“I feel like I am at my best communicating with people through performance when I’m on stage, when I’m in the spotlight, when I have that safety of the costume and the wig and the actual performance,” says Ginger Minj, the 41-year-old drag queen who is one of the main characters in Adam Shankman’s nutball comedy Stop! That! Train!, pulling into theaters Friday, June 12.

Minj, a child actor with roots in the live theater world, shot to fame after her top-three finish on Season 7 of the Emmy Award-winning reality show RuPaul’s Drag Race. She finds solace in completely inhabiting a character and bringing them to life. By comparison, Minj feels much more discomfort when asked to share details of her personal life or history, and doesn’t easily make friends.

“Throughout most of my childhood, if I wasn’t on stage or in the theater setting, my father was pretty much just telling me, ‘Just be quiet. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Just don’t be embarrassing to us. Just kind of sit there and wait to be spoken to,'” Minj, who identifies as nonbinary but uses she/her pronouns in and out of drag, recalls. “And that was what I had in the back of my head. Every time I would speak or open my mouth, it was like, ‘God, am I being too swishy? Am I being too over the top? Am I being too much at all times?’ To the point where I would hold myself back.”

Minj credits the theater with saving her life, saying her acting experience helped her overcome her natural shyness and taught her not only how to interact with people outside her comfort zone, but how to develop meaningful relationships. She also now has much healthier relationships with her parents, although admits that her relationship with her father remains more cordial than close.

Minj grew up in Leesburg, Florida, about 45 miles outside of Orlando, in a large, traditional, Southern Baptist family, in a house “off a dirt road that was off another dirt road.” She and many of her first cousins — over 30 in total — spent many weekends visiting her grandparents, whom she’d later live with on a full-time basis in her late teens. Minj was particularly close to her grandmother, who served as her defender and personal champion.

“I was the queer kid,” she says. “I was the weird one that my father didn’t know how to handle, and my mother would always tell everybody was ‘artistic,’ which later in life I learned meant gay,” she says of her identity. “I found my only safe space in musical theater.”

It was through performing in a local community theater group that Minj developed her talents, including her ability to sing live. To this day, she fondly remembers her first-ever singing role, as the mayor of Munchkin City in The Wizard of Oz.

“It was the first time anybody had really heard me sing,” she says. “And they were like, ‘Oh God, we’ve got a little Ethel Merman here.'” Her parents enrolled her in voice lessons, where she trained in opera. Throughout her childhood — and even into adulthood, she cut her teeth appearing in various musicals. She even briefly moved to New York City at age 18 in a failed attempt to make it big as a performer, finding that living in the Big Apple was too cost-prohibitive and that she had to spend more time working to make ends meet, leaving barely any time to audition.

Upon returning to Florida, Minj worked as a receptionist in a mental health facility by day and sought out smaller acting roles in her spare time. She was eventually alerted to an audition for Boys, Boys, Boys, a show written for the Orlando Fringe Theater Festival, which ultimately led her to pursue drag as a full-time career.

After four different stints on RuPaul’s Drag Race and RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars — the latter of which she won in the spinoff show’s tenth season — and supporting roles in various TV and film projects, including Dumplin’, The Bitch Who Stole Christmas, AJ and the Queen, and Hocus Pocus 2, Minj now finds herself portraying Tess, a train stewardess who loses her job at the low-rent Stank Rail train line and, with her best friend Dee Dee (Drag Race alum Jujubee) attempts to find a position working for the swanky, opulent Glamazonian Express luxury rail service.

The over-the-top, queer-coded comedy also features RuPaul, several notable Drag Race franchise fixtures, and a merry-go-round of recognizable Hollywood personalities in supporting roles, including Sarah Michelle Gellar, Rachel Bloom, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Matt Rogers, and Charo. The movie follows the structure of classic “spaghetti at the wall” comedies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun, and features Easter eggs galore for the die-hard Drag Race fans.

Minj says she feels “like a proud parent” when asked about Tess. “I want to put the character of Tess out there for everybody to enjoy, do whatever they want with it,” she says.

Director Adam Shankman has high praise for Minj, whom he calls a “talented artist” with whom he’d consider working in the future.

“Ginger is a joy,” he says. “She’s incredibly professional. She is super on it, and I just had a great time working with her. I can’t imagine anyone else playing that character.”

