Book tour bonus with Leslie Jordan

damn funny. I just had to meet him, albeit virtually, and let's just say we took a liking to each other. I've since learned about his incredible, unique life story and just how talented he really is. I mean, he can do it all. I am so excited for you all to get to know the wonderful Leslie Alan Jordan's. Thank you for having me. You are welcome. I am so happy you're here. Is it hot? In? Hearers at me? What is the deal with this theater? I am like,

I've already gone through menopause. What the hell is happening? So I talk to us, Mr tell us what's going on? Well, what is going on? I'm doing a television show called Call Me Cat with my Ambiollic who you may know from how you know her from everything? She was blossom and she had the uh what's that with? Um? Jim Parsons the Big Bang Theory? She was amy on the Big Bang Theory for years. So I've got that going on. I'm gonna be um. I've got this whole other career

that I just fell into. I'm gonna be a rock singer or like a hymn singer. I don't know what you're gonna call. I've got an album called Company's Coming, and I make a list and I'm not a singer, but for some reason, hymns, just old Southern hymns I can sing. Oh, you wouldn't believe. In the church, they said, just sing out for the Lord, and so I would sing. But I came up with a list of everybody I thought I'd like to sing a hymn with and put together and every one of them said, yes, Dolly, pardon

um uh oh everybody, yeah, everybody. And that's so exciting. And you well, we're going to talk about the better. We're gonna talk about that in a minute. Got no, no, no, it's totally fine. I got a clip because I want to show everyone how cute you look in your country outfit. I like your classes. Where did I get them? You got them in the lobby. I got them from you. Those are your Catius glasses from the going their tour. But let's talk Leslie. Let's talk first about this whole

phenomenon that you created on Instagram. You during the pandemic, you started posting. You moved back to Chattanooga where you're from, stayed with your mama, and you started posting things on Instagram. We're going to take a look at one of them, and it's so random but so adorable. Let's let's watch Why are ship? What are you all day? It is awful? It's still March, many days in March. When is I We're gonna fucking get well? My mother holding up the steps?

Ask me who I'm talking to? I'm talking come, my friend, mama bothering me? How much more were this gonna take? So you just did the sort of funny stream of consciousness videos and you ended up you you started, you had kind of maxed out at eighty thousand followers, and then you're You're like, you have six million followers now, Leslie, So why do you think why do you think so many people gravitated to your feed during the pandemic? What was going on there? Well, you know, my mother said

to me, why why would you talk like that? In all those people you weren't raced to talk like that? Because I said, and I said, I bought you a condo. So but what hapever was I started? I was a marketing genius and I didn't even know it because I knew I didn't want to talk about politics, I didn't want to talk about religion, and I didn't want to sell anybody anything. So for I didn't even know what content.

You know, the wake up in the morning now and I think I gotta come up with some content, you know, I got to post something back then. I posted twice a day for eighty days, just whatever, you know? And what and how did people react? And you must have gotten so many d m since as you as I said, so many followers. What were they saying to you? You know they were they were wonderful because they were saying,

you know, it's so tough right now. You know, people would come up to me in the grocery store and saying, I'm stuck at I was stuck at home with my husband and my kids, and I would just I just needed a dose of you every day. And I realized the power of comedy, you know, just pure comedy, just you know. And as I said, I didn't try to sell anybody. I'm rethinking that board. But it was you know,

and and and stuck in Tennessee. And my phone rang early on because it jumped from like you said, twenty, I had twenty or thirty forty and then um, Megan Malally from my will and Grace day, Yeah, yeah, yeah, back to me. Sorry that bit stole my thunder for eight years. So she's a dear friend about it. But anyway, Megan Malally reposted and I jumped to about you know, I guess I don't know eighty thousand, and I thought wow. And then I don't know what happened, you know, I

don't know how that works. But my friend called and said, Leslie, honey, you have gone viral. And I said, no, I'm in Tennessee. I don't have COVID, I'm he said, no, Internet viral. And it just well, people, I mean, you just spread so much joy and you do make people smile and laugh. And you know, I was talking to Orally Brown. I don't know if you heard our conversation, but she's just an amazing woman. Grew up in Mississippi, one of twelve kids,

the daughter of sharecroppers, and I wanted to talk. I'm fascinated about people's childhoods and what makes them tick. You were you were born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee. You have twin sisters, and sisters twenty two months. They're twins and twenty two months younger than me. So tell us a little bit about your childhood, Leslie. Well, you know, my my mother was nineteen when I was born. Daddy was twenty two. You think back, you think, my God,

just babies raising babies. But we were never at home, you know. We were always on the go. Um My, uh my, my mother and my maternal grandmother, her mother, I think took one look at a little Leslie and thought he's gonna need some help because you know, I wasn't like the other boys. I didn't play I didn't like sports, you know, and they created they circle the wagons, as only good Southern mothers can do. They circle those wagons and created this amazing little secret garden where I

