‘There was a lot of addiction and trauma in my family’: why Drag Race winner Jinkx Monsoon plays a perfect Judy Garland

As she takes on the icon in musical drama End of the Rainbow, Monsoon recalls a childhood spent watching Wizard of Oz on repeat – and explains why audiences are ready for trans performers in non-trans roles

If these are strange times in America, they are particularly strange for Jinkx Monsoon, the 38-year-old actor, singer and drag artist who, since winning RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2013 and Drag Race All Stars in 2022, has become a huge breakout star. Monsoon, who has the white-lead-and-vinegar glamour of a 1930s movie star, has appeared on Broadway, at Carnegie Hall and in countless viral clips from Drag Race – and in other words is widely well known. And yet, she says, when she walks down the street in certain American cities, it is in a state of “not knowing if someone’s going to recognise me and be excited to see me, or recognise something about me and be hostile. It’s a really interesting dichotomy.” She lets out a huge laugh. “But it also keeps me humble, I gotta say.”

We are backstage at the Soho Theatre in London’s Walthamstow, where Monsoon is shortly to appear in End of the Rainbow, Peter Quilter’s musical drama about Judy Garland, set in 1969 in the last months of the icon’s life. It’s a great role for Monsoon, whose impersonation of Garland on Drag Race was so spot-on the clips are still doing the rounds (although for my money, her Little Edie Beale was even better and funnier). But the show isn’t being played for laughs. Monsoon, who had a stellar run as Mama Morton in the Broadway production of Chicago three years ago, is increasingly leaning towards dramatic roles and, like Garland herself, is comfortable with the tragi-comic. “She’s a pillar, and an institution,” she says of Garland, in whom she became interested after watching the Wizard of Oz on repeat as a child. And because, she laughs, “my ex was obsessed with her”.