Shankman backs up Minj’s account of coming into the studio each day with ideas on how to further develop the characters, heighten the film’s campy humor, or highlight the absurdity of the jokes being cracked as the high-speed Glamazonian Express train, with Tess and Dee Dee on board, hurtles toward a seemingly impending disaster.

As for Minj, she is confident that this will not be the last time she dons Tess’s stewardess uniform and high heels as she embarks on another adventure, with Dee Dee by her side.

“I hope the movie does well enough for a sequel, but I also know that Jujubee and I love these girls so much that, even if we don’t get another movie, we’ll create something for them on our own.”

METRO WEEKLY: Let’s start by talking about your coming out.

GINGER MINJ: I don’t know that I ever actually came out. I was always the artistic one [in the family]. And my mother, it was so weird because she knew it. Everybody knew that I was the gay one. But I mean, I grew up doing musical theater. I’ve always loved wigs and costumes and makeup. But the few times that I did try to come out to my mom, she would just go, “Oh, no, no, no. You’re too young. You don’t understand. It’s just a phase.” So that made me retreat into myself and not want to accept or acknowledge it.

It wasn’t until Thanksgiving when I was about 14 years old, and was starring and costuming a production at the local community theater. I went to Walmart — which was down the street from my grandmother’s house, where all 50 or 60 of us would gather for all holidays and occasions — to buy patterned fabric to make myself a pair of pants for a costume. And at the bottom of my theater bag was an XY magazine.

I don’t know if you remember XY, but God, I loved it. It was like my lifeline to the real gay world. I had to have a friend drive me the hour-and-a-half to Orlando to purchase that magazine, and I clung to it because it was like, “Oh my God, there’s this world outside of Lake County that seems so cool and so accepting and so wonderful.” The magazine was my ticket to the big city, which I kept hidden at the bottom of my theater bag.

And while I was gone, my sister and my cousin Jamie had gone through my bag and found the magazine. So when I came back with my Walmart bag full of fabric and scissors and sewing supplies, the entire family was gathered around the dinner table and the magazine was sitting there in the middle.

And, of course, they were all wailing and gnashing their teeth and crying and looking at me like I’m this awful creature. And in my head, I thought, “But this isn’t a secret. I literally just went and bought fabric to make a costume for a musical theater production. You have to know, on some level, that I am gay.”

Before I could say anything, my grandmother, who was like my superhero, said, “Baby, I need you to come into the kitchen and help me.” So I go in there with her, and we’re doing things, and she kind of nudges me with her shoulder and says, “I learned a long time ago that if you keep their mouth full of love, they don’t have time to spit out the hate. So let’s get this love on the table.” And we set the table, everybody ate, and then suddenly everybody forgot about it. My grandmother was always the one that would deflect all of the people who were coming for me. She protected me.

MW: How did you get started in drag?

GINGER: I always say, drag queens are born one of two ways. It’s either through musical theater or on Halloween. And mine was through musical theater. I ended up getting cast in this role, it was like an original show that was written for the Orlando Fringe Theater Festival called Boys, Boys, Boys, where it had eight men willing to go completely full-frontal naked and two drag queens.

And I was like, “Well, I know my grandma and my mama are going to come and see this show, so I don’t want to be having my dingle-dangle out there for everybody. So let me try the drag thing.” I didn’t know if they would buy it or not, but they did. The thing about the Orlando Fringe Theater Festival is it’s one of the biggest Fringe festivals in the country. People from all over the world, but particularly Orlando, come and see all of the shows. And it was one of the big hit shows that year. So we got a lot of people from the Orlando drag community.

And once they saw me, it was like, “Oh, fresh meat. Oh, and this one can sing live. That’s something different that we haven’t really had in the clubs in a while.”

So I just started getting bookings. And at that point, I didn’t even have a name. I didn’t have a character outside of what I was playing in the show, which was like this ’70s disco live-singing queen from the Upper East Side named Maxi. So it was very different from what I would become. But it kind of laid the foundation, and I suddenly realized, doing these drag bookings, that, “Oh, I’m kind of good at this and it gives me the creative freedom to be the writer, producer, director, costumer, everything for the shows that I want to do.” And I was finally making enough money to pay my own bills.

In theater, you do it for the passion of the art — you don’t do it because you want to become a millionaire. And not only was I not a millionaire, my electricity was constantly getting shut off. I couldn’t get back and forth to work unless somebody would come and pick me up, because I couldn’t afford the gas or the insurance, or my car would break down. But I kept doing it because I loved it. And then, all of a sudden, I’ve got these drag bookings where maybe it’s $50 or $100 a booking, but you do enough of those in the week and suddenly you can pay your bills and have a little extra to have fun with. That was a first for me. It really changed my life.

