‘There was a lot of addiction and trauma in my family’: why Drag Race winner Jinkx Monsoon plays a perfect Judy Garland

As she takes on the icon in musical drama End of the Rainbow, Monsoon recalls a childhood spent watching Wizard of Oz on repeat – and explains why audiences are ready for trans performers in non-trans roles If these are strange times in America, they are particularly strange for Jinkx Monsoon, the 38-year-old actor, singer and drag artist who, since winning RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2013 and Drag Race All Stars in 2022, has become a huge breakout star. Monsoon, who has the white-lead-and-vinegar glamour of a 1930s movie star, has appeared on Broadway, at Carnegie Hall and in countless viral clips from Drag Race – and in other words is widely well known. And yet, she says, when she walks down the street in certain American cities, it is in a state of “not knowing if someone’s going to recognise me and be excited to see me, or recognise something about me and be hostile. It’s a really interesting dichotomy.” She lets out a huge laugh. “But it also keeps me humble, I gotta say.” We are back...

‘I’m not a saint’: Abel Ferrara on his wild career, rehab and nightclubbing with Donald Trump

The last time our writer interviewed him, the drugged up director dozed off then asked for coke. Now sober, he reflects on #MeToo, Italian fascism and his fight for the final cut

The last time I met Abel Ferrara, he dozed off in the middle of our interview then woke up and asked me to score him some coke. It was 1996, and he was in the UK promoting his gangster drama The Funeral – which the actor Vincent Gallo alleged Ferrara had been too blitzed on crack to direct properly – and his vampire horror The Addiction. He was on a roll, his reputation fortified by King of New York, starring Christopher Walken as a flamboyant crime boss, and the gruelling Bad Lieutenant, with Harvey Keitel as a bent junkie cop. Ferrara was the scuzzball Scorsese: no matter how celebrated he became, he never shed the patina of grime from his early days as the star and director of porn film The Nine Lives of a Wet Pussy and the infamous “video nasty” The Driller Killer.

“You were the guy I fell asleep with?” he gasps now from his bright, high-ceilinged living room in Rome. He is calling via Zoom, his laptop resting on a shelf so he can pace around as he speaks, drinking from a bottle of San Pellegrino that he clutches by the neck. “You’re the guy? I’m sorry, man! Really, really.” Then he switches tack. “You let me down! You were 24, living in London, and you didn’t know where to score?” He shakes his head in disbelief. “All right. So where could we get some now?” A sandpapery cackle fills the air as he rocks on his heels. His hunched posture and jutting jaw make him the spit of the cartoon dog Muttley. He laughs like him, too.

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