could play with dolls. You know, I could twirl a baton, you know, I could do whatever I wanted to do. But then, you know, you just knew you don't tell daddy, you know, because I would. I was so doll close. I said, i'mnna show daddy. No, no, don't show daddy. It's just don't show daddy. And then, you know, my dad would come home. He was a lieutenant colonel in the army. I was not exactly the sun he envisioned, and so he would and I would be twirling a

baton in the front yard, you know. And then but he adored me. He adored me, and and you lost him when you were just eleven years eleven. When he happened, he was flying, he was in the Army reserves by the end, and he was flying to Hattisburg, Mrs Hippy from Chattanooga, Tennessee. And this plane, there were ten men

on it just undershot the runway. It was just but you know, a terrible time for a kid to lose his dad, you know, and especially and it's so funny because I thought that maybe I had been somewhat of a disappointment to him, and um, I mentioned that to my mother and she was a bergasted. She said, you're daddy adored you, you know, but it's just I don't know, you know, I felt like because I wasn't good. And

then she told me this crazy story. She said, you know, when you were little, we took you to a wedding and uh Alan, my dad kept saying, Peggy, he's not gonna sit still. I'm a very excitable boy. And they were right. I was up. I was down, and mother thought, well,

I'm gonna have to take him out. And mother said, all of a sudden, the bride swept down the aisle, and she said, I just froze like a pointer dog like and I couldn't get that bright, and all I could talk about when I got home, and I made up a game called Bright and Gun, and I was the bright and I had an angel food cake pan on my head, and I'd taken mother's white tearcloth bathrobe and slipped it on backwards. It was Empire ways, it was beautiful, it was, and I had and I bank.

My cousin Karen walked me around. She made her be the goon and walked me all around my house. And then for Christmas, I wanted a bride doll. That's what I wanted. And my daddy said to my mother, I'm not gonna get him a bride doll, Piggy. I'm just not. You know, you're trying. We're talking the fifties, you know, we're talking the Rank ten fifties, and I'm wanting a bride doll. And so mother said, well, let's just don't mention again and maybe he'll forget about it, you know.

But it's all I could talk about Christmas Eve. So mother said, well, I don't. I don't know what you're gonna say to him in the morning, Allen. But and so she heard the front door shut and my daddy went out. This would have been nineteen. Well, I was whatever and bought his twelve, his three year old son, the most beautiful bride doll. Mother said it was. It was in a box of cellophane. And she said, when I came down the steps and I saw her under the tree, I squatted in the floor and pee. I

just paid all over the Thanks for sharing. So you have talked about the fact that if you hadn't lost your dad when you were eleven years old as a as a gay teenager, it you might not have come out or how would that affected sort of your journey and being open about your sexuality. You know, I don't know. I told my mother. You know, people say, well, when did you come out? I sort of fell out of the womb and to her high heels. So you have

to have been in and come out. And I don't know how I negotiated that, but I just you know, I remember in high school, i'd sit people down. I would say, listen, I have a secret. I need to tell you I'm gay. And they'd go and I was the secret, you're gay and you murdered somebody. It sounds like it sounds like your father was very supportive of He was supportive, and I just wonder, you know, I

just wonder what it would have been like. You know, who knows he loved me, So I cannot imagine, you know, someone who bought their three year old son of bride doll, you know, being upset. You know, yeah, you're the one

that bought me the bride dog. You made me this way more with the one and only Leslie Jordan's right after this, Well, let's talk about so it's so fascinating you grow up grow up in in Chattanooga and then you go to ut Knoxville and you take an acting class or you know, just kind of to fulfill some kind of requirement. And then I know you said it performing hit you like a drug. It was just I couldn't.

I wanted to be a journal journalist. I was a journalism major, and I took intro to theater for from my arts elective. And that afternoon I went to the head of the department. I said, what do I this? What what do I do? He said, well, first let's learn how to pronounce he's because it was I was saying, uh, theater. Yeah, I'm gonna get a green theater. He goes, it's theater. I won't get me a degrade theater. And but but

you obviously fell in love with acting. Got on a bus twelve hundred dollars that my mother sewed into my underpants. I had no fear. I had no fear back then. I just think back on it just makes me tired. I got on a bus pinning my underpants, my degree in theater, and a tiny suitcase, and I got off at the corner of Hollywood and Vine, which so you're

twenty two years old at the time. No, I was older than that by then, I think, yeah, and you got there, you got to Hollywood, and I know your mom said, if it doesn't work out, you can come home, she said, and you'll have a standing ovation. That's so sweet.

