Interview: BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon bring heart and dick jokes to the holiday season with new special
If you like getting your stocking extra stuffed during the holiday season…boy, do we have good news for you!
Drag legends and former Drag Race favorites BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon have taken their iconic holiday stage show to the screen with the new special The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Special. Filmed under strict safety protocols during the pandemic, the film features all of the signature wit and raunch that fans have come to expect from the duo, with enough charm and tenderness to soften even the most cold-hearted Grinch.
The film, which also marks DeLa’s cinematic directing and producing debut, aims to replicate the coziness of nostalgic Christmas specials, with perhaps one or two more sexual innuendos than Grandma remembers. Ultimately, the movie is a love letter to the queer community, a group that both DeLa and Jinkx acknowledge can go under-acknowledged and ignored during this sometimes difficult time of year.
Never ones to be complacent, the special marks the second splash the pair makes this month. They also make a memorable cameo experience in Happiest Season, written and directed by their friend Clea DuVall and available to stream now on Hulu.
The full VIDEO interview with DeLa and Jinkx can be found here.
The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Special premieres worldwide on December 1st at jinkxanddela.com, and the digital soundtrack will be available on December 11th.
Daniel Trainor and Sam Stone talked with DeLa and Jinkx about the inspiration behind the special, the difficult filming circumstances, their own holiday traditions and how the Happiest Season appearance came to fruition.
Daniel Trainor: Hello girls! Thanks for taking some time with us today. We’re very excited about the special. What can you tell us about it?
BenDeLaCreme: Well, for those out there are that familiar with us or think they’re familiar with us, I think they’re going to be more than satisfied with getting all the glitz and glamour and comedy and music that they expect. All the fabulous jewels! But I think people are also going to learn a lot about just how weird, wacky, wild and introspective and heartwarming we are as performers and writers. For those who have no idea what they’re walking into, it’s glitzy and glamorous and full of all sorts of exciting music, original songs, a full dance company, puppets! All sorts of holiday tropes subverted and turned on their head. We’ve got all the classic traditions, as well as the classic dick jokes that you’d expect from Jinkx Monsoon.
Jinkx Monsoon: Well, we are building off of many drag-created and drag-centric films that came before us. There are many outstanding queens who did work before there was a TV show dedicated to drag. We found a way to create something new and to create something very specific to us as artists, while also giving a nod to the queens who paved the way for drag-centric film before us. I’ve always said, when we make a film I want it to be a good film that happens to star drag queens, not a film that is only good if you are a fan of drag. So, I think if you’re a fan of comedy, if you’re a fan of good writing, if you’re a fan of showmanship, and even if you’re just a fan of full frontal nudity, we’ve got you covered.
Sam Stone: And who isn’t a fan of full frontal nudity? You’re looking at two of the biggest! You’ve mentioned some introspective moments in the special. What do you think we might be most surprised by?
JM: I think you’ll be surprised by just how much heart and meaning there is buried under the dick jokes and the zaniness. We’re both really committed artists, first and foremost. We’re committed to being effective live performers. We’re committed to writing stuff we believe in and wish to share with the world. But we choose to do it through drag. Doing it through drag gives me a lot more freedom. I feel like I’m able to hit a lot more levels than when I’m just Jerick Hoffer in a play. A big thing is creating the work ourselves. One of my favorite things about working with DeLa is that we don’t sit around and wait for a movie to star two drag queens with a holiday message. We decided to create it ourselves. So, I think what people will be surprised by is that, for every dick joke, there is also a moment of earnest, heartfelt truth.
DeLa: We really strived to take the classic TV Christmas special, those of you super gays out there will be very familiar with the Judy Garland Christmas special, where you’re invited into somebody’s soundstage home and they spend the evening with you. We did a nod to that. It’s a film about Jinkx and DeLa attempting to do that, but not being able to agree on how it should happen because of their own separate ideas of what Christmas is and should be. At the end of it, I think people will be delighted that it really is a fully-formed, well-told story that has these fun elements of variety, but is really a story of how we can overcome our assumptions about ourselves and each other, and figure out how to make tradition and the holidays our own. It’s a time that can be difficult for queer people who don’t see themselves represented a lot of the time in the messaging of the season.