MW: Your theater credits include some big-name plays and musicals, including Torch Song Trilogy, Chicago, The Wiz, Rocky Horror Picture Show, and Sweeney Todd. What it’s like for a self-described theater kid to play these major roles like Mary Sunshine or Mrs. Lovett.

GINGER: It’s the holy grail. I’ve gotten to play roles that I never, in a million years, growing up, thought I would’ve had the chance to play. I was always a little envious, every time I would do these shows. If I’d play Jack in Into The Woods, yeah, it’s a great role, but I want to be The Witch. Everybody wants to be The Witch. You play one of the newsboys in Gypsy, but all you really want to do is sing “Rose’s Turn.” And as a little gay boy, I was like, “I’m never going to get to do that.” This is before I even thought about drag.

I guess honestly, I did start drag before Boys, Boys, Boys. I did it one time, completely by accident. When I was 17 years old, I was costuming a production of Gypsy at the community theater, and the woman who was playing Mama Rose got into this big blow-up fight with the director two days before we opened, and she quit. And I was there at every rehearsal, so I knew the lines, I knew the blocking, I fit the costumes. So I got to play Mama Rose for three performances until they trained the new actress for the following weekend. So I guess that’s really the first time I did drag on a big scale.

But it was so cathartic because my whole life I had been saying, “I want to do this but I’m never going to be able to.” And then suddenly, by some twist of the universe, I was forced to do it, and it was like, “Oh, so there’s a world where this exists and there’s a world where I can pursue this.” And it wasn’t until several years later when I really got into drag that I started just saying, “I’m going to play the roles I’ve always wanted to play, even if I have to just do songs and scenes from it in my shows by myself.” And that kind of caught on.

I started — with one of my good friends, The Minx — the Broadway Brunch at Hamburger Mary’s in Orlando. And it suddenly took off and was winning all of these awards all across the country, and other people were buying into it and taking that idea and running with it. So now there’s Broadway Brunches everywhere. It’s still running here, even without us. I always say, no matter what else I do, that Broadway Brunch is going to be mine and Minx’s legacy. But it was one of those things where everybody said it’s too niche. It’ll never catch on. Nobody’s going to be interested in it. And it took off immediately.

We were just doing what theater kids do. We were putting on a show in the Big Red Barn with all of our friends once a week, every Sunday afternoon in this little hamburger restaurant. But we were doing it with full costumes, props, and conviction. And that’s when all of the people from the theater community started trickling in and going, “Oh, well, you do sing that song really well. Maybe we’ll let you come and play this role next year when we do it.” That’s how I ended up stumbling into creating a situation that led to me being able to play these roles.

MW: I think I’d be remiss, putting on my political geek hat for a second, if I didn’t ask you about something related to Hamburger Mary’s that I’ve reported on previously: Florida’s “drag ban” and the DeSantis administration’s obsession with cracking down on drag shows. What has it been like dealing with that in Florida?

GINGER: It’s been really weird. I’ve been in Orlando for over 20 years at this point, and it’s always been this beautiful blue island in a big red sea. We’ve got Disney and Universal and it’s just this big melting pot of wonderful people. And after [the] Pulse [massacre] happened, I have never seen a community come together like I did here in Orlando. People who had protested us were now protesting for us and protecting us. And they were like, “Even if we disagree, you’re still a part of our family.” It felt like the whole community was so strong together.

So then to see this [crackdown] happening, not only in the other parts of Florida that are super conservative and always have been, but to see it kind of seeping into the sides of Orlando, has been crazy. It’s been so disheartening. A lot of people have said, “Why haven’t you moved?” A lot of the queens or queer people that I do know from here have packed up and left. And I’m not saying that I’m better than they are, or they’re better than I am, but they have their reasons for leaving and I have mine for staying.

I feel like we’ve got to fight this from the inside. I think that John and Mike, who own Hamburger Mary’s Orlando, have done such an incredible job of fighting this [drag ban] for everybody, and the fight isn’t over. So I can’t, in good conscience, leave my community and the people that I love so much without helping them to protect and provide for themselves.

MW: Were you a regular at Pulse as an Orlando drag queen?

