How Jinkx Monsoon Made Her Way to Broadway in ‘Pirates! The Penzance Musical’

Performer and drag entertainer Jinkx Monsoon has built up quite the résumé since her time on RuPaul’s Drag Race. After two stints in Chicago broke house records for that long-running musical revival, she stepped up to a leading role in Little Shop of Horrors (as Audrey) and, last night, opened her first Broadway show: Pirates! The Penzance Musical, a New Orleans-flavored updating of the 19th-century Gilbert and Sullivan operetta.

The scene-stealing part of the love-lorn housemaid Ruth was a bit of a surprise to Monsoon (whose name offstage is Hera Hoffer), but hard-earned. At some point during her rise in the New York theater, she bewitched Scott Ellis, the artistic director of Roundabout Theater Company, which produces Pirates!. Monsoon was confused, at first, when he mentioned his idea for an upcoming revival, but followed a feeling in her stomach that, she tells Vogue, usually pays off.

And that it did: Soon, she found herself having the time of her life in a rehearsal process where Ellis encouraged her to follow her instincts, which stem from a deep love of Lucille Ball and Judy Garland.

“Sometimes, as a marginalized performer entering a space that’s got such a legacy, it’s easy to feel like an outsider or have imposter syndrome and convince yourself, I’m a drag queen, I’m a comedian, what am I doing in this Broadway show? That kind of stuff creeps into your head,” she says. “The antidote is working with people who assure you that they trust you. Ruth is a lot of my choices and instincts, but she was shaped by the author, the music director, the choreographer, the director, and I couldn’t ask for better co-stars.”

Monsoon shares the Pirates! marquee with a pair of Broadway icons: David Hyde Pierce and Ramin Karimloo, with whom she shares a close friend, Drag Race host Michelle Visage, his co-star in a West End concert staging of The Addams Family. She says, “Ramin, on day one, walked up to me and was like, ‘I’m Ramin, Michelle loves you, so I love you.’ And that was that. Plus, the three of us are Virgos, one right after the other; September 18, 19, 20.”

Ahead of her opening night, Monsoon told Vogue about her path to this off-beat operetta, what she’s learned from reviews throughout her career, and how, months after deciding to begin transitioning, she finds her peace between the onstage Jinkx and the at-home Hera.

Vogue: What was your relationship to Gilbert and Sullivan before signing on to do Pirates?

Jinkx Monsoon: I’m not a devotee, but as a person in musical theater and in showbusiness, I know plenty of Gilbert and Sullivan and [about] their contributions to this world of performance. I would have never guessed that I’d be in a Gilbert and Sullivan show. I definitely would have never said no—I would always have been happy to take on the challenge. But I’m so excited that, in this iteration, we’re doing blues and jazz with a Creole, Louisiana influence. It’s allowing me to really work with this incredible material in a format that I think suits my capabilities really well. It’s this wonderful blend of reverence and revamp—nothing is done carelessly or hastily.

Their work has a very distinct sensibility. How has it been, working your way into that?

I think one of the things—and this isn’t me trying to humble brag, this is what I’ve seen people say about me—is that I have found ways to take those iconic and anachronistic performance styles and revitalize them in a modern, contemporary context. If you look at the shows I’ve done—Mama Morton in Chicago, that’s a very vaudeville-esque show; Little Shop of Horrors, not really a vaudeville show, but Audrey is a rare ingenue in that she is like a character actress-y ingenue—I feel like I’ve found ways to take everything I love about past eras and weave them into what I do as a contemporary performer. Those who know the references can see it, and those who don’t sometimes go look it up and realize, Oh, wow, she was referencing something from a hundred years ago. That bitch is deep.

I love how you started that answer. It reminds me of Barbra Streisand’s memoir, where she would include a rave notice from The New York Times and be shocked by what it said.

I promise I’m not trying to be up my own ass, but I have learned what works in my work by reading reviews. I could never put my finger on why the audience responds to this, but this reviewer saw it and explained it articulately and now I know, so now I can double down on that. It’s such an ill-fated practice, right? Reading reviews. I don’t know that I should be doing it, but when I read someone else’s perception of something I’ve done, and they 100% got what I was going for, that makes me so happy.

With Drag Race, you hit the mainstream in one of the most viciously dissected arenas I can think of, so I’m not surprised you’ve had to find ways to handle reviews.

