Taco Bell is what time of day you’re ordering it?
For me it’s how recently have I had Taco Bell. That’s the mental gymnastics.
As far as Jinkx is concerned, did Jinkx arrive to you fully-formed or were there stages of evolution to Jinkx?
Oh, Jinkx is continually evolving because she’s an extension of me. So as I evolve as a human, she evolves. Jinkx — when I was on a weird mushroom trip.
Are there any other kinds?
Yeah, there’s fun ones and then there’s — I was on a mushroom trip once and I did the thing you’re not supposed to do. I went to the bathroom and stared in the mirror. And as I stared into the mirror, I realized that Jinkx is a demon that has been possessing me half my life. That’s what my mushroom logic told me. But what I really feel, instead of that terrifying idea, is that Jinkx, she is a separate person, but she’s so an extension of me. She’s like if I took all of my best and worst qualities and none of the middle-ground qualities. None of the qualities that make me a functioning human being, just the best and the worst, and put them into a person. That’s what Jinkx is. I get to get my demons out through Jinkx. I get to complain about what I want to complain about, but in a funny way where it may be me running my mouth might serve a purpose and help some other people in my audience like see things from a new perspective or from a new point of view. That’s my whole, if I had a mission statement as a comedian, I guess it’s to dismantle the patriarchy through comedy. I tell dick jokes, but in an effort to help people see the world in a new way, you know, in an effort to show what’s universal between any person in my audience and this alcoholic, neurotic narcoleptic drag queen. And if you can have similarities with me, then you can probably have similarities with everyone.
Don’t sell yourself short. You’re not just you’re not just a teller of dick jokes. You’re also a fabulous singer.
Thank you! And the singer of dick jokes Yes. Thank you.
Does one come more naturally to you than the other, singing versus joke telling?
Well, yeah, because singing is something you can do technically right? As long as you’re doing it technically well. You can get away like you can — I hate to admit this. But there are songs that I’ve sung so many times, that sometimes I’m on tage singing a song, and I might be really selling the song but in my brain I’m thinking OK, so tonight I’ve got to do my laundry because if I don’t wash my tights tonight, they won’t be dry in time for tomorrow. So I’ve got to get Michael to do that. I catch myself doing this and I quickly say, snap back into it snap back into it, because that’s when I mess up my lyrics is when my mind starts to wander. Comedy, my mind can’t wander. Comedy takes more focus because I have to be fully engaged and connected with the audience to know that the jokes are landing. Singing, I also like to be fully engaged and connected with the audience. But some parts of the song are like oh, this I just need to sing it technically. Well, verse two is when I really need to connect with them. So right now I can just go through the motions.
So I told you that in the mid 90s when I arrived in Seattle, there was a weekly drag night at Neighbours, and Drag Bingo was already a thing then. What was the drag scene in Seattle like when you came on the scene a decade later?
Oh, well. What I love about drag in Seattle and really entertainment and the arts and Seattle is the wealth of diversity in the genre and presentation. I’m specifying, I mean, Seattle is a very white city, don’t get me wrong! But the wealth of diversity and genre in presentation is vast, because as a drag queen in Seattle, you could fill your calendar by doing nightclub work, drag lipsync members at the nightclub on Saturday. And then maybe on Wednesday, you’re doing burlesque with a burlesque troupe and Thursday you’re doing cabaret. Like every day of the week, you could be doing a different form of drag, because Seattle has it all. And that was really formative to me to meet so many different drag queens making their way as a drag queen, doing completely different things that required completely different skill sets. And it really like taught my brain to think: Drag is the medium in which we present our talents, but drag is a talent, of course. But drag isn’t the only talent on display. When you see a drag queen who’s dancing she’s a dancer. She’s a dancer in drag. Bianca Del Rio is a stand-up comedian who does it in drag. Adore Delano is a pop singer who does it in drag. I think my work what I’m setting out to do as a drag entertainer is to remove the word drag as a qualifier that gets put before our talents. I see oftentimes in the mainstream media, it’s like something gets labeled drag this or drag that as a way to other us, from other professionals doing the exact same thing we’re doing. And the fact that we do it in drag doesn’t mean that we’re doing it at any less of a level as any other person. We’re not doing any less acting. We’re not telling any less jokes.
When Paul Reubens performs as Pee-wee Herman, people don’t say oh, he’s performing in drag.
Yeah. They don’t say drag comedian as a way to other him
Or they don’t say Reginald Dwight is performing in drag as Sir Elton John.
Exactly. I don’t know that it’s a conscious effort on everyone’s part. But what it is, is just another way to other queer people and keep queer people kind of, like, OK, we’re giving new representation but don’t go crazy! You know, it’s still a predominantly straight world. We see that all the time in media. We see that all the time in mainstream media, where they want to be with the times and share diverse stories, but also it’s been working one way for so long that they’re so fucking terrified that if they give us an inch, we’ll take a mile, because a forbid queer people be treated equally.
I went to Los Angeles for the Netflix Is A Joke Festival in May and there were all these stand-up showcases and they made specials out of them, but the one that was for the LGBTQ community, they cram 30 performers into one hour. It’s like, oh, you get three minutes.
All of you, get on in here! Exactly. And you see that kind of stuff all the time. And it’s obviously not just with queer people. It’s any marginalized community. Mainstream media is in this tricky place where it’s trying to get with the picture. It realizes it has to evolve and adapt and it realizes it has to update and be for everyone and show diverse representation and let people from marginalized communities be the ones telling their own stories, i.e., stop casting white voice actors to voice POC characters. Stop casting cis hetero people to play trans queer people? We know now that there are enough talented people of color. There are enough talented trans and queer people in the world. Drag Race is an example that there are countless talented camera-ready people out there, and there’s no reason to keep using these antiquated ways of doing things. So media’s trying to catch up to you know where they should be. And also fighting it every step of the way.