GINGER: I wouldn’t say I was a regular. Now I will say that Pulse is the first place that ever trusted me on a microphone to host a show. So I cut my teeth there. And I did several shows with them, but I spent most of my time at Parliament House — rest in peace — which I loved. I was there until the day they knocked it down. And then because, like I said, Minx and I were so different and so niche, we didn’t really fit in with the types of shows that the nightclubs were doing. We just created our own show over at Hamburger Mary’s. So that really became our home and all of a sudden we weren’t doing just Sunday brunches. We were doing four or five shows a week that took all of our time and effort and energy. It takes a special skillset to dance around on a microphone while dodging hamburgers and French fries.

MW: What was it like for you, as a performer, to transition to movies and TV?

GINGER: It’s pretty easy for me, because I have always found such comfort in being able to become somebody else and to tell somebody else’s story. I don’t find a whole lot of comfort in — I’m going to be completely honest with you right now. I don’t like talking about myself. I don’t love sharing my world, because my world is so small and it’s so curated. I feel very safe in my bubble. And I don’t love sharing that with the world on a large scale. It’s uncomfortable for me. But being able to slip into somebody else’s world and tell their story, that’s where I thrive. So it doesn’t really matter what the medium is. As long as there’s somebody interested in listening, it’s so easy for me just to tell somebody else’s story.

But there’s always a learning curve. Being thrust into television was something different for me. I was lucky to be able to do it on RuPaul’s Drag Race. There’s still that theatrical, over-the-top element to it. But it did kind of make me go, “Oh, okay.” You do have to be aware of where the cameras are, because the cameras are your audience. And sometimes if I’m talking to you and you’re over here on my left, my camera’s all the way on the far right, I’ve got to play to that. So it did teach me about the logistics of navigating how to act in front of cameras.

MW: I do have to note that some of your confessionals, speaking to the camera on Drag Race, were TV gold in Season 7.

GINGER: Thank you. And I do feel like season seven is probably the most authentic me that you’ll get. Of course, there’s editing there, and things that were said were sometimes about a different situation or not pertinent to what we were talking about. But I do think that there’s this level of naïveté and joy in season seven that I maybe did not have for any of my other three seasons –- just because once you know how the sausage is made, it tastes a little bit different every time. So you do become a little more aware of the cameras.

MW: Because you got so much visibility on the show, you were able to book other film or TV projects. Can you talk about how you were able to diversify your portfolio?

GINGER: I’m a workhorse. I took Drag Race as a stepping stone, as an opportunity, and I was very blessed that my first season was the last season that got a full year just for itself. Because by the time season eight came around, we had already filmed All Stars 2, and that premiered, and that started this chain reaction of when one season ends, another one begins. So our season seven cast members had a full year to just travel the world and get to know the audience and let them really get to know us. And that led to me traveling anywhere and everywhere.

Bianca Del Rio [Drag Race Season 6 winner] told me at the season seven premiere, “The only advice I can give you is just don’t say no. If you don’t have to say no, take the opportunity.” And I took it to heart. I have always taken every opportunity, as long as I can fit it into whatever the rest of my life is at the moment. So you meet people and you start sharing what you love about this thing or that thing with others who feel the same way. And that leads to these bigger conversations and bigger opportunities. So I’ve just jumped on every single one of them and stood 10 toes down and said, “Yeah, if I can act, and sing, and dance, and be silly, and be a fool in drag, that’s all the things that I love in the world combined.”

MW: Do you feel that you have a close connection with RuPaul because you’ve done AJ and the Queen and Stop! That! Train!?

GINGER: I would never say that we’re close, and I would never say that we have a better relationship than she has with any other queen, except for Raven. I mean, she and Raven, of course, spend so much time together. They’re inseparable. They’re like Juju and me. We spend so much time together that we really are those characters. We’re inseparable. But I have heard from RuPaul’s mouth that she just really appreciates my work ethic. She loves that I show up ready to work and ready to laugh. Those are her two favorite things.

I think that’s why she continues to use me and to prop me up for these different projects. I loved doing AJ and the Queen with her because it was just her and me and Jane Krakowski for two weeks in this house in Encino, playing dirty charades between takes and having a great time. And then I did How the Bitch Stole Christmas on VH1 through World of Wonder, and that was really fun. That was also incredibly fast. We shot an entire movie in two weeks in the middle of summer — all overnights really. And RuPaul, even if she was in the scene with us, they shot her coverage separately because of the way her schedule was. She was at Drag Race during the day filming while we were doing all the scenes with her outside. So we didn’t get much of a chance to work together.

