Her days of tearing Atlanta a new one alongside Larry Tee and RuPaul back in the early ’80s might be behind her, but drag stain-station Lady Bunny has never let her hoof off the accelerator when it comes to her career.
With the Chinese calendar telling her this is her year, she’s mud-sliding over to the British shores with her new show Lady Bunny – Pig in a Wig. A quick browse of a urine-stained phonebooth and we had her number, so Ifan Llewelyn decided to shoot over a phone call to ask her all about it.
So where am I catching you now, Bunny?
I’m half in drag, mid-preparation in the way going to do some news program in preparation for World Pride. They go on about ‘fake news’, they’re about to see some fake tits and fake hips and everything else!
Are you doing more daytime appearances now you’re an international personality?
Now that I’m OLD. I’m up at the crack of dawn because I’m not out doing crack until 5 am. I’m up at 5 am.
At least you’re joining the human race.
NEVER. I’m a celestial goddess. Humans are beneath me.
Too right. Since you’re back in NY I can’t help but ask: Met Gala. Camp. What did you think?
Well, now I think we’re too dumb to appreciate camp. We can bitch about our stars not getting the theme right, I mean Kim Kardashian, her look suggests that she read “Tramp” instead of “Camp”. She DID look like a butthole, and a friend of mine made the dress… Why is it that we don’t demand more with-it stars? You know?
Did Mz Wintour not pick up the phone to invite you?
No, she did NOT. (chuckles)
Sad not to see more camp icons attending.
Well, RuPaul caught some heat because he didn’t appear in drag which does seem odd because when you have all that money, and designers, and everything at your disposal, and you can’t milk a scene party. It’s a little disappointing.
Definitely. Who would you say did slay it?
Err… Well… I mean, I looked at it and thought “Who are all these clueless nobodies in awful costumes?”, then I woke up and I thought, oh that’s not the Met Gala. That’s the last time I’ll fall asleep watching Drag Race Season 11. Camp is something you really get in the UK. You GET camp in the UK. I didn’t see a lot that I liked.
So this year’s the year of the PIG! Are you having a particularly good year?
YES! Wallowing in the mud, and snorting everything I can. I am having a great year, and a busy year. This Pig in a Wig tour coming to London and the rest of the UK and Ireland, it’s really fun for me because I’ve done Manchester and London, but this one I’m taking to Aberdeen and Nottingham.
Oh, the REAL Britain.
Well, I actually went to school in York, at boarding school so I’m not unfamiliar with the second tier cities…
Bunny, we’re living in a strange time when people are highly sensitive about what comedians say, and which jokes are and aren’t okay. How does a comedienne like yourself whether it through?
You do what you do without apologies, and if they stop coming then you fiddle with the formula a little bit. I recently did this Haters Roast, made up of all Drag Race performers except for me, and some of the audience was into it, but most of them were going “oooo” on really mild jokes. We were all like “this is called the Haters Roast – The Shady Tour”, why buy a ticket if you can’t take a joke? There are those who are precious and don’t think you should make jokes about anything sensitive, and there are those who enjoy twisted humour. Those are the ones who should come to see my show. Dirty, crazy, irreverent. That’s the vibe I’m going for.
Your material is pretty out there. Any gig you can remember going down particularly badly?
I perform at gay pride festivals and if I’m performing in the Bible Belt in the US where I’m from I have to be careful because it’s not my show, and it’s not in a nightclub. It’s all outdoors where children may be present, and I don’t want to be the Typhoid Mary who shut down gay pride in Roanoke, Virginia where they had to battle to have the festival to begin with. There was one time performing in Virginia with a dildo hanging from my crotch singing “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman.” and someone took a photo of a father with his young daughter on his shoulder, and in the photo, it looked like the dildo was inches from her face. I don’t like to perform comedy that’s not appropriate. I don’t like offending people.
I see you’re suspended on Twitter. What happened there?
Well, Bianca Del Rio tweeted something about the musical she’s in, Everybody’s Talking About Jamie, and I tweeted back “I just got my ticket, see you there lezzer”. That was flagged as hate speech and my account got suspended. I’ve filed an appeal because first of all, Bianca is a woman so if I’m calling her any word for lesbian it’s fitting in the realm of the absurd. Then I googled the term, and there was even an article in The Guardian which had it in the title, so it’s not hate-speech. This is the straight community falling all over themselves to protect them from what they consider to be hate speech when they don’t even know what a light-hearted tweet supporting a friend is.
I wanted to spread the word that I wanted to come to the show in drag and sit in the royal box but someone said they might confuse me for Camilla, to which I said: “I’m not thin”.
You’re in London a few times these coming months. What keeps you coming back?
It was coming through London that I went to some of my first clubs. When I was around 16 I came through London and would sneak into clubs like Adams and Bangs, and many of the songs then I still spin today. It was down at the peep shows in Leicester Square where I learned almost everything I know about sex, and believe I may have caused the great scabies outbreak. But I’ve got something new up my sleeve now! Bed bugs.
So what can we expect from the show?
It’s a crazy show, there are song parodies, I’m currently working on a parody of Duffy’s Mercy “I’m begging you for Pussy”, one-liners, my award-winning Kate Bush impersonation. (Inaudible high pitched squealing)
Lady Bunny – Pig in a Wig is coming to The Clapham Grand, London SW11 1TT on Tuesday the 21st of May. Grab your tickets at ClaphamGrand.com.
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