This year for Christmas, all Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme want is peace on Earth, a night of passion with Krampus and to be murdered by Jennifer Tilly.
In a recent interview, we caught up with the drag icons: Jinkx, fresh off her Broadway triumph as Matron “Mama” Morton in Chicago and her breakout role as Maestro in “Doctor Who,” and DeLa, a trailblazing force in drag and the in-demand director behind numerous drag and queer artists’ one-person shows and concerts, including Monét X Change’s “Life Be Lifin’.” Both are founding members of Drag PAC, an organization dedicated to fighting for LGBTQ+ rights and working to end anti-trans and anti-drag laws across the country.
The creative masterminds and stars of “The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show,” which will tour the U.S. through December, spoke recently about how the show has evolved, their creative process and what new drag barriers they’ll be breaking.
On the evolution of the Jinkx and DeLa holiday shows
Jinkx: Every year we create a brand new show, right? And that ain’t easy to do. In past years, we’ve only had about three weeks to write the show, build it, get everything in place, rehearse it, and then open it.
There was one year where we went to the U.K. We did about two shows, and the U.K. loved it. The show was great. Don’t question that. But that year, we realized that something about how we wrote the show was making the audience root for one of us or the other.
DeLa: They were choosing sides.
Jinkx: They were choosing sides in a show that has always been about coming together.
Competition is not a bad thing. Competition produces good art. It inspires good art when it drives people to be their best. But what also produces good art is supporting one another. So DeLa carried the weight of doing some massive rewrites while I was keeping us on track to keep doing this version of the show in the U.K. So when we get to America, we hoped we’d fixed this unintentional thing that was happening in our show.
DeLa: It was crazy. I was literally doing rewrites between our shows of the current version, running them by Jinkx, but then we had to remember the current script. Then we landed in the U.S., had like one day of rehearsal and then put it on.
Jinkx on ‘All Stars’ 7 format vs. traditional seasons
As Jinkx and DeLa discussed how they’ve intentionally shifted away from a rivalry in their annual show, Jinkx recounted another opportunity to revisit an entertaining formula and demonstrate it can still work without adversarial tension: her victory on Season 7 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” — the all-winners season.
Jinkx: Our show is not the only example of that. I participated in “All Stars” [season] 7, and I feel like that was a huge celebration rather than a competition in the way we had previously seen it [on the show]. And to see everyone’s response to that sisterhood and camaraderie that we were able to experience when we removed the cutthroat element from the competition, that reassured me and affirmed that people are just as happy — if not happier — to see us work together as they are to see us being catty and bitchy.
I don’t think one [format] is better than the other. I think they both have entertainment, that they both have merit. Wonderful friendships were formed when I was in my regular season. What I want our audiences to know is that there’s room for all of it. There’s room for queens who lip sync. There’s room for queens who are more about fashion and visual spectacle, whereas we choose live theater and comedy as our way to communicate.
And we have had moments where we have genuinely just thrown off the drag ego and supported one another on stage and the audience went 10 times more nuts for that than they have for our funniest moments of being at each other’s throats.
DeLa: Yeah, and I think we want to lead by example in a larger cultural way and, you know, we have a lot of real villains to fight and so we need to stop focusing on each other and get on the same page so that we can really make the kind of change that the queer community has so often made in the past through solidarity.
Also, sometimes people would talk to us trying to get us to jab at each other. We were like, “This is not our dynamic and if that’s what you’re getting out of it, we’re going to tell you something different.”
How Jinkx and DeLa really feel about Christmas
Earlier renditions of “The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show” made this clear: The character of Jinkx was not a fan of Christmas in the slightest, while the character DeLa simply couldn’t get enough.
Jinkx: The characters of Jinkx and DeLa are what you just described. Whereas the human beings who created those characters — Christmas was my favorite time of year as a kid. And, yeah, I have some resentment toward it now because of my fervent anti-organized religion shtick [laughs], but DeLa had the opposite experience growing up. This show actually stemmed out of her hatred of Christmas.
DeLa: Yeah, I always hated going home for Christmas. It was all the things a family could be that makes you not want to go home for Christmas.
So, in 2007 I started doing Christmas productions with some other artists before Jinkx and I teamed up in 2018. And a lot of that was so I didn’t have to go home for Christmas. I was like, “Well, I’m working Christmas Eve!” But that show ended up being, “Oh, you can have traditions. You can have a sense of home. You can have a family to spend the holiday with if you build it yourself.” And that’s the message that we have continued to spread.