Now, with this project, she had no choice but to be locked with Jujubee and me in that cockpit for days on end, just having a good time. And Juju’s favorite story is we were just sitting there in the cockpit. It was between takes or whatever and Jujubee just starts making these whale noises. So I’m sitting in the copilot seat, and I start making the whale noises with her. And then the curtain opens up behind us, and RuPaul comes in making whale noises. And we did that for 20 minutes and it was surreal and stupid. People always ask me, “What is the key to success with Drag Race?” And I say, “RuPaul gives you the answer every episode: ‘Make me laugh. Just make me laugh.'” And she’s always game for it. And I love that, because I love to make people laugh.

MW: At the end of Stop! That! Train!, they show all these bloopers from filming. Can you tell us an interesting story about one of those instances?

GINGER: Well, my favorite moment, and I’m so surprised it didn’t make it into the outtakes, was we were doing the kissing scene with RuPaul, and she was getting so close to my face and Adam wasn’t yelling cut. She got so close, she just burst out in that big old RuPaul laugh right in my face, and it was terrifying and wonderful and something that is now my sleep-paralysis demon. RuPaul as Judy Gagwell, cackling inches from my face.

It was a fun set and there was no drama, because there was no time for drama. We shot this whole movie in 19 days and it was one of those things where it was like, “You’d better be prepared because it is a runaway train.” As soon as they yell “action,” know your lines, know where your mark is, and do not fuck it up. And Adam was really great about doing all of the coverage that he needed when we were sticking to the script. And then afterwards, he would go, “Okay, we’ve got a couple of minutes. I’m just going to role-play. Do the scene again, and just play with it.” And it felt like we were super supported and encouraged to enjoy ourselves and our friendship, and enjoy this time with RuPaul, but also in a way that allowed us to be super efficient with time. It was really wonderful.

MW: How much of the final movie is ad-libs?

GINGER: Not much. It is a brilliant script. Connor [Wright] and Christina [Friel] are fantastic writers. I knew that when we did How The Bitch Stole Christmas. So when we got to this project, they sent us the script. I was like, “Oh, they really hit their stride. They’re funny.”

And so almost everything is scripted except the “Boop, boop, ‘Gorge!'” [chest bump] Jujubee and I came up with, and the fight that we have 40 feet away from each other, the invisible fight where we’re pushing each other, pulling each other’s hair from opposite ends of the car. That happened because we were living together while we shot the film. So every night, we would go home with the script open, exhausted and punchy. But we’d sit there and talk about what the next day was and what the backstory of our characters were, how we ended up in that position. And we started making each other laugh by going, “What if I was at the other end of the train? I just pushed you. What if I did this? What if I did that?” And it built and built and built to where we were crying, laughing so hard. And we went, “You know what? We’re going to wake up tomorrow and this is going to be so stupid to us, but we should probably just do it. Just do it and see what Adam says.”

So we waited, we did our scenes, and then we said, “Can you just let the camera roll? Don’t yell cut.” And Adam comes over the loudspeaker and he goes, “Oh, the girls are doing a bit!” And we did it and there was silence and we were like, “Okay. So he hates it.” Then he comes over the loudspeaker and goes, “Okay, that was brilliant. Let’s do it again and make it bigger.” And so we did. It really plays because we are super grounded in those characters. I think that’s why the movie works, honestly, because Adam told us on day one, “You’re not in a comedy, you’re in a drama, and this is all really happening.” I think that’s why the absurdity works.

MW: Are you playing Tess as if she’s a biological woman, or as a drag queen? When I think about Divine in Pink Flamingos, or the character of Edna in Hairspray, even though the actors are in drag, they’re playing the roles as if they are women, as opposed to men dressing up in drag, like Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot.

GINGER: To be completely honest with you, we never had a conversation about gender. Ever. In the entire process. All Adam wanted was for us to be real, and that was kind of like whatever it meant to Juju and myself. And after discussions, just between the two of us, it was like “They’re just Tess and Dee Dee.” If you want them to be drag queens, they can be drag queens. If you want them to be women, then they’re women. It’s however you identify with those characters. We didn’t want it to get bogged down in anything. We just wanted to play them as honestly as we could. I know it sounds so pretentious. But we just wanted to approach it from a “real” aspect so that anybody could just see themselves reflected in it, whether you’re a woman, a gay man, a drag queen, or a straight man.

