The “queens of Christmas” talk to IN about the importance of creating a little holiday fun for the queer community…
By Christopher Turner
The holidays are fast approaching, and to help us celebrate, RuPaul’s Drag Race royalty Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme are heading out on the road with their seventh annual “The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show” tour. This year the show promises to be bigger than ever before, with performances throughout North America from November 17 through December 29, with Canadian stops in Toronto (November 26 at Meridian Hall), Montreal (November 28 at L’Olympia de Montréal), and Vancouver (December 28 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre).
Jinkx and DeLa have remained the sole writers of their holiday extravaganzas since the very beginning, a major achievement for two drag artists who tour on such a large scale. They’ve also had the same goal throughout the show’s seven-year history of making the yuletide super gay. In the past, the drag duo have done it all: travelled through time à la A Christmas Carol with a wacky multiversal twist (this was the same year Everything Everywhere All at Once + MCU multiverse films dominated the box office), defeated AI overlords trying to replace them, battled it out to define the meaning of Christmas, got trapped in a meta world of their own creation through the lens of a Faustian nightmare, and explored post-pandemic depression via a talking peppermint candy puppet. And that’s just a few of the show’s past plotlines. The 2024 iteration of The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show promises to be just as over the top with a completely brand new production, which was co-written and co-created by the pair, and directed by DeLa.
Jinkx and DeLa had worked together for years in various capacities, but in 2018 DeLa suggested they go all in on expanding the Holiday Show together. (The self-proclaimed “terminally delightful” DeLa had been producing holiday shows in Seattle for 10 years before that.) The shows grew bigger year by year, and now the pair have become fixtures of the holiday season. In 2020, Hulu even picked up The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Special, which brought their self-written holiday season staple to an even broader audience.
IN sat down with Jinkx and DeLa before they headed out on the road, to talk about what fans can expect from this year’s winter-time staple, and more.
Let’s kick things off and talk about The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show! What can fans expect to see this year?
Jinkx: Well, if anyone has seen The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show before, they know that it is a unique blend of our two aesthetics. This show is our baby! For the last several years, we have been taking classic holiday tropes and stories and then combining them with other classic tropes and stories in our unique way. For example. Two years ago, we did A Christmas Carol/Back To The Future mashup where Jinkx and DeLa hijacked the Ghost of Christmas Past to mess with time, which messed with history. [Laughs] So it’s a wild ride every year, but we work really hard on it, and I think that’s why audiences come back time and time again. Because when you care about something this much, it tends to be special.
DeLa: I think the thing that audiences come back for, or that new audiences are excited and surprised about, is that we come at this production with a camp sensibility – there’s always a lot of amazing visuals, pop music parodies and, obviously, wall-to-wall comedy. But we also always make sure to address whatever is happening culturally. This is obviously a very tough, crazy year. Every year we say, ‘Wow, at least things can’t get any worse,’ and then the next year comes and slaps us across the face. This is another challenge: how do we uplift and also address what’s going on and make people feel like there is solidarity and a strong community? I think it’s that combination of levity and irreverence and real genuine heart.
Would you say that’s the main reason you keep coming back to The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show?
Jinkx: As drag queens we have a responsibility to entertain, and as humans we have a responsibility to our mission to try and make the world a slightly better place. So, I like to say that when you take entertainment and fill it with intention, that’s when it becomes art.
The two of you write a brand new production for the Holiday Show every year.… What kind of timeline do the two of you work on?
DeLa: Oh, it’s bonkers! I mean, I still can’t believe that we do it. We start our writing process around the beginning of September. Both of our years are so jam-packed, it’s hard to set aside the time, but we make sure that we do it. We really just go into a full-throttle writing workshop in all of September. Then we head to Seattle in October, where we work with the artisans who build our stage props for us as well as our dancers. We create all of the choreography for the show in that month as well as all of the staging, which happens in collaboration with the artists we are working with. It’s a little bit less than a two-month process from inception to opening night.
Wow! That seems like a massive undertaking and an incredible challenge!
