BenDeLaCreme and Jinkx Monsoon Are Making the Yuletides Gay

For Jinkx Monsoon and BenDeLaCreme, the holidays haven’t always been the best time of the year. Visions of peppermint-looking gowns didn’t dance in their heads, and spiked eggnog wasn’t sitting in their dressing rooms. It’s shocking, almost, that the pair have become fixtures of the holiday season.

“I started creating these shows annually, because I didn’t like going home for the holidays. I think, at this time of year, when we’re being inundated with the ideas of family and homecoming, that’s something a lot of queer people can feel alienated from,” BenDeLaCreme tells ELLE.com over Zoom. “I wanted to create a space about chosen family that I think is really needed in the queer community.”

The Jinkx & DeLa Holiday Show has now become a winter-time staple. Fans around the country clamor to see two favorites of RuPaul’s Drag Race take the stage, something which is familiar for both queens. The self-proclaimed “terminally delightful” BenDeLaCreme brings in audiences by the swarm after her dominating performances in the sixth season of Drag Race and in RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars, plus many solo shows and revues. Meanwhile, Jinkx Monsoon has won two seasons of Drag Race herself, season 5 and All Stars season 7. Just this past year, she starred in Chicago on Broadway as Matron “Mama” Morton.

The duo first launched their show back in 2018, and in 2020, Hulu picked up The Jinkx and DeLa Holiday Special. Soon, they were spreading holiday cheer all throughout the world. This year, the pair’s self-written show will play 37 shows throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and it kicked off on November 8 in Detroit, Michigan.

“When the tour begins, basically the whole team treats DeLa and I like two 90-year-old grandmas, literally,” Monsoon says. “It’s lovely because we have got to be in good shape to be able to do the show, and that’s just an objective truth. So, everyone will shuffle us to a car and shuffle us to the next place.”

Below, the duo discuss this year’s version of the holiday show, their strong relationship, and how they prepared for their performances.

What is so special about this year’s show?

Jinkx Monsoon: What I would say is if anyone has ever seen our show before, one thing I love to specify is that we write a brand new show every year. If you’ve seen us throughout the years, you know that every year the show gets a little bit bigger, a little bit cooler, a little bit flashier. We’ve had a good couple of years, and this is our biggest production yet. What started out as a two drag queen variety show has become a two act musical variety show.

BenDeLaCreme: This year specifically we had a sort of certain idea we wanted to communicate that was fun comedy around the holidays but also queer chosen family. When you’re creating Christmas content you start to be like, all right, people need us talking about Santa again. Last year, we really started to be like, we’ve been doing this long enough, let’s just let ourselves get a little bit weirder. Last year, we wound up making what was essentially a Christmas-Carol–Back-to-the-Future mashup with multiverse elements. People responded so well to that. I think it was our best, most successful show to date. So this year, it’s really us doing what we want to do. It’s supernatural, it’s meta, it’s drawing from everything from Faust to Looney Tunes, but make it Christmas.

What did the writing room look like?

DeLa: We take a big chunk of time to write this show and make sure it’s done right. This year, we started early September. Jinkx came out to L.A., and we just write for hours and hours every day. We lock ourselves in a room, and we don’t come out until there’s a show. I’m a big note card person, so it sort of looks like a sort of a forensics TV show with lines drawn between everything on the bulletin board. Jinkx and I, as writers, have really different but complimentary skillsets. I’m very narrative based. Jinkx will get into a room and just spout a million ideas in a second, and it’s all over the place. So, she just is putting all these brilliant ideas into the ether, and then I get to pick out of the ether.

Jinkx: That style of working together comes from trust because we are both solo performers as well, and we both create our own work. We both have ways of doing stuff that works for us. When you come together, it’s not just about finding a middle ground of the two ways of working, it’s about finding how the two ways of working can really compliment each other. Over the years, it’s just gotten easier and easier. In the end, if an idea makes it into the show, it has been tested. It has been through the ringer. We have slapped it around and interrogated it.

With all that’s going on in our country, how do you stay safe as drag queens?

Jinkx: We’ve always tried to provide an escape even before we were dealing with what we’re dealing with right now. I’m not going to say that we weren’t always dealing with it, but it’s at a level and a veracity right now that is terrifying. Our show has always sought to provide escape and provide a message we believe in, a message that we want to send out into the world. We’ve always tried to find that balance of just giving you some rest from the shit of the season. We give you a little escape from it. If anything, yes, we take extra safety precautions, but we’ve always been aware. We’ve always had to prepare for the bigotry we face as a community, and it makes it that much more important to provide that safe space. That’s why we do the extra security. That’s why sometimes the show starts half an hour late, because of metal detectors taking time. And you know what? Good. Because then you get to sit down and relax for two and a half hours with us. You get to just relax for a while and just have a little fun with your community.

How did the holiday show start?

DeLa: I’ve actually producing and directing holiday shows in Seattle since 2008 or 2009. So, once Jinkx was out of college, and she and I met, that was the first thing I drew her into. When it was time, we both were ready to move into a new holiday tradition in 2018. We both already had that sensibility of why the holidays are an important thing for queer people to address, not to mention that they are just already inherently super gay. It’s like, lots of sequined sweaters and singing and that sort of thing. So, we might as well reclaim it. It was ours to begin with.

Jinkx: I’m really reclaiming it as a pagan.

DeLa: Listen, Christmas aesthetics were all borrowed from witches and queers.

Jinkx: As a witch and a drag queen and a big old queer, I am reclaiming the winter season.

How is this show different than say, a club performance? What kind of crowds do you draw?

DeLa: I think that both Jinx and I come from a very theatrical background. Jinkx went to school for theater. I went to school for fine arts and got into developing work that way. When we started doing work on our own pre-Drag Race, this is what it looked like. And it wasn’t, for me at least, that I started doing a lot of club stuff until after Drag Race, because that’s kind of part of the drag race circuit. So, really for me now, I am just moving back into the spaces where I started, but on a larger scale. Those audiences are not the same as the club audiences. There’s overlap for sure, but the folks who want to sit down and see a narrative hold by two folks with classical vaudevillian sensibilities. Our work draws from contemporary references, but also references from the past. I think that’s why we play to a really wide range of ages and sensibilities.

Jinkx: What I love about our show and our work is it is 100 percent what it is, and it is also 100 percent drag. I think that there was this misconception early on in the Drag Race years. I remember saying I want to do drag on Broadway. I’ve now done that. Back in the day, season 5, people were like, she’s not passionate about drag. She’s just using drag to get to Broadway. I took drag with me to Broadway. What I love is that we write a show that is a musical comedy. We are doing drag and we are doing theater, and neither one is taking a back seat to the other.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Tickets for the show can be purchased here.