Jinkx Monsoon Tells Jane Krakowski How She Made Mary Todd Lincoln Her Own

15 months into its side-splitting Broadway run, Oh, Mary! has boasted a veritable murderer’s row of divas in its coveted title role. The character of Mary Todd Lincoln originated, of course, with the show’s playwright Cole Escola, who won a Tony this summer for their boozy turn as President Abraham Lincoln’s scorned and tetchy wife. After limited engagements with comedy heavyweights Tituss Burgess and Betty Gilpin, Jinkx Monsoon took over the role last month, injecting Mary Todd with the same gusto she demonstrated in Chicago, Pirates! The Penzance Musical, and RuPaul’s Drag Race (which she won not once, but twice). Monsoon, 38, has put in the work, but starring in a Broadway production was always written in the stars. “I just knew this is what I wanted to do,” she told us last week. “It’s something I’ve known about myself as long as I’ve known anything else about myself.” To mark the occasion, we thought long and hard about who should interview Ms. Monsoon. The answer, of course, was the woman who’ll be succeeding her in the role of Mary Todd Lincoln beginning on October 14th: Emmy, Tony, and Golden Globe Award-winner Jane Krakowski. Below, the present and future Mary’s talk show business, Broadway ballads, and playing for laughs.

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JANE KRAKOWSKI: Well, first, I want to say happy birthday again.

JINKX MONSOON: Oh, thank you so much.

KRAKOWSKI: And it was such a privilege to get to see your Mary on your birthday.

MONSOON: Well, thank you. I’ve almost always been working on my birthday because I’ve been a workaholic since [I was] a teenager, so I’m used to working on my birthday. I’m not used to working on Broadway on my birthday. That’s still very new for me. [Laughs] So last night was very special.

KRAKOWSKI: It’s a whole other schedule, yes.

MONSOON: And I just need to get it out of the way just how much my brain is trying to act cool right now. I’ve been such a big fan of yours for so long. I mean, we’re talking back to Goodbye, Earl. We’re talking back to Ally McBeal, when I was too young to get the jokes. I just liked your character, you know what I mean?

KRAKOWSKI: [Laughs] First of all, we’ve been in the interview for seven seconds, so I’m glad you said it. But thank you. That is so sweet of you. First of all, the fan club is mutual and goes right back to you too, as I told you when I first met you in your dressing room at Pirates [The Penzance Musical]. I think that’s where we met, right?

MONSOON: Yeah.

KRAKOWSKI: But what a year it has been.

MONSOON: I mean, just like I was saying, I try to play it cool, but everything constantly feels like, “I can’t believe this is happening.” Because I’m 38, and I just knew this is what I wanted to do. It’s in my baby book. It’s something I’ve known about myself as long as I’ve known anything else about myself. So to spend so much of my life doing every little micro thing I can think of that’s going to get me a step closer to where I’ve always wanted to be, and then to be there—it’s simultaneously surreal, but then you’re also like, “But I get why I’m here. I put in the work. I trained. It didn’t happen by accident.” [Laughs]

KRAKOWSKI: Well, I recall when you were on Drag Race that you knew that you wanted to be on Broadway, and now here we are. How many years ago was that? Was that 2016?

MONSOON: ’13, even longer. And then I got to see Ru the night before you came, and that was, again… These moments are simultaneously surreal and then they’re just such great affirmations. Ru just had a look on his face like a proud parent, and it was just very genuine. It feels like this really wonderful moment in spite of everything. It’s almost like, because of everything, the queer community is really bolstering each other because we know how much we need that right now, and it’s very special to have that with people who have meant so much to me through my life.

 

KRAKOWSKI: I love what you wrote in your bio. I took a little screenshot of it because it said, “Dedicated to all the queer actors who were worried there would never be roles for them, and to Cole for creating some.”

MONSOON: Yeah. Well, I have to ask you, because you do so much work in comedy—have you ever felt like there were roles you knew you could play, but because you’re able to do big things, people weren’t going to consider you for it? I mean, you’re so gorgeous. You’re such an ingenue type, but you play these over-the-top characters. So I have to imagine that somewhere along the line someone had to have told you, “You’re a little too big.” I’ve been told that a billion times. [Laughs]

KRAKOWSKI: I mean, if they said it, I don’t think it got back to me. [Laughs] But I do remember—and I’m bringing up this moment because it did change the course of my career early in my twenties—that I had a test for Ally McBeal. It was my first television show, and I got in the room where you have to test in front of people. So you’re doing a live test, but it’s going to be for television ultimately, and they fly you all across the country. There’s a lot of pressure. You have five minutes in the room with 37 people from the network and the studio to try to get this job that you know can change your life. Back in the day, they used to negotiate your contract before you went in the room, so you knew what you were going to make for the next five years if you got it.