And and so what was it like when you first got to Hollywood trying to break into the business, because you know, well, it was interesting because it was very wink wink, because you would go out at night to the gay bars and you would dance and this and that, and you would see everybody would see producers, you would see actors and this and that. But in the daytime, you know, very wink wink, you know. And I had representation, uh that were gay. My agent was gay. Everybody was gay.

They told me. Now. They would call me up and say, now, listen, feed on the ground. Put your voice in your lower register. You know, la la la, don't go in there. Take it down, you know, take it down a not right. I wore cowboy boots and I had a mustache. And you're mazing you. My friend looked back, because who does she think she's fooling? But that you also had you struggled back in those days, Leslie, you had some pretty dark days. You had problems with substance abuse, you ended

up in jail. Um, I mean, what do you think major life unravel once you got to Hollywood. I don't know. I just think I really I've I've always you know, around the rooms of recovery, they talk of this gene, you know, that addictive people have. And I think I used to think, oh, bullshit, you're infantile. Is I'm just need to grow up? No, there's something, as I see it in my family, you know, with one twin who who we've had the dark twin. You know, she's had props.

And I think I don't know, I don't know what it was. I do think that once I got sober, I was forty two years old, and I remember thinking, my friends said to me, you're a and this is a terrible thing to say, but he said, you're a fag hating fag honey. And I said, what do you mean? And he said, you you have so much self hatred, you know. So a lot of that was internal homophobia, That's just what it was. It was the shame, you know, having been brought up in the church. Also, I've been

baptized forteen times. We're not gonna go down that road. But anyway, but just accepting something that I knew, you know, was me. I was born this way, and so anyway. It took years and years and years of UM. I'm glad I got into recovery because they you don't go over your problems. You don't go under your problems. You go through and and um, and you're doing well. Now.

I'll tell a really funny story that when I first got into recovery, my spiritual advisor said, your greatest fearlessly and fear is what drives us to drink and drug. Your greatest fear is heterosexual men. I said, well, no, ship, it wasn't exactly a picnic on the playground, you know. And he said, well, I want you to join a stag recovery group all men. And I said, I was scared to death. I don't know why. So I went and joined this recovery group. There were fifty of the

butchers men you've ever seen. And my, my, my buser said I want you to walk right up to the podium and I want you to tell them I am scared to death of you man. And so right before the meeting started I called him and I said, do you think I should just tell him that I'm gay, just right off the bat, he goes, Honey, you got

to walk to the podium. They're gonna know you. You know what, what I think is so interested to that, while you're in the throes of some of your really tough days, you were ministering to to AIDS victims because you were in California at the height of the crisis. And I'm curious what motivated you to do that and what you learned from that experience. You know what happened was and it's it's when when the pandemic started, I remember thinking of myself, I've been through this on some scale.

I kept thinking, and it hit me like ino, here we were gay men were dropping like flies. We couldn't get help from anyone. The government was not really helping us, and we had I remember looking at one another and saying, we're going to have to take care of our own. And so all these you know, groups started, and UM, I got very involved with an organization called Project night Light, which was all we did was sit with men who were in hospice near the end and UM and so

all of that was happening. On top of it was a very tumultuous time. But I look back and I don't I'm not. It wasn't a sad time for me. You know, we galvanized. And I'm hoping kind of that the same thing is going to happen as we come through this pandemic, because what happened was after it was all over the gay community, were we were strong, we were more apt to reach out to one another, to

help another. We've all been through it together. I'm hoping maybe with this pandemic that will come out the other end and as because this doesn't know, you know, gay, straight, white, black all over the world. You know, maybe we can come through this and uh be kinder, you know, be more willing to wouldn't that be nice? Then the pulpit. I mean, you know, I write in my book about how you know, first of all, your big break came

in Will and Grace when you played Beverly Leslie. And it was a role originally for Joan Collins, but it landed in your lap somehow, Leslie. I mean, and and and I write a lot in my book about how much change we've actually witnessed when it comes to gay rights. You know, I covered Matthew Shepard, that darling boy who was beaten to death and waoming, and talked about, you know, all kinds of issues facing the gay community. Then I,

you know, fast forward seventeen years. I interviewed Jim oh burgha fell, the plaintiff in the same sex marriage ruling by the Supreme Court. And when you look at the strides that have made been made and granted, not everywhere in the country, but in general, do you feel heartened by that? And and and did you ever think in your lifetime, growing up as a little boy in Chattanooga, Tennessee, that we would see a culture where there's much more acceptance.