And now I do love Christmas because this is how we celebrate Christmas. I also think it’s funny that I know this, but not many other people do: I really think of DeLa as a send-up of all the things I think are stupid.
On Jinkx trying to sleep with Krampus again in the ‘Holiday Show’ this year
As the conversation shifted to what else the duo is working on, one pressing question had to be asked of Jinkx first: Will she try to sleep with the half-goat, half-demon monster Krampus once again in this year’s show?
Jinkx: Try to?! [Laughs.] Listen, every year the show is whatever it needs to be that year, and we don’t consider writing done until the show is up. So, I can’t tell you that Krampus is or isn’t coming back this year. What I can say is the costume exists. [Laughs.]
DeLa: You know, I can say that every single year there are things that happen [in the show] the year prior that people are like, “Are we going to see this again? Let us see this again.” And then every single year we manage to make a show where people ask the same thing the following year.
So, I love that we create great new content every year, and when we do a “best of” show down the road, we’re going to have a hell of a “best of” show.
On preparing for Carnegie Hall
Jinkx and DeLa have many “firsts” to lay claim to when it comes to elevating and bringing drag entertainment to the masses. All their successes — Jinkx’s role as Matron “Mama” Morton in “Chicago” on Broadway, DeLa’s multiple director credits for several successful one-woman shows, their international “Holiday Show” — now have brought them to perhaps their greatest performance yet: A one-night-only concert directed by DeLa and starring Jinkx. So how does preparing for such a momentous performance differ from the annual “Holiday Show”?
Jinkx: It was the same but different. The way we work, we have to first completely strip down the egos, strip down the judgment and just lean into the trust and respect that we have for one another.
DeLa and I have different ways of working that complement one another, but they’re very different. DeLa is bringing her meticulous eye for detail, her meticulous eye for storytelling, and her wonderful direction and production skills. She’s bringing all of that to a show that’s going to put me in the spotlight. And for that reason, she embraced my way of working more than when it’s the “Holiday Show.”
So it was kind of like the “Holiday Show” with just a little more lean toward Jinkx. But that’s why I asked her to direct it, because I knew that she was going to want to help me put on the best show to showcase Jinkx Monsoon at Carnegie Hall.
DeLa: When we do the “Holiday Show,” you can see both of our flavors in it, in full effect. And I’m glad that I had the opportunity to help write and direct some other shows before this, because I learned that one thing I really, really love is when my fingerprints aren’t really on it. When it really is just the best version of what that queen brings to this stage, I feel really excited. Because Jinkx is at the heart of this, and I get to help her shape something that is Jinkx.
Jinkx: And I don’t have to do all the work by myself. [Laughs.]
Jinkx on her ‘Doctor Who’ appearance and DeLa’s dream role
On Season 14 of “Doctor Who,” Jinkx portrayed Maestro, the musical genderqueer villain who showrunner Russell T. Davies considers the Doctor’s most powerful enemy to date. But which cinematic universe would DeLa want to join?
Jinkx: Oh, I’ll answer, I’ll answer. She wants to be in the “Chucky” series.
DeLa: I’m obsessed. I think [creator] Don Mancini is such a creative genius and he takes such big swings. And I just want to tag on that seeing Jinkx in that role of Maestro was so incredible and also felt so natural. I was like, “Of course, this is what’s happening.” But to see her channel all of our favorite Disney villains and beyond into something that felt completely new and authentic to her.
Jinkx: I just think amazing things can happen when you feel trusted and respected. I don’t always take big swings in situations because I’m scared to. Because I’m already the marginalized, odd duck here. If I take too big of a swing here, is this going to ruin my chance of being here? Is it going to ruin the next queer person’s chance to be here? But from the moment they called me to play the role, I was like, “OK, trust yourself, babe, this is your time; this is your time to show that we drag entertainers, queer entertainers, marginalized performers have every right to be there and we have all the talent to back it up.”
So it’s time to put us in these [roles].
DeLa: And I want Jennifer Tilly to murder me on screen.
Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme will perform in “The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Show” at 8 p.m. on Dec. 1 at the Academy of Music, 240 S. Broad St. For more information or to purchase tickets, visit ensembleartsphilly.org.