MONSOON: Fuck me. [Laughs]

KRAKOWSKI: Just to add a little more pressure to a mostly unemployed theater actor at the time. And the casting director, who was Meg Simon, said to me, “Even though you’re going to be performing live for all these people, do your performance for the camera.” And I know that was why I got that job that day. She reminded me. And because I think you and I have a simpatico, that once [we] hear the laughs or feel the audience, then suddenly we start playing to the people.

MONSOON: Oh, yeah. So theater was first for you?

KRAKOWSKI: Oh, absolutely.

MONSOON: Okay, I have to confess. I sang “A Call From the Vatican” for my Carnegie Hall show on Valentine’s Day, and this is my chance to tell you that that song is one of my favorite songs. It came to me in college, because I started insisting on working on my falsetto, because they were like, “You’re a tenor, and you’re male.” And I was like, “But I know what roles I’m going to be playing, and I want to develop that part of my voice.” So “A Call From the Vatican” was one of my voice lesson songs and I put it in my Carnegie Hall show. And that’s just to say that your voice has been in my ears, so thank you. Because listening to singers you love, it’s not that you’re stealing things from their performance. If you listen to one song over and over and over, you can go, “I think she made this choice here, so then that next part would have more power.” You start dissecting the performance, and I’ve learned to be a better singer by listening to very good singers.

KRAKOWSKI: That’s very sweet. It’s interesting that you say that, though, because I came up in musicals during a time of celebrating revivals, so I learned most of the shows that I was in from the cast albums. And that’s one of the things I love about doing revivals, dissecting the puzzle the other way around.

MONSOON: Me too. I guess Pirates was my first revival, but I’ve done put-ins, and I always like to go back to the source material and try to figure out what they were working with so that I don’t let other people get in my head. I did this with Mama Morton, only because I had Queen Latifah in my head my whole life. So it’s like, “I’m not going to play it like Queen Latifah, so I got to figure out how I’m going to play it.” [Laughs] So I went all the way back to the original with Marcia Lewis, I think. 

KRAKOWSKI: Yeah, oh my gosh. And I don’t know if you feel this way, but I feel like there’s a certain amount of time that I can learn and grow and dissect the puzzle through all of the original people that played it before. But then there comes a point where I have to stop listening to it. Once you know it, then you have to make the interpretation your own. Because if you’re not thinking it through, it’s not going to be yours.

MONSOON: Exactly. I had to do that with Oh, Mary! because they gave me a video to watch to help me absorb the blocking and the staging and stuff before rehearsal. And I’m very familiar with Cole’s acting style. I’ve been a fan of Cole since the dawn of YouTube, so I’m very familiar with Cole’s idiosyncrasies and mannerisms and I wasn’t worried I was going to absorb any of those. But once I was so deep into rehearsal, I tried to watch it again just as a refresher. I got about 90 seconds in and I was like, “Nope, nope, nope, nope. We’re making entirely different decisions. This is going to throw me off my Mary course.”

KRAKOWSKI: And Cole’s performance is so instantly iconic. Was there anything in Cole’s performance that you quote-unquote borrowed for your Mary?

MONSOON: It’s not like I’m stealing a facial expression, but I am stealing the thoughts that I think Cole’s Mary was having so that I can make my own face that’s in the same realm. I try not to give away any secrets, but the paint thinner vomit moment said so much to me in just the way Cole took a big chug of something and then went… [Laughs]

KRAKOWSKI: I think that’s a real character-defining moment for Mary. Yeah, I really do. And I think I’m going to tell you that I’ve figured out what I’m going to borrow from your brilliant performance I saw last night. Obviously, so many things made me laugh out loud that I didn’t see coming or I didn’t expect because A, you’re genius. But when you threw that baton, I literally lost it. And I was like, “Oh, please. I’m going to get permission. Please let me do that.” Because it’s hilarious, and it‘s also fun.

MONSOON: It is fun. I told everyone in rehearsal on the first day, “Please understand, I don’t intend to do this, but I act very hard, and I have broken every prop I’ve come into contact with.

KRAKOWSKI: If I had a beverage, I would’ve spit it all out of my mouth and on the person in front of me. 

MONSOON: The baton, it’s yours. Take it. It’s a logistical thing that became a character thing all at once. There’s a lot of that with Mary, because the whole show moves at lightning speed. You have to make tactical decisions as an actor that also make sense as the character so that everything’s in perfect alignment, so that you’re not straining your voice or straining your body but you’re letting the character do what she needs to do to get her points across.

KRAKOWSKI: Vocally, I don’t know how you’re getting through eight shows a week.

MONSOON: You’ve got to treat screaming like singing, I guess. But I have to say, and this is a bit of a departure, but we met during Pirates, and I spent a lot of time resting. I was spending a lot of time with my cats, just puttering around the house, and I like to put the TV on and rewatch shows and find moments I missed the first time. So after seeing you I was like, “Okay, now I have to watch 30 Rock.” And there’s a lot of Jenna Maroney that can transfer into Mary. I mean, I see the similarity in that they both know what they want to do and they will stop at nothing to get it. And it’s not that they’re sociopaths. Jenna has the capacity for empathy and so does Mary, but the second you get in the way of their ultimate goal that they already done warned you was their ultimate goal, all bets are off.

