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It’s Monsoon season in the Lincoln bedroom.
Portland-born actress, singer and drag superstar Jinkx Monsoon will take the title role in Oh, Mary!, the critically acclaimed comedic play written by Oregon-born Cole Escola. Monsoon announced her role as Mary Todd Lincoln—originated by Escola and currently portrayed by Tituss Burgess—on NBC’s The Today Show with host Jenna Bush Hager on Wednesday, June 18.
“I told my agent ‘I have to take August off unless Oh, Mary! calls,” Monsoon said on-air. “And they went, ‘Oh, Mary! called.’”
Monsoon currently resides in New York as a cast member of Pirates! The Penzance Musical, and will star as Todd Lincoln for an August 4–Sept. 27 run after Pirates. In Oh, Mary! Monsoon will take creative liberties as Abraham Lincoln’s wife, an aspiring cabaret performer who hears the rumors of her husband’s same-sex attractions. The play just won Escola, who was born and raised in Clatskanie, Ore., the Tony Awards’ first Best Actor award to an openly nonbinary winner.
Since winning RuPaul’s Drag Race twice (the first time in 2013, the second nearly a decade later on the All Stars: All Winners season), Monsoon has memorably appeared on Broadway as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors in a commercially remarkable run, and starred as the Doctor Who villain Maestro during the U.K. sci-fi series’ 14th season, as well as headlined last year’s LGBTQ+ Pride Festival. She will perform with the Oregon Symphony on September 10.
“I feel very honored and privileged to be in this position right now, because as a trans feminine actress I was convinced this wasn’t possible,” Monsoon told Bush Hager and guest co-host Michelle Buteau. “I thought I had to choose between being an actor and being a trans person, but I didn’t think the world was going to let me be both.”