DT: DeLa, not only are you starring in this thing, you’re producing and directing which, in my culture, we call a triple threat.
DeLa: In my culture, we call it ill-advised.
DT: (laughs) Well, walk me through it! I know you guys also filmed this under strict restrictions and guidelines in the middle of the pandemic. It sounds like so much work.
DeLA: Yeah, it was definitely an undertaking! It was my first time directing and producing, which I’ve done in theater, but this was its own beast. Because of COVID, this was something we had to decide to do in June when it became clear that we weren’t going to do our tour. That’s not a recommendable amount of time to create a film within. That combined with all the safety precautions we had to take and all the quarantining, it was a very ambitious endeavor that I’m very proud that we rose to. Even though we didn’t have the benefit of time and certain other resources on our side, we countered that with real passion to bring something to people this year that would bring some joy and warmth in a very difficult year. It would also provide us with that through the experience. It allowed us to find some solace in this time. Everyone on the cast and crew brought so much to elevate this thing, from pre-production all the way through post. Everybody was really fueled by how hard it was, by how necessary it all felt and how thankful people were just to be creating again.
SS: I know you guys had to do all the proper COVID testing and I’m sure everything was very safe and very serious. My question is: when you got those COVID nose tests, did you feel like they felt good, a little bit?
DeLa: (laughs) Oh my god, thank you so much for saying that! Everybody thinks I’m crazy.
DT: What?!
SS: I enjoy getting my brain poked, I’m just going to put it out there, you know what I mean?
DeLa: It’s like getting the plaque off your frontal lobe or something.
SS: Getting the brain worms out.
DT: This is the first I’ve heard of this. The only COVID tests I’ve had are the mouth swabs. Everybody I’ve spoken to about the nose one has had nightmares and won’t stop talking about it.
JM: It was difficult the first time, like so many things in life.
SS: Yeah, once you relax it really makes it pleasurable.
JM: While we’re talking about it, I think it’s worth noting that we were not cavalier in any way about doing this film at this time. We had to find the balance between “Well, we still have to create art, but we can’t shirk off the responsibility of keeping everybody healthy and safe.” Even though, at the end of the day, we were like “We need to get this film filmed,” health and safety actually was the top priority. We solo quarantined first. Then we created a safety bubble where everybody who was working on the film was quarantining throughout the production, getting multiple tests and screenings. Everyone was wearing masks and PPE throughout the production. The only time we had our masks off was when we were on set. We had a health and safety COVID czar Meredith, who walked through the set like 80 times a day just to hose us down with sanitizer.
DeLa: She was like a nun with a ruler at school.
JM: It also made it that much more significant to rise to the challenge to keep everybody healthy and safe throughout. It’s a process that’s difficult even if you aren’t in the middle of a pandemic. We can happily say that no one on our cast or crew contracted COVID throughout the production process. Everybody was healthy and safe. And if anybody had contracted it, we probably would have just said “Never mind, we don’t need to make a movie!” (laughs)
DeLa: We didn’t breathe a word of this film to anybody until after we got done filming, because we said if anybody winds up testing positive, we just have to shut down production immediately. We’re so fortunate that everyone took it so seriously.
JM: Yeah, we wouldn’t want to encourage anybody to do the same unless they could take the same amount of precautions that we took. We don’t want to give the message “Hey, it’s a pandemic but you should still make movies!” You should only make movies if you have the ability to make them safely and responsibly at this time.
DT: That’s very commendable. To deviate from this movie for a second, Sam and I had the pleasure of watching a little movie called “Happiest Season,” in which you two make cameos. How did that come together?
