Jinkx Monsoon has long transcended the Werk Room. The two-time RuPaul’s Drag Race winner (the only contestant ever to take home the crown twice) gave an all-time great comedic performance as Judy Garland on All Stars season seven’s Snatch Game. Now, fresh from her second triumphant run as the petulant Mary Todd Lincoln in Broadway’s Oh, Mary!, Monsoon is once again becoming Garland—this time in the London revival of Peter Quilter’s End of the Rainbow.
“I find comedy to be a divine calling—to be able to make people laugh, especially at times like now,” Monsoon tells Vogue. “This play is more of a drama and, I guess, more of me as an actress. I’m excited about the challenge to play a character that I’ve played comedically so many times—now to play her seriously and earnestly.”
In a set of images of Monsoon as Garland exclusively shared with Vogue, she dons a series of flamboyant, sequined stage dresses, complete with Garland’s raven crop of hair and a dash of red lip. Striking several haughty poses, you can already sense that pizzazz and presence. “I consider one of my witch powers to be shape-shifting,” says Monsoon. “Physically, [Judy and I] have a lot of differences—size, stature, health. She was nearing the end of her life.”
Physicality informs Monsoon’s work (no wonder clowning was her favorite class in school), as do costumes—whether Mary Todd Lincoln’s absurdly gigantic hoop skirts or the corsetry she wore as Ruth in Pirates! The Penzance Musical on Broadway. “I see that Judy was always picking at her clothes and messing with her hair,” she says. “I have a feeling she wasn’t entirely comfortable in her clothing all the time. I’m excited to really get a feel for her.”
Set in London in 1968, the musical drama follows Garland as she prepares for a run of concerts at the Talk of the Town restaurant, while struggling with addiction, strained personal relationships, and her stuttering stardom in the final months of her life. Its last London staging in 2011 garnered four Olivier Award nominations, and its Broadway production was three-time Tony Award nominated. (Renée Zellweger won the Oscar for the 2019 film Judy, adapted from the play.) Directed by Rupert Hands, the 2026 show at Soho Theatre Walthamstow weaves together some of Garland’s most familiar songs with lesser-known aspects of her story.
In 2023, Monsoon made her Broadway debut in a box-office-record-breaking run of Chicago as the scene-stealing Matron “Mama” Morton (the first non-cisgender performer to do so), before going on to play Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors, making her Carnegie Hall debut, and returning to Broadway in Pirates! The Penzance Musical last year. Onstage, she is known for her tenacity, precise timing, and relentless energy.
While finishing her run on Oh, Mary!, Monsoon began to reacquaint herself with Garland’s catalog slowly. Now, she’s ready to dive into the deeper research. “I’m focusing on Judy’s live performances from the ’60s,” she says. “I feel like she truly comes alive in her music—probably because, for an hour and a half, no one could tell her what to do. And I love that about being onstage too! She would forget her words, and no one cared because she didn’t let it stop her from telling the story.”
Monsoon has also been listening to interviews with Garland in her final years, when she’s at her most earnest and candid. “She’s very mad about the fact that she’s Judy Garland, one of the biggest names in America, and she has no money to her name,” she says. “That all the men who ran her career—and who made her a drug addict—are all rich. For a woman who presented this charming, gentle, soft person, she had that self-awareness and this total fire and anger inside of her.”
For Monsoon, that feels especially potent today. “I won’t attempt to list all the celebrity women who are disenfranchised in some way or another,” she says. “We see it from Britney [Spears] to JoJo Siwa. It was very prevalent then and now. I feel this calling as someone…I like to say, as a new woman who has recently awakened to so much of this. As a feminine person, I have dealt with much of it, but to become a trans woman at this point in my life, I’m watching as people’s behavior towards me changes, and I’m starting to recognize what women in this industry have been talking about my entire life.”
Monsoon is also keen to explore Garland beyond the glamorous, chaotic archetype. “It’s important to remember that even these caricatures have a human heart,” she says.
And while she worries that it could sound “basic,” Monsoon declares “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” as her favorite from Garland’s catalog. “My whole life has been shaped by The Wizard of Oz,” she says. “Like so many queer people, we escape the boring life for a magical one. Then I realized magic is accessible in my own life.” (Monsoon is a practicing witch.) Otherwise? It’s all about Garland’s live performance of “Stormy Weather” at Carnegie Hall: “You can just hear everything going on in Judy’s life in her tone. Her voice doesn’t sound like it’s in perfect condition, but it sounds like it’s exactly her.”
The UK is a special place for Monsoon, who has been performing there on and off for 15 years—from the West End to small English towns where “locals don’t know how a Subway sandwich shop works.”
“My favorite parts of the play are when Judy’s complaining about London,” Monsoon says wickedly. “I’m excited to plant myself in London for a while.” She’s committed to staying, as she always does, in Soho. “I love that your favorite British celebrity will just be walking around and people leave them alone!”
In the run-up to the show’s premiere in the spring, Monsoon will continue to reflect on her own trajectory—and how it intertwines with Garland’s. “I spend a lot of time with fellow marginalized performers who have really worked hard to just get recognized for the same kind of things that heteronormative, white, pretty people do,” she says. “I feel like I’ve climbed every rung of the entertainment ladder. I have paid heavy attention along the way, and I get excited to share these experiences, whether in my own words or through someone else’s script. Judy Garland is a perfect character to channel a lot of my experiences into a story that’s not my own, filling it with real life.”
She adds: “I have come to embrace the idea of artistry as a service. Seeing that it has a purpose beyond just feeling my oats and being entertaining is a gift—and more excuse to throw myself into the work.”
End of the Rainbow, starring Jinkx Monsoon as Judy Garland, has a strictly limited run at Soho Theatre Walthamstow from May 15 through June 21, 2026.
