Drag Race icon Miz Cracker has no time for homophobic dog whistles at Christmas: ‘F**k family’
Miz Cracker is doing Christmas her way in Who’s Holiday. (Joshua Going)
Drag Race favourite Miz Cracker plays The Grinch’s Cindy Lou Who as a “hard-drinking, pill-popping, very experienced woman” in her “ungodly” new Christmas show.
Told entirely in Dr. Seuss rhyme, Cracker’s one-woman show Who’s Holiday! follows Cindy Lou through the hard, ugly reality of adult life. A classic Christmas tale this is not – but for Cracker, attaching any kind of “traditional value” to the holiday is a non-starter.
“To say that Christmas is about traditional values or values of any kind anymore is pretty ridiculous,” Cracker tells PinkNews. “Christ is nowhere featured in this. In America, if you look at the way people knock down the doors of shopping centres, I think you can tell that we have separated Christmas from Christ.”
Some people might disagree. Last month, for example, Full House actor Candace Cameron Bure sparked controversy after saying that any Christmas movie she makes in the future will “keep traditional marriage at the core”, rather than focus on telling LGBTQ+ stories.
Clearly, Cracker disagrees. “I think any opportunity that we have to kick down traditional family values is welcomed,” she says. “The way of thinking about family is old and tired and we need to reinvent it.
“I think that Who’s Holiday! does that. It makes fun of family and I think it talks about chosen family and talks about the friends that really matter and what it means to have them in your life. So yeah, f**k family.”
Miz Cracker’s show is running throughout December and into the New Year at London’s Southwark Playhouse. It’s a long time to be away from her home city, New York, but she really doesn’t mind.
“We have so many problems in the US politically – it’s nice to take a break to other people’s problems,” she laughs. “I’m not faced with political strife of my own every day. It’s other people’s political strife.”
Less than two years after the US gave Donald Trump the boot, the community is already having to prepare for his potential comeback in 2024, and the mountain of transphobic and misogynistic policies that might bring.
“I’m already worried right now,” Cracker says. “I think [it] would be terrifying. Not just because he would be president, which is one thing, but because it would show that there is support for hatred and phobia in our country.
This year was the worst on record for anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in the US, with hundreds of state bills proposed that would decimate trans healthcare and prevent trans youth from playing school sports.
Cracker doesn’t think it’s worth “trying to logic” where this rise is stemming from.
“What matters is not figuring out why it happened, but making sure that it gets crushed…because we’re talking about the lives of trans youth being crushed or not acknowledged by some of this legislation,” she says.
“We’re talking about, on the smallest level and on the national level, real persecution. So it doesn’t matter where it came from, it just has to be stopped.
“We can make it irrelevant that he’s running if we show up and vote. We have in the past, I know we can do it again.”
Cracker is acutely aware that it’s not just LGBTQ+ folk who have bore the brunt of dire Republican legislation, with the reversal of Roe v. Wade emboldening anti-abortion activists across the US.
“I am a feminist,” says Cracker, who uses her She’s A Woman podcast to celebrate the remarkable achievements of diverse women around the globe. “I believe [in] having the opportunity to speak up about abortion rights, access to health care for women… It is going to be an element of my show that I’m writing to perform next year.
“I’m just going to write a show that has issues that I care about in it, buried in comedy so that people don’t fall asleep in their seats.”
Miz Cracker has long been one of Drag Race’s most politically engaged queens, having first got into drag with Bob The Drag Queen while protesting for marriage equality in New York.
Right now though, Cracker thinks that simply choosing to have a laugh is political.
“My comedy special Here I Stand was completely apolitical,” she says. “Literally all it was, is about giving hand jobs to Uber drivers. That was a personal show that was about my life but I don’t think it was less important because sometimes hearing someone’s personal story can really give you a laugh, help you acknowledge who you are, and help you recharge for what you need to do the next day.”
Giving people that moment of “laughter and togetherness” is exactly what she aims to do with Who’s Holiday! It’s campy Christmas filth, and a perfect antidote to worldwide political turmoil.
“Despite it being raunchy and despite it being ungodly, there is still a message there, that family and friends are the most important things that you can have on the holidays,” Cracker says.
“It’s not simply the story of a slag, if you will.”
Who’s Holiday! is on at London’s Southwark Playhouse from 7 December to 7 Jan.