I thought I was only queer on the planet. I thought I was the only one. I mean, what would I what would I know? I was in an elevator in Denver one time and there was a lady, a little lady there, and she said, I love your work. I said, oh, thank you. You're not what really paying attention, And she said, my name's Judy Shepard. And I burst into tears, and we got off the elevator and talked in depth about all that. But you know, to have been on the forefront of all of this, you know,

um and I'm very proud. You know. Sometimes it's funny. I saw two guys sitting side by side holding hands not too long ago, and I walked by the table. I said, I just love this. I said, I hope you kids realize you know what we went through there, like uh huh yeah anyway, And I thought, oh, I don't want to be that one. You know that all we red there the war. You have no idea. I don't want to hear it. You know, they're gonna have their own thing. And but you know, I'm proud. I'm

proud to have been a part of all that. We'll be right back. You are got to have so much going on, as you were talking about, You've got this show with me, uh my embolic AND's just doing Jeopardy. She's doing a great job to anything. And you've got this country album, which was you you write, You recorded these songs that you were mentioning with all these famous country artists, and you look so cute in your outfit. I wanted to show a video of you singing with

Vince Gill. I think we cued that up, and you guys rolled that. You put my life We're going to We's it's a holy oh great, you're just having a ball. I am so it's so great. I mean, it's so great to see you just being discovered by so many people, and you're having so much fun less Lee doing all these things. You wrote a book, You've got an album, You've got this show. Do you sometimes say you want to pinch yourself? Every night I lay in bed and

I just think, oh my gosh, oh my gosh. And you know this was I'm a Tennessee boy, so to be doing the Rheyman, you know, the Rheyman Theater, it was just beyond anything. Yes, I've got a new one. I from doing the Rheman again on the of November, and I've got a brand new outfit. Good Before we go, we got a quick lightning round Leslie Jordan's Can we do It? Okay, here we go. What's your favorite country artists or who's your favorite country artist? Dolly Parton? Okay, okay, okay,

mine are the chicks. Okay? What is your what is your favorite home cook meal? Uh, beef stew, my mother's my mother's beef stew. Okay, I like a garden's chicken. Okay. What's your go to karaoke song um um uh oh, the one about I remember it all fancy. I remember it all very well just because I know the words with Rayba McIntyre. But say I was a big fan of um Bobby Gentry, who wrote I remember it all

very well looking back as a summer returned eighteen. It's a girl thing that any way, Mine is crazy by Patsy k Oh. I love that. Okay, what's the What would be your dream job if you weren't doing what you're doing? Something to do with horses? Really? Yeah, I'm back. I rode my whole life and I'm back riding sixty six years old. And I went over to the Los Angeles Equestrian Center and I said, um, and I just walked into a barn. But it was a barn that

handles show horses. Saddle breads always rode like hunter jumpers. But these you sit back and you look pretty, and I'm gonna start showing horses. Are yes, good for you? Okay? Mine would be cabaret singer. Okay, what's your happy place? On ambient I read several awful things. I took a n Ambian one time and I woke up and um,

I had ordered uh I had. I thought I got too fat at Christmas and I had ordered a slim fast and they sent me boxes of food for slim fasts, and I had about I think there were sixty eight desserts, and I took an Ambian and eight all sixty eight desserts. You you that happens, you sleep, you eat, that can happen. I'm not gonna do that again. Okay, um, all right, what we got two more? What's your favorite movie? My

favorite movie is Coal Miner's Daughter. Oh I love that, love that movie Space and Levon Ham was in it. Who I've loved him with the anyway, Leavon Halm, y'all know who that is. Some of Levon Halm played her daddy in the movie. But he started a group called the Band I pulled into Nasre. Just course that's Levon Ham. Oh yeah, we of course, of course, alright, but night they drove Old Dixie down. That's yeah, I loved him.

I didn't. I didn't understand who you're saying. Okay, and what are you most excited about now that you're such a big deal, Leslie Jordan's I think that I'm excited that. Um, I'm at a place in my life. I'm sixty six years old. I've pretty much accomplished what I set out to do, and so everything it just seems like it's gravy now. So I have no big thoughts, Oh I want to do this, I want to do that. I've done it all and so there's something you know, they

always tell you just live it one day at a time. Well, yeah, that's not easy, but but I'm trying to do that and you're just having fun. I'm having a ball. Well, thank you for coming out, Leslie Jordan and pressing. Thank you, Thank you, guys, guy, say thank you again to my friend Leslie Jordan's And if you don't follow him already on Instagram, well shit, what are you waiting for? He's the Leslie Jordan's Next Question with Katie Kurik is a production of My Heart Media and Katie Kurk Media. The

executive producers Army, Katie Couric, and Courtney Littz. The supervising producer is Lauren Hansen, as associate producers Derek Clements and Adriana Fasio. The show is edited and mixed by Derrek Clements. For more information about today's episode, or to sign up for my morning newsletter wake Up Call. Go to Katie correct dot com. You can also find me at Katie Currect,

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