When you auditioned for season five, your first victorious romp through Drag Race. Were you able at that time to be making a living full time as a performer or were you having to pull odd jobs?
By the time I auditioned for Drag Race, I had a part-time job. I worked four hours, Monday through Friday, as a janitor in the morning at a medical clinic. It was a respite center for people recovering from injury and illness. For houseless people recovering from injury and illness. And I was the janitor there, after having been the janitor at my college for four years. It was a very Good Will Hunting situation. So I liked being a janitor. It was work I understood. In addition to my part-time job, I worked on the weekends as a drag queen, and I was constantly auditioning for theater. So if I had a play, I would take a little time off from drag to do my plays. And then drag was always there for me in between other shows that I was doing. So I was just about there. I think one more season and I would have been fully supporting myself as a performer. But I was just about there. Do you know, I’ve thought about it. If I ever stopped performing, I have no other marketable skills. I can’t even do simple math. I am so scared. If I ever decided to stop performing for whatever reason, I would literally have to start again at the ground level. I’d probably go back to being a janitor.
There’s no shame in that game. Between that and then doing the All Winners edition did your strategy change for why you decided to do the show the second time around? I know you’ve cited on other podcasts that you want to create the next Broad City for yourself and DeLa, and and you do have all these things, you know you have the sketch series is coming out. You filmed a stand-up special earlier in 2022 at Tribeca. So did you view doing the All Winner season as a way to like catapult you to a higher level or what was the thinking?
One of my big strategies with All Star 7 is, I don’t have a single regret of either of my my seasons of Drag Race. I mean, I’m sure I have some regrets. But the point is, I look back and I watch season five, and there’s things I would have done differently today. There’s things I’m like, oooh I wish I could have worn a different outfit for this or oooh, I’ve got the perfect idea for this now 10 years later. But I wouldn’t tamper with the past because it got me to where I am right now. What I’ll say though that season five. I feel like you really got to know Jinkx the artist who does drag. I think you got to know the artist and the human behind the drag persona really really well. But you didn’t get to meet Jinkx the character as much, and you didn’t get to see an example of what I do as an artist. I think the things that stand out from Season Five even though of course Snatch Game was a huge victory for me. The acting challenges were standout moments for me, but I really feel like my audience is more familiar with my journey and my story on Season Five than they are with my talents. So All Star 7, I said I need to go on and just really fucking show off what I do in my shows. Because this is the last time I’m going on Drag Race and I want my audiences, next time they see my shows coming through town or they see the holiday tour with BenDeLaCreme is coming or they see that I’m doing one of my shows with my music partner, or they see that I’ve got a new show on WOW Presents Plus called Sketchy Queens. When they see my name, I want them to know Oh, she’s probably got a whole musical comedy Power Hour and I want them to be excited to see that, because I do feel like after Season Five people came to my shows expecting water off the duck’s back and what they got instead was an unfiltered slutty bitch. That’s the Jinkx character. She’s an unfiltered slutty bitch and I fucking love her for it and she lets me get my demons out onstage. But she’s not water off a duck’s back and she’s not. That’s me, the human, that’s not the drag persona. So I’m excited that I think between Season Five and All Star Seven. What I’m recognizing right now with my audiences who I meet in the meet and greets, or who I talk to on Grindr. What I’m noticing is now after 10 years, I feel like people know me, the full package. They know my work as a drag queen. They know who I am as a person. They know I’m still that person. They might resonate with me as a human being and they might enjoy my work, but they’re separate things. And they’re both fully present right now. And that’s why I feel like if I hadn’t won, which thank God I did because I’m so excited to have won, thank you. But even if I hadn’t won I would say mission accomplished because there’s no doubt about what I do as an artist now. I feel like my audiences come knowing full well what they’ve got. What they’ve got themselves into.
Jinkx, thank you for being fully present with me. And allowing my audiences to get to know you a little bit better. I really do appreciate your time. And happy birthday.
Oh, thank you. Happy birthday to you, too. But can I ask: Did you watch episode one of Sketchy Queens? Did you like it?
I did. I liked that it opened with you as two different characters.
Yeah, that’s what I love about filmwork.
The first thing you see is is not Jinkx. You see Jennifer Tilly and Jennifer Coolidge.
I mean, that’s why I belong on stage in front of a live audience. That’s where I really thrive. But there’s so much you can only do in video work. And more than anything video work lets me play more of the characters.
Right, there’s the talk-show segment with Trixie Mattel that’s got like a Between Two Ferns kind of energy to it, but you’re also not Jinkx in that, either.
What I love about Sketchy Queens is I think you can see the inspirations we draw from, like Between Two Ferns, Portlandia, Tim Robinson’s I Think You Should Leave, The Characters. The work of Kate Berlant and John Early. They’re big inspirations to us. Brandon Rogers is a friend to both me and Liam Krug, Liam co-created the show with me.
And they’ve all been on my podcast.
So I’m so inspired by these funny people. And so you will definitely pick up on the inspirations. But what I love about Sketchy Queens is it’s kind of like saying, hey, you know, these other sources of comedy that you like, what if that same kind of idea was done just unapologetically queer? And so I think we take some tropes and some sketch motifs, and some styles that you’re already familiar with, and show you what it looks like through a queer lens. And that’s what I’m happy to do in my work.
That also allows you to be inspirational to the next generation of queer kids who don’t realize that that’s an option for them. You get to unlock it in their heads.
I’ve just taken what Varla Jean Merman and Coco Peru and Lady Bunny, I’m just taking what they laid down for me and paying it forward.
Well, congratulations, The Queen of all Queens, thank you so much.
Thank you! Have a great day.
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