JM: Well, we have been friends with Clea Duvall (“Happiest Season” director and co-writer) for quite some time now. Peaches Christ first introduced us to Clea years ago when we did our “Death Becomes Her” parody, “Drag Becomes Her.” Clea has been a kind and generous and wonderful friend to me throughout the years. I’ve gotten to spend a little bit more time with Clea than DeLa has…
DeLa: That just means she actively kept us apart.
JM: A couple of years ago, I went to dinner with Clea and her wife Mia, because lesbians have to have rhyming names apparently.
SS: That’s the law.
JM: I’m at dinner with Clea and Mia, and Clea says that she’s writing and directing a film, and that she had a role in mind for DeLa and I. It was one of those things when you’re like “I’ll believe it when I see it” because you don’t know if somebody is just being kind. But no, Clea delivered and she’s just such a wonderful person to work with. She wrote these parts for us and none of us knew, when we went to film “Happiest Season,” that we would also be filming our own holiday film. So now we’re just branding ourselves as the queens you go to for holiday entertainment.
DeLa: Clea has also been so incredibly supportive and generous in terms of the way that she’s incorporated us into the family of this film. We were just at the premiere the other night, a socially distanced drive-in premiere. She and the whole cast were just so welcoming and wonderful to work with. She’s also been so supportive of letting people know that she was inspired by coming to our holiday shows every year. It’s one of her traditions. Now that we’ve created this new film, she’s been so supportive about helping to get the word out about that. That kind of generosity in an artist is incredibly admirable.
JM: It’s really special. The admirable people within our community are really happy to share success with other members of the community. It’s from Clea’s generosity that we were part of her film and we try to pay it forward by…
DeLa: Casting her in our film. (laughs)
JM: We try to involve as many people as possible that we’ve worked with since well before we’ve had commercial success. We worked with my music partner, Major Scales, on this film. We shot it in Seattle, so we were able to include a lot of the members of our community that we’ve been working with for over a decade, not only as cast members but also as crew members. When DeLa first involved me in one of her Christmas productions like ten years ago, her mission statement was to create the feeling of being at home with your family for those people who don’t have the opportunity or desire to spend the holidays with their blood family. So let’s be your chosen family to spend the holidays with. That’s what I feel most proud of with this film. Even though we did it in a completely different way this year, I think we still upheld the idea of creating a familial space for queer people in a time of year where queer people are excluded or just forgotten about.
SS: Do either of you girls have any fun, cute, campy, chic or queer holiday traditions that we can hear about?
DeLa: Well, I have spent Christmas on stage for the past 14 years. This film is really about finding a way to uphold what I do for the holidays. I don’t know, I always like that turkey ham.
SS: Wait, what? Turkey ham?
JM: It’s a cold smoked turkey that’s been treated like a ham.
DeLa: All its life it was treated like a ham.
JM: It’s like a spiral smoked turkey that tastes like ham. We call it a “turkey who identifies as ham, ham/her.”
DeLa: It’s delicious!
DT: Listen, I believe you! I’ll take your word.
JM: I’ve never prescribed to organized religion or any organized religious holidays since my adulthood, so I think practicing aspects of Paganism and witchcraft at the holidays is inherently queer.
SS: Sacrificing a turkey ham, maybe.
DeLa: I bring a turkey ham to the party. Jinkx brings a live goat.
SS: We just summon a demon. It’s real cute.
DT: Man, post-COVID, I need an invite to this thing because that sounds way more fun than my family holiday parties. There aren’t any goats.
SS: That’s on you, Dan.
DT: I’ll have to talk to my mom about the lack of goats. Well ladies, congratulations on the film. It’s such a feat and it’s going to bring so many people so much joy this holiday season. Thanks for taking the time today.
DeLa: Thank you! Have a great day!
The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Special premieres worldwide on December 1st at jinkxanddela.com, and the digital soundtrack will be available on December 11th.
He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.
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