Jinkx Monsoon is Judy Garland,” screams the advertising for Soho Theatre Walthamstow’s new staging of End of the Rainbow. On the surface, it’s punchy and unconventional casting: Garland, legend of Old Hollywood, played by a trans woman of reality TV fame. That’s not to sell Monsoon short – her two victorious runs on RuPaul’s Drag Race (in 2013 and as part of the all-winners series in 2022) have made her bona fide drag royalty, and a Broadway star in her own right. So in another way, there are few apter roles for her than Garland – the ur-icon of gay pop culture, a totemic figure in the queer community to this day. The two women have lived lives of “parallel circumstances”, as Monsoon will go on to explain. “It makes sense for me to play Judy Garland. It just does,” she grins. “Ask anybody.”
Today, the 38-year-old is sitting opposite me in the corner of a rehearsal room above the theatre. She’s wearing a vintage-looking jacket and her eyes are fretted with swipes of deep green. Her hair is red. That is to say, she looks nothing whatsoever like Garland – though by the time she steps onstage, she’ll have transformed. In some ways, Monsoon requires no transformation. She shares the Meet Me in St Louis star’s powerhouse vibrato, and she’s a keen mimic: Drag Race fans will already know she’s got a formidable dinner-party Garland in her back pocket. (In the 2022 series, Monsoon won Drag Race’s “Snatch Game” round with impersonations of Garland and the actor Natasha Lyonne.)
Written by Peter Quilter and first staged in 2005, End of the Rainbow traces the tragic denouement of Garland’s life. It’s a gift of a part for an actor, rich and sad: Renee Zellweger won an Oscar when the play was adapted as a film, Judy, in 2019. For Monsoon, who has herself been sober from alcohol for around seven years, it presented an opportunity to explore the addiction that Garland struggled with throughout her life. “I just feel like.. in very obtuse ways, we've lived parallel lives,” she says. “But I have gotten to this really good place in my life that some people who struggle with addiction don't make it to.”
End of the Rainbow is, adds Monsoon, an exploration of “what women deal with in the public eye when they reach a certain level of fame, and it changes everything about their life. But beyond all of that, it’s a very true to life play about what happens to a person and the people around them when someone is really in the grips of addiction. There’s just layers and layers here, to give it meaning beyond just doing a… flawless Judy Garland impersonation.”
She laughs as she says this, even though she’s not quite kidding. It’s hard not to fixate on Monsoon’s atomic weapon of a laugh – breathy, sincere, and contagious, punctuating much of our conversation. There’s a sort of hard-lived quality to her voice in general, something else that becomes an asset when playing Garland. “I spent some years not making all the best choices for a singer,” Monsoon concedes. “But now I’ve made a decision to treat my talents like the gifts that they are, while finding a balance and still living my life.” She leans forward. “What I’m hinting at is I’m a high-functioning stoner.”
She smirks, adding hastily: “...in America. It’s legal there.”
Monsoon (or Hera Lilith Hoffer, in her private life) has now been sober from alcohol for seven years; she quit during a trip to the UK, when she was nearly hit by a car while blackout drunk. “I’d been hit before, and I always considered it very lucky that I didn’t get more hurt. And it almost happened again, and someone had to tell me about it because I didn’t remember. I thought, ‘You’re only going to get lucky so many times.’ And I didn’t want that to be the end of my story.”
The beginning of Monsoon’s story took place in Portland, Oregon. Her father was young, and mostly out of the picture; her mother had a serious alcohol addiction, leaving Monsoon in a position where she would often be caring for her two younger siblings. End of the Rainbow has, in a way, helped her better understand her mother’s position. “We’re having conversations nowadays that we didn’t have in Judy and Liza’s time,” she says. “Generational trauma is something I’ve had to learn a lot about for my own wellbeing. And then, unpacking that for myself, I’m able to help my mother, and find forgiveness for her – because she also had the trauma that was inflicted upon her. It’s an easier pill to swallow when you realise your parent was just a human, and the way you feel right now – like you can barely figure things out – we all go through that constantly.”
At 13, Monsoon came out as gay; by 15 she had started performing drag, with the support of her grandmother. It wasn’t until years later, post-fame, that Monsoon began identifying as trans, first coming out as non-binary in 2017, then, a few years later, as a trans woman.
In some ways, the UK is very ahead, but you’re still having the trans conversation
Jinkx Monsoon
A major new report earlier this year described the “hostile environment” currently facing trans people in the UK. Has she felt welcomed here, I ask? The answer, understandably, is complicated. “Queer people are waiting for the day when we can walk down the street and not have anyone in the entire day shout something at us,” Monsoon says. In this regard, the UK is, to her, much the same as everywhere else. “In America, a complete stranger on the street might angrily ask me, ‘Are you a man or a woman?’ Here, it’s a guy saying, ‘Is you a bloke or a bird?’ So, you know…” she sighs. “Lateral move.”
It’s interesting, she adds, given the UK’s “longer history” with drag, and other artforms like panto. “And all these things in which queer people can thrive,” she continues. “But for some reason, the trans conversation is newer here or something – you haven’t been having it as openly as I’m used to in America. So in some ways, the UK is very ahead, but you’re still having these conversations.”
Monsoon speaks with a magnetism that’s hard not to love, whether she’s talking about everything from the gender binary (“you watch one nature documentary and you know this is a lie”) to her love of the film Addams Family Values (“if you want to make something about misfits and outcasts, then you need to let misfits and outcasts create it – and you need to take money out of the equation”). We talk, too, about Drag Race – something she describes as a “constant in my life”.
“It’s a huge part of me,” she says, “And it's something I'm very, very proud of – Drag Race is what told me I could do anything else I've done, including quitting drinking. I did something really hard at a really young age. [Monsoon was just 26 when she first appeared on the show.] It's what reminds me that I'm capable of doing it again, whatever the next hard thing might be.”
If Drag Race is the obvious destination for a pre-eminent young drag performer, then her career since has taken a handful of less predictable swerves: voice acting stints on one of the spinoffs of the cartoon Adventure Time; a small role in the festive 2020 romcom Happiest Season; a re-imagining of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance on Broadway. Most unexpectedly, there was Doctor Who, a TV institution that dwarfs even RuPaul. Monsoon took a spin in the Tardis back in 2024, playing an all-singing, all-serving villain called Maestro. From the actors through to the creative staff, everyone involved “treated what we were doing with high reverence,” she recalls, “and that’s what makes the best fantasy – treating it like Shakespeare.
“When you really get into what we do as actors, it doesn’t matter where or how you’re doing it. It all comes down to telling the truth. So whether you’re a mythical, demonic god of music, or you’re Judy Garland…”
Monsoon laughs, letting the punchline wait, silently, in the wings. The stage is hers: same as it ever was.
‘End of the Rainbow’ is on at Soho Theatre Walthamstow until 21 June
