She wanted me to have a safe ride there and back. And you say your grandmother would have gotten mad at you for riding your bike but not the fact that you were going to the clubs.Įxactly. You would ride your bike to the club, at 15 years old. I've heard you talk about your grandmother and how she would kind of give you the once-over before you'd go to the drag club. But throughout it all, I had these fiercely protective, very loving, very caring, very funny women who taught me everything that I know. So, it's this dichotomy of being raised in a very loving, very accepting family and still having a lot of conditioning to undo and a lot of conditioning to unpack. But they also hailed from Georgia, and my grandfather was in the military. You know, it's funny, because all the people in my family are very, very progressive. And she was also very, very goofy.Īnd then my aunt kind of opened my mind up to so many things that I wouldn't have learned about if I didn't have someone in my life teaching me about it. My grandmother, she was a very, very sharp-tongued, sharp-witted person who loved her family fiercely. That also informs my view on, like, the strength and power and resilience of a woman.
And in the last like five years, my mom has gotten to a much better place. My mom's a hilarious, really sweet, very kind person who just had a really long, rough time. And I like to joke that I was raised by a small coven of witches who never would have self-identified as witches. They had a big influence on Jinkx herself.Īnd I don't know that it ever made it to air much, but I was actually raised by three women: my mother, my grandmother and my aunt. But I also wanted to talk about your mother and your grandmother. I'd like to talk to you more about that in just a bit. And when it was considered funny, if you look back on it, you're like, "I don't even know that this was ever funny." We were just conditioned to think it was funny, you know? You evolve to be mindful, and you evolve to reflect the sentiment of your community. And I think that what we're finding is comedy at the expense of marginalized people is not funny. To a certain extent, you know, you have to consider what the world has been through.
And you have to know what your audience is going through. Well, I think comedy, like any art form, has to evolve and reflect the community that it serves. We've seen comedians coming under fire for so many things. Things are so different now, when it comes to comedy and how things are accepted or not. And I've definitely felt like, in my work, I've taken all of the hard things that have happened in my life and all of the hard things that I know about the world and trauma and tragedy - and I take all of that and I filter it through this kind of absurd drag lens and take some of my hardships and turn it into comedy.Īngela King: I've heard that from a lot of drag queens, and we hear this a lot about comedians taking the dark side of their lives and addressing it through their comedy. I'm very inspired by old Hollywood, how there was a tinge of tragedy and all the glamour in old Hollywood. But after I went to Cornish College and studied the Commedia dell'Arte clown form, that really informed - I always hate the way I sound when I say when I studied the Commedia dell'Arte clown form, but it really informed the way I, like, approached my drag. Jinkx Monsoon: I started drag at age 15 in earnest.
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