KRAKOWSKI: And I definitely think that the fast pace of 30 Rock is very similar to the fast pace of Oh, Mary! You have to know the lines backwards and forward  so you can just spit them out and so they just roll out almost musically—because it is very musical, the way it’s done. I have always approached my characters loving them, and I loved Jenna, no matter what flaws she had. I definitely approached her with zero judgment because I just found her hilarious most times. But I was at one of those panels, like a TCA panel or something, and one of the writers got up and said, “When did you realize that Jenna was a sociopath?” And I literally went pale. I was like, “What is he talking about?” I had no idea this was the way people were identifying her or—

MONSOON: I have to say, I do the same thing with characters. I have to love the characters. I always try to come from a place of empathy because characters are so much more interesting when everything’s real for them and when there’s a reason for why they’re doing everything they’re doing. It’s not just because they’re evil or they’re dumb or drunk. The underlying stuff is the stuff that we relate to with the character.

KRAKOWSKI: So I have to know, you only had eight days off between finishing Pirates and doing your first performance of Oh Mary! Is that right?

MONSOON: Yeah, and I didn’t know that until I saw a caption saying that because—

KRAKOWSKI: Oh my god, you’re so like me. I said yesterday, “Wait a minute, I can’t learn that in that amount of time.”

MONSOON: I’m sure you’ve had these moments where it’s like, “I know that this is going to be hard, and I know that this is not ideal. However, there’s no chance I’m not doing it. There’s just not a reality in which I can say no to this and feel good about myself.” But it was Tony’s season and I found out I was playing Oh Mary! and that it would be announced shortly after the Tonys. So to see Cole win a Tony, my brain was like, “Wow, what a moment to be invited into someone’s masterpiece.”

KRAKOWSKI: Yeah. And Sam [Pinkleton].

MONSOON: Oh, absolutely. So we had one week of overlap where I was doing Pirates at night and rehearsal during the day, except for the matinee days. And then we had one week of solid rehearsal in the rehearsal room. Then we moved to the stage and I think we had about five full dress runs, and one of them was an invited run. And that was it. We hit the ground running. And this isn’t my first put-in, so some of it was old hat for me. But I have to tell you—

KRAKOWSKI: Was Chicago your first put-in?

MONSOON: Yeah, yeah. And I learned so much from that production, from every actor I worked with, in particular Lana Gordon and Charlotte d’Amboise. I learned so much from just being their scene partners. And what I’ve learned is that if you take all the same stuff from theater and apply it to your camera work, your scene partners will say, “Oh my gosh, you’re such a generous scene partner.” And that’s what’s special about theater, how we stay there with each other.”

KRAKOWSKI: One-hundred percent. 

MONSOON: And Sam, the director, who also won a Tony for his direction, I feel responsible to keep what they created. But Sam told me when he was casting the rest of the cast after I got the offer was, “My number one rule is I don’t work with assholes.” And that has been completely true. The entire building, not an asshole in sight, except where they ought to be. [Laughs]

KRAKOWSKI: You can feel that. I’ve never done a put-in before and I am so honored to get to play this part, but I’m nervous about the extremely short rehearsal period because I’ve just never done that. Do you have any advice for me?

MONSOON: Okay, so this is my advice to anyone doing a put-in because this is what I had to tell myself for Chicago. If the people in the room who have been with the show longer aren’t worried, then stay calm. They know that it’s going to take a while. They know how many trials and errors it takes. And this production, they are so good at putting people in now that they’re really patient with each individual actor and their needs. There was a day where I had a stage manager say all my lines so I could just go through my blocking, and I would just kind of nod my head with the lines. Because like we said, it’s lightning speed. It’s hard sometimes to memorize your lines while memorizing the blocking and then try to perform them both at the same time. So my advice is, take it bit by bit, chunk by chunk. Don’t try to climb the mountain all at once.

KRAKOWSKI: That’s very good advice. You have an incredible brain and you’re so sharp. This whole interview, the whole thing, it was just chef’s kiss. [Purses lips]

MONSOON: This is the only thing I do. I can’t do math. I don’t drive, but I can do this stuff. [Laughs]

KRAKOWSKI: Well, I applaud you for achieving so much.

MONSOON: Hey, ditto. And neither of us are that old yet, so there’s plenty to come. And I hope we get to work together on something someday now that we’re pals.

KRAKOWSKI: It would be amazing, Jinkx. Although, I think we go up for the same roles now.

MONSOON: No, because I’m a redhead! [Laughs]

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Hair: William Scott Blair

Makeup: Laurel Charleston

Production Assistants: Zoe Ziegfeld and Robbie Manulani