MW: There’s also a little homage to Airplane! in the movie–

GINGER: — A little bit?

MW: Okay, quite a lot. Did you ever reference that in the back of your mind or take inspiration from that movie?

GINGER: No, I didn’t. Mostly because there were no characters like Jujubee and me in Airplane!. There were no two that were really, really grounded. So I approached it more from a Thelma & Louise point of view, where these women love each other. They have their ups and downs in their friendship, but if they’re going to ride off the side of a cliff, they’re going to do it hand-in-hand. That’s exactly how I just pictured it in my head the whole time. And then it was like, “Well, now let me sprinkle a little bit of Romy and Michelle or Barb and Star on top of it, maybe a little Lucy and Ethel,” which is what Adam would call us.

Actually, now that we’re talking about this, it kind of goes back to what you were saying earlier about transforming yourself for a different medium. Our very first day of shooting was two days after Jujubee and I had finished the Hokus Pokus Live! tour, which is coming back this year. It did really well. We had a great time. We did two months of it. But you’re playing for the back row, and those characters are already so over the top. So whenever you put a camera in front of our face and that’s kind of the world we’ve been living in, we’d be reacting to something, and Adam would come over the speaker, and he’d say, “Lucy, Ethel, leave the handprints at the theater and move on.” And we were like, “Oh, shit. He wants us to tone it down, tone it down, tone it down.” So anytime we would get a little too over-the-top, he would just go, “Lucy, Ethel.” And we’d go, “Okay, time to reel it in.”

MW: The movie features “Glamazonian Railways,” similar to “Glamazonian Airways,” a challenge that you won in your original RuPaul’s Drag Race season.

GINGER: The very first challenge I ever won.

MW: Did you take any inspiration from your screaming stewardess character in Glamazonian Airways?

GINGER: Other than the awful plasticy wig and not enough makeup, no, I don’t think I did. The funny thing is –- and I didn’t know this until we were doing the press tour, but Adam was telling me that the original draft was set on an airplane because they wanted to do Glamazonian Airways, and he went back to them and said, “The script is hilarious, but we can’t put it on an airplane because then it’s just Airplane!” He said, “So let me put it on a train, but then keep all the airplane jokes like the oxygen masks and all of that kind of stuff because it makes it more absurd and more funny, and honestly, a little draggier.”

MW: What would you say is your fondest memory from the set of Stop! That! Train!?

GINGER: Juju and I are both the type of queens where “If you’re on time, you’re already 15 minutes late,” but she takes that to the extreme. So she always wanted to be there like 45 minutes before we had to be in the chair, which was at 5 a.m. every day. So at 4:15 we’d roll up and we’d just be sitting out in our robes, sipping our coffee, whatever. But she had her trailer right next to mine, and mine was right next to the guest star trailer. So we’d always just kind of sit out there, drink our coffee and smoke a cigarette, and see who was joining us that day. And every single time those celebrities turned the corner and saw us, they were so kind, and they were so excited to be there and excited to be a part of what we were doing. So that was the serotonin boost that we needed every morning to be like, “Okay, it’s going to be another long day, but we’ve got people who are excited to be here and on our side.” And we always wanted to, not impress them per se, but just do really well for these people that we appreciated. So that was my favorite memory, just sitting on the steps smoking, drinking coffee, and waiting to see who turned the corner.

MW: We saw many other Drag Race personalities in the movie, whether it’s Brook Lynn Hytes as your arch nemesis, or Latrice Royale, or Symone. I was delighted to see Marcia Marcia Marcia in the film, as well as fan favorites like Monét X Change, not to mention a number of past judges or guest stars from Jesse Tyler Ferguson to Rachel Bloom.

GINGER: Or Joel McHale in a harness.

MW: Yes. What was it like working with the other personalities from the Drag Race franchise? Did you have good chemistry?

GINGER: We saw them almost every day. I mean, Juju and I were the two who were in everything, so we were there all day, every day. But usually, at least four, maybe five days a week, we’d have the others for the first half of the day. We were great. We love each other. We are all really close. Once you’ve been through Drag Race, there’s a certain form of trauma bonding. Even if you weren’t in the same season, only a handful of people really have ever been through that experience. So you just get each other on a different level, and there’s no pretension around it.