I also went to an art school, Cornish College in Seattle, where critique and receiving feedback was just a huge part of the work and the education. I once said this as a complete bitch to my friend when we were in a fight, but it’s what I was dealing with at the time: We all have bad days at work, mine just sometimes happen in front of an audience and get written about in the papers. I was going through this thing where I was really having a hard time because, when you put the work out there, you have to accept that it might not be a bullseye, and you have to learn how to learn from that. If you surround yourself with yes people who don’t tell you the truth about what works, then that’s how people lose touch. Artists lose touch over time because they stop allowing people to tell them when something’s not working right.

As you hit wider audiences, is “Jinkx” something you feel you have to uphold? For example, you’re not performing here as Hera. I’m interested in the interplay between your persona, your personality, your name, and your stage name. How are you grounding yourself?

For a long time, I tried to figure out an answer to that question, and I don’t yet have a succinct answer. The thing I’ve realized is that there was a time when Jinkx was just a persona I put on and left onstage. Now she’s more of an extension of myself. I have other characters that don’t share my body the way Jinkx does. I’m always thinking Jinkx’s thoughts because she’s my Super Saiyan, my Megazoid. She’s me when I’m at full capacity, firing on all cylinders; when I’ve got the wig and the makeup and the corset and the heels. Now that I’m transitioning and presenting feminine in my day-to-day life, Jinkx is more than just the accessories; it’s when all of it comes together and Sailor Moon finishes the transformation and is ready for battle.

Choosing a new name for my private self, and giving myself a new private self that I like being, was me grounding myself again. It was kind of like how I loved being Jinkx but hated being Jerick, which was my given name. Any time people would say that name, or use male pronouns, it felt like, Ugh, I want to be Jinkx again. I realized how much that was affecting my private life and making me want to be Jinkx all the time, and Jinkx isn’t sustainable all the time. My new private self was a gift I gave myself to regain that grounding. But Jinkx and I, we’re the same person. It’s my stage name.

I love that I chose a persona for the world to meet, and I won’t change my stage name because I love that it’s a drag name in these headlines. I love that it’s a name that I gave myself working in dive bars in Portland, Oregon, and now it’s the name they write about in The New York Times. And I created her. I’m not going to give that up. I thought, just for a second, Should I start going by Hera full-time because I love it, and should I be an actress named Hera Hoffer instead? And I said, No, you created Jinkx for this purpose. Let her do this. Recently, someone sent me a screenshot about you-know-who passing another order against trans people, and in the same newsfeed, it said, “Jinkx Monsoon sells out Carnegie Hall.” They have to see that face-to-face, in spite of what this person’s doing. We just keep going because we always have and we always will. I like to remind people that we’re here no matter what.

I feel like the relationship between drag and musical theater has been tightening. Queens have always stanned Judy, Angela, Liza, et cetera, but now, we have you doing all these shows. We have Marcia Marcia Marcia in Cabaret. We have Orville Peck, who I see as always doing a version of drag, in Cabaret. Do you see a change in that connection?

I think we’re just noticing it differently and celebrating it differently, because drag and theater have always been tight-knit. Chicago has been running nearly 30 years and there’s always been Mary Sunshine, right? Varla Jean Merman [who has played that role] was doing drag on Broadway well before me, or any of us chickens. The term “female impersonatior” comes from vaudeville, and the term “drag” comes from Shakespeare, when women weren’t allowed to act. It’s not actually revolutionary. What’s revolutionary is that we’re celebrating it and not looking at it as a novelty, or as something like, Hey, look at that drag queen doing so good for herself!

More and more people refer to me as an actress with a drag career, or some variation of that. And I don’t need that, you can call me a drag queen and I know who I am, right? I am a drag queen and I am an actress. Call me both, call me either, whatever, it’s not going to change the work that I do because I’ve always been doing it and it’s always been a part of it and it always will be. What’s amazing is this renaissance of queerness that’s happening right now in our pop culture, but it’s very scary. You mentioned Orville in Cabaret, and things do feel like act one [of that musical]. It feels like we’re having a party right now because we know it’s being threatened, and we’re partying harder to get the most out of it right now. But some of the most beautiful and impactful historical art was created in adversity. I think we’re seeing a lot of that right now, and I’m really, really, really grateful and honored to be a part of it.

This conversation has been edited and condensed.