‘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...

Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley: ‘Never repress a woman – because it will come out’

The actors star in a true-life 1920s tale of a snobbish small town upset by poison-pen letters. They discuss falling in love with one another, the f-word and the parallels with today’s internet trolling

On 23 September 1921, a letter arrived at the home of Edith Swan, a laundress in the seaside town of Littlehampton, addressed to “the foxy ass whore 47, Western Rd”. One of the milder letters that had been plaguing the Sussex community for three years, it continued: “You foxy ass piss country whore you are a character.” Swan blamed a neighbour, Rose Gooding. But the post-office clerk and the local police had other suspicions, which drove them to rig up a periscope to spy on deliveries to the town’s post box and marking postage stamps with invisible ink.

The combination of filthy poison pen letters and DIY sleuthing in a quaint small-town setting is a gift for the star pairing of Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley. Directed by Thea Sharrock with a screenplay by Jonny Sweet, and stuffed with classy character actors, Wicked Little Letters blows a raspberry at the Agatha Christie tradition of cosy crime stories. It also undercuts the Downton Abbey image of British social history which, says Buckley, “gives everybody the idea that people are kind of lovely when actually there’s a little bit of dirt under everybody’s pretty teacup. Everyone loves a good swear, even the ones that say they don’t.”

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