DeLa: We hit the boards hard. I think that if we were any less inspired or driven by this specific thing, we would never be able to pull it off. I’m really proud of what we are able to do in that short amount of time.
Jinkx: I want to point out that that’s where we got to because of the loyalty of our audience, and through tenacity, and through DeLa being a brilliant producer. There’s a team of brilliant producers: Kevin Heard, Gus Lanza and the associate producer Jin Moon. It’s such an incredible team, and every year the team gets to grow a little bit more and take on a little bit more life. But that two-month process…we had to fight for that! There was a time when we had to do that two-month process in about two weeks because that’s all we could afford to do. When you’re an independent, scrappy, marginalized artist creating your own work, it’s hard to take a lot of time off because you’re hustling the rest of the year. Like DeLa said: our schedules are jam-packed. So the fact that we got to a point where we could even talk about taking two months to work on creating something is a huge win as artists.
DeLa: And the scale of the production really reflects it.
Jinkx, I’ve read that you credit the Holiday Show for the launch of your Broadway career. Can you tell me a little bit about that?
Jinkx: Well, DeLa and I have known each other for a long time, and a lot of my best work has come from my friendship with DeLa: either being inspired by her, being motivated by her, being counselled by her. And then, when we started collaborating, it was like we both through the years have been able to unlock things in each other. We both have helped the other grow in directions that they weren’t already proficient in. She reminded me of the respect I have to have for this if I want to do my best work. I took that mentality and I applied it to my life. A year after we created this show, I stopped drinking, and my life has been on this upward trajectory that comes with a lot of hard work and a lot of commitment and a lot of responsibility…but it started with believing in what I can do as an artist in an industry that tells you that you have to jump on whatever is hot right now. DeLa reminded me that if you create something that you believe in, and you create something that you actually are passionate about, the success will follow because the authenticity will resonate with your audience. So, from the creation of the Holiday Show, I’ve blossomed. And that’s because I showed up for the work and I chose to do it…but it definitely started there.
How did the two of you first meet?
Jinkx: I’ll set up a little bit of it and then I’ll let DeLa take it. [Laughs] I was going to college in Seattle, Washington [Cornish College of the Arts], and Keira McDonald, who was my favourite teacher and is still currently my theatre mentor, said, ‘There’s a drag queen in Seattle that you have to become friends with, because she’s doing something so special and so unique that you are just going to love her and you’re just going to want to work with her.’ I shrugged it all off because, you know, I had already been doing drag for a while and was like, ‘Sure, sure, every drag queen is the best drag queen you’ve ever met.’ And then I saw what DeLa did and I realized that Keira was right. It was like this fangirl crush that became a friendship that became a sisterhood. She’s simultaneously been my best friend and mentor for a long time. So, that’s the setup.
Beautiful. DeLa, you’re up!
DeLa: On my end, I have been creating and producing shows in Seattle for a while. Obviously not on the scale of where I am now, but when I moved there, I really found an incredible community of inspiring artists. I had heard about this young drag queen in town and I kept hearing whisperings about her, and I kept asking myself why she kept continuing to come up for me. I eventually saw something posted online that announced she was doing a show with her musical partner Major Scales, and they were doing it at a local Starbucks on a Tuesday in the middle of the afternoon. Like, who is this person? [Laughs] So I went to this coffee shop and there were like 15 folding chairs and I kept asking myself…what is this?! And then Jinkx and Major came out and did this performance, and I had never seen anything like it. It blew me away. When the show ended, I turned to my friend who I had come with, and told her that I have to make friends with this queen and cast her in my next show, because otherwise we’re going to be rivals. [Laughs]
So, what happened?
DeLa: So, I marched up to Jinkx after the performance and…
Jinkx: She handed me a business card…like, a real business card! I thought it was very impressive. But to sum it all up…you know the movie Death Becomes Her and their friendship? It goes through a lot of trails and then in the end they realize that they have each other for life for better or for worse. [Laughs]
DeLa: I don’t know if that’s a good analogy. [Laughs]
Jinkx: Two high-profile drag queens sharing the stage could be a recipe for disaster, and yet for the last seven years – through showing up for each other, through trust and respect, and through putting in the work on our friendship as well as our professional partnership – that’s what’s kept this going and that’s what has kept it real. [Pause] And it all started at a Starbucks in Seattle at 4 pm on a Tuesday.