The biggest drama that we had — we had our group chat, and it was at the time when Wicked: For Good was premiering. And the biggest drama was Marcia — who is the group leader of all of us, always the dance captain — was trying to find a time where we could all go see the movie together. And I’m the biggest Wicked fan in the world. Of course, I’m like, “Yeah, yeah, anytime. I’ll be there.” And Jujubee, the practical one, is always like, “I think we’re probably going to be on set, dear, because we’re on set until about 9 p.m. every day. We can’t go to that.” But she said, “Buy the tickets.” So Marcia would buy the tickets and then of course the schedule would come out. We’d be like, “We can’t go.” So we’d have to pay her for the tickets. So that was the biggest drama: we never actually got to link up with them to go see Wicked: For Good. And I think Marcia was getting really perturbed.

MW: She’s a theater kid, too.

GINGER: She is. She is. And we all were like, “Oh, my God, we love the first one. I can’t wait to go.” Jujubee and I love it so much we’re playing Elphaba and Glinda all summer long in Licked: For Gay, the lesbian love story of the girls.

MW: Where’s that going to be?

GINGER: We do it in Atlanta all of June and then in P-town all of July.

MW: Nice. So who’s Elphaba? Who’s Glinda?

GINGER: I’m Glinda, and she’s Elphaba, because I wasn’t painting myself green. I said, “I wrote it. I’m financing it. I hired the director. You can paint yourself green.”

MW: You are still the current reigning champion of RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars. Frankly, a lot of people were waiting for you to finally win a season. And some thought you deserved it. But obviously, there’s been some controversy on the interwebs and among the Drag Race fandom about the outcome and your relationship with other queens. Do you feel you are a bit of a villain in the world of Drag Race?

GINGER: That’s an interesting question, actually. One of the fans made one of those charts and said I was the “chaotic good.” And I was like, “Okay, yeah, I can get behind that.” Yeah. I think I do have a little bit of chaos that has surrounded my time on Drag Race over the last decade. But I do think that I generally try to be a good person, be a good performer, and put nothing but love out into the world. And some people click with it and some don’t. And I think that’s fine. I think that’s cool.

I knew that whether I won or lost, people were going to be happy or mad. And I was already prepared going into that. But the people who were happy were incredibly happy. So I do it for them, and I am really proud of what I’ve accomplished. And I can be the hero in some people’s stories and the villain for others. And that’s totally fine, because that’s just humanity.

MW: Did you get a lot of personal backlash or hate on the Internet because some people thought that Jorgeous should have won?

GINGER: I don’t know. I stay off of the Internet, to be completely honest with you. Because RuPaul’s the one that told me, while we were filming AJ and the Queen, what other people think about you is not your business. I have been sober for four years now and that’s also in the program, they teach you that same mantra. And once I adopted that, I mean, I really found peace with my life.

Like I told you, I’m not super comfortable sharing the real me with all of the world. It always has to be Ginger. It has to be the character. That’s why I wrote my book, Southern Fried Sass, because I was like, “You know what? So many people ask about these things. Let me write my story the way that I experienced it. And people can read that.”

But if it’s like a drag competition or whatever, you still want to protect your peace. You still want to put out the entertaining version of yourself and then keep some of who you really are to you. That’s always been very important for me. I can’t believe I’m actually talking to you about this. I’m feeling very vulnerable. But that’s just kind of how I approach everything now. I’m human, and yes, it hurts if somebody doesn’t like you, or what you’ve done, or assumes certain things about you, when you know those things are the opposite of what you are. But all you can do is just be secure in what you offer to the world, and hope that it finds the people who it’s meant for.

MW: I’ll also just note that the final lip sync doesn’t decide everything. I think everyone agrees Jinkx Monsoon should have won All Stars 7, even if they also agree that Monét won the final lip sync.

GINGER: Well, even [All Stars 3 winner] Trixie called me the day after I won [All Stars 10] and she was like, “You know what? There’s still people, every single time I post anything, that go, ‘You shouldn’t have won. Shangela should have won!’ But you know what? I did, and it’s fucking cool.” And she said, “Whenever you’re feeling bad or if anybody gets to you, look at your crown and hold your scepter.” So I do.

MW: And where is that crown and scepter?

GINGER: It is in my office, prominently displayed and advertised.

Stop! That! Train! premieres in theaters nationwide on Friday, June 12. For tickets or a list of theaters, visit bleeckerstreetmedia.com/stop-that-train.

Visit gingerminj.com or follow her on Instagram at @gingerminj and on Tik-Tok at @thegingerminj.