Jinkx Monsoon: ‘Billionaires have no one to blame but themselves if they’re hated’

Jinkx Monsoon was going to name her new comedy and concert tour ‘Dear Straight People’ until she got a call from a fellow winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race. “Bob the Drag Queen said to me, ‘You’re stupid if you don’t call your tour Speaking of Witch,’” Jinkx recalls with a cackle. “Bob was right, because I love wordplay, I’m a loud and proud witch, and I love hearing myself talk.’”

Jinkx isn’t just a self-styled witch, of course, but also a seasoned comedian, singer and actress who’s become a Broadway mainstay. The sales pitch for her 11-date UK tour, which began in Brighton on 3 July, promises she’ll “give audiences the inside scoop on being a perma-stoned trans drag queen from America in 2026”. Despite her penchant for the occult, much of the subject matter will be pretty earthbound.

“Our planet is dying and telling us in every way it can that we’re killing it,” says Portland-born Jinkx, whose legal name is Hera Lilith Hoffer. “I mean, there’s a genocide actively taking place every day,” she adds, alluding to the ongoing conflict in Israel-Palestine, “and still we’re expected to just keep moving. That makes one
feel insane.”

Jinkx, 38, has built a sizeable platform of two million Instagram followers since she won RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2013. So, she’s probably learned the hard way that calling out political leaders by name is like a red rag to the right-wing bull. Still, she’s unequivocal about the roots of global political unrest. 

“Information travels faster than we were ever prepared for, but politicians are still trying to pull the wool over our eyes – the way they always have,” she says. “The thing is, the ruling classes are fucking old, and they don’t get that it’s easier to fact-check what they say now. They just keep pushing and pushing [their agenda], and I feel like the dam is going to break.”

Jinkx gets especially incensed when one-percenters try to downplay their wealth and privilege to appear more relatable. “The billionaire class has no one to blame but themselves if they’re hated right now,” she says firmly. “But in a way, this is why I love being an artist. My job right now is to tell the truth.”

When we speak in early June, Jinkx has another, very intense job: portraying Judy Garland in End of the Rainbow, a musical play that has now wrapped its run at Soho Theatre Walthamstow, East London. Written by Peter Quilter with lashings of gallows humour, the play presents a harrowing account of Garland’s final months in London in 1969, when she blustered through a five-week nightclub residency to put a dent in her
mounting debts. 

Jinkx’s performance was a tour-de-force. It required her not only to recreate Garland’s famously gutsy vocal performances on The Trolley Song and The Man I Love, but also to convey the Hollywood star’s anguish and erratic behaviour, as well as her sheer indefatigability. When the manager of the Ritz hotel implores Garland to pay her overdue bill, she threatens to jump out the window, so he’d have to deal with the PR disaster of having “Dorothy splattered all over the red carpet” outside.

When I say that playing Garland eight times a week must be draining, Jinkx hoots back: “It is! But I love the adrenaline.” 

Her drawling speaking voice seems to belong to a star from a different era. 

“I quit drinking and I leaned into stage work,” Jinkx continues. “I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last!”

Read more:

• Why RuPaul is not the be-all and end-all when it comes to drag
• Why, right now, there is no such thing as too much RuPaul’s Drag Race
• Ncuti Gatwa: Doctor Who reminds me that there is always hope

Jinkx describes herself as “California sober” because she smokes weed but doesn’t touch alcohol. Having tried and failed in the past, she finally quit drinking in 2019 after getting “blackout drunk” and almost being hit by a car. Jinkx has previously revealed that “there was a lot of addiction” in her family, so clearly, she can relate to Garland’s battles with substance abuse. 

But at the same time, she believes she and Hollywood’s original gay icon are linked on a much deeper level. “We both draw our power from the same source: the queer community,” she says. “I’ve had so many things in my life that could have kept me insular, but the queer community introduces me to new people every single day. I’ve travelled all over the world and heard thousands of people’s stories at this point.”

Jinkx came out as non-binary in her mid-twenties, shortly after she won RuPaul’s Drag Race for the first time, but her gender identity has evolved since then. In 2024, two years after she made a triumphant return to the franchise by winning RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, she told Attitude magazine: “I had to come out as a drag queen, as queer, as trans, as non-binary, and now trans-feminine.” These days, she uses she/her pronouns both in and out of drag.

Since her second spell on Drag Race, Jinkx has become a bona fide Broadway star with stints in Chicago, Oh, Mary! and Pirates! The Penzance Musical, a jazzy reimagining of the Gilbert and Sullivan classic. 

“I set out to have a career as an actress before I ever auditioned for RuPaul’s Drag Race, and I’ve always felt like one thing benefits the other,” she says. “Everything I’ve learned through my years of nightclub work and cabaret shows goes directly into what I do on stage now.”

In 2024, she landed an equally plum screen role as the otherworldly Doctor Who villain, Maestro. This was a particular “honour”, Jinkx says, because she’s a huge fan of showrunner Russell T Davies. And now, portraying Judy Garland is another milestone that once felt out of reach.

“I never thought I’d be playing female leads, I thought I’d be lucky if I was cast as the campy best friend,” she says. “But now that I am playing female leads, my attitude is ‘why the hell not?!’”

So, with this in mind, which stage role is she eyeing up next? 

“I really want to play Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd and the Witch in Into the Woods, but those parts aren’t going anywhere,” Jinkx says. “Lately, my more immediate sights are set on playing Mame. I’d love to bring that musical back and contemporise it a little.”

First performed on Broadway in 1966, Mame follows the Depression-era adventures of eccentric New York socialite Mame Dennis and her snarky, hard-drinking best friend Vera Charles. Jinkx already has an idea who could be the Vera to her Mame.

“What about Mason Alexander Park?” she suggests. Park, who is trans and non-binary, recently earned raves for their role as Mary Todd Lincoln in West End comedy romp Oh, Mary!. “And oh boy, would the TERFs [Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists] be pissed off about that,” Jinkx says with another cackle. “But I don’t care what the TERFs think!”

Jinkx Monsoon’s Speaking of Witch tours the UK from 3 to 16 July. She stars in Oh, Mary! at London’s Trafalgar Theatre from 17 August-26 September

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