You’re both role models to so many people within the community. I’m wondering what your advice is to people who are looking to you as a role model?
DeLa: One thing that ties into what Jinkx was just addressing is that there is a lot of messaging that encourages rivalry within the queer community, and often folks are pitted against each other. I think something that is really important, that has added to our success in this industry and as humans, is realizing that when you meet someone special, it doesn’t mean that you’re less special. It could mean that you have found someone to enjoy camaraderie with or met someone to team up with. We are stronger together. That’s true of us, and that’s why people identify so strongly with our friendship and our dynamic on stage. It’s because they see that, and I hope it is an inspiration to realize that the queer community has to band together, especially right now with so much coming at us.
Who do you both consider as role models?
Jinkx: We both look up to the old guard of drag. That applies to the queens and the queer people in the drag and performance community that got as big as you could get without a TV show dedicated to drag – you know, that Before Drag Race time. So, Peaches Christ. Or Varla Jean Merman; she was a drag queen on Broadway before I was, so I’ve always looked up to her as a performer. Miss Coco Peru. We lost Heklina [the renowned San Francisco drag queen passed away in April 2023], but she was a great friend to both of us. Kevin Aviance. There are people around today who built the drag community up before there was a TV show about it, and I think we both have a lot of respect for those who paved the road for us to pick up and keep paving.
DeLa: Obviously we both have such an incredible platform and we are both so grateful for it, but sometimes I think there is a perception that drag came out of nowhere. Varla is a great example: she was playing the Sydney Opera House in the early 2000s. Those were the people who were high profile enough when I was younger to make me say, ‘There is a place for me out there.’
Jinkx: Exactly. Seeing people like Varla Jean Merman and Coco Peru made me say I can do that too.
We are seeing so much political hate and anti-2SLGBTQI+ legislation happening around the world right now.… How do you think the community can best combat the landslide of hate that we are seeing and experiencing?
DeLa: I think it’s the one-on-one connection. I think it’s the building of community. I think it’s allyship and realizing that so much of the division that happens is due to the isolation that we experience and the way that we communicate largely through our phones. So when we come together in the same space, like a performance space, it’s about understanding that we can uplift each other and that we are strong. That’s how the queer community has gotten to where it is. We worked so hard to overcome so many things in our history. We have come so far, and we have to continue on. We’ve gotten a lot, but we also have a lot to protect.
Jinkx: I think our biggest strength is our community, and not everyone has a community like the queer community. Our community is global, includes everyone and welcomes anyone. Anyone can be queer. Anyone can be a member of our community as long as they abide by the conditions of our community: equality.
DeLa: Being queer is not really about who you love, it’s about who loves you.
Jinkx: And The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show allows you to see what DeLa was talking about in action. You put your phones down and you watch a show in an audience filled with a ton of people who feel the same way you do. You are in a safe space. DeLa talked about the importance of one-on-one conversations and why they are so necessary right now. When we created our show, that is us having one big conversation with our audience. That’s what we try to use it as: from us to you! We talk to you about how we see the world right now and what we see as a way forward. And, usually, it’s through unity!
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show will hit 33 different North American cities with three stops in Canada: Toronto on November 26 (Meridian Hall); Montreal on November 28 (L’Olympia de Montréal); and Vancouver on December 28 (Queen Elizabeth Theatre). Tickets are now on sale for all US and Canadian dates at jinkxanddela.com. VIP packages, including photo opportunity and a Q&A with the stars, are also available to purchase.
CHRISTOPHER TURNER is the editor of IN Magazine. He is a Toronto-based writer, editor and lifelong fashionisto with a passion for pop culture and sneakers. Follow him on social media at @Turnstylin.
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