It’s almost 5:30 and I’m standing in the courtyard of the Parliament House Resort waiting for Michael Wanzie to show up and deliver the goods. The goods in this case come in the form of the pint-sized comedic powerhouse known as Leslie Jordan, star of stage and screen.
This is my fourth interview with Leslie which puts him somewhere between Christopher Rice and Cyndi Lauper when it comes to celebs I have interviewed more than once. For some reason I am a little nervous, probably because this is a face to face chat instead of the usual phone time that I get with stars.
Wanzie materializes in a whirlwind of evergreens and bingo balls and directs me to the place where Leslie is waiting for me. I knock on the door and I am greeted with a cheery hello and a great big smile.
“Come on in, Honey,” Leslie delivers in that unmistakable southern drawl of his. “I’m just eating my dinner so if you don’t mind we can chat in here.”
As soon as I hit “record” all of my nervousness is gone and it feels like I am just hanging out with a good friend. Leslie is in town to premiere his brand new holiday show for his fans in Central Florida before taking it on the road through Christmas.
Parliament House audiences know him well and pack the joint every time he comes to town. Earlier this year brought us the laugh riot My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, testing it out on us before taking it to New York where it ran off-Broadway for fourteen weeks. The plan was to tour it around the US during November and December and then take it to London’s West End in January.
“It Turns out I’m a Huge star over there because of Will & Grace,” Leslie tells me between bites of Barbecue and sips of iced tea. “So I’m opening February third on the West End in the Apollo. But then they cancelled the tour for November and December that we were gonna do here to get the show ready. Well honey I’ve got, you know, rent boys and other bills to pay. I’ve got to keep the ship afloat.
His booking agent David Morgan suggested Leslie put together a Christmas show.
“What am I going to do,” asked the Emmy Award winner. “Sing Christmas carols?”
He thought about it and came up with the title Deck Them Halls, Ya’ll and before he knew it Morgan had him booked in Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Atlanta, or, as Leslie puts it “All my favorite haunts. Places where they’ll love you whether I fuck up or not.”
All this before he had even written word one. But hey, no pressure, right? It’s not like he hadn’t ever written a one man show for himself before.
“You know, I’m tired of writing about myself. Everything’s always been about me so this was a real impetus to sit down and write something and I’d had this idea germinating. I met this waitress in Dallas, Texas and she used to be a stripper. She was always telling me these stories about the 1950’s and how she would strip for Jack Ruby, who owned a lot of the strip clubs in Dallas.”
He pounded out a monologue combining an aging stripper, complete with her own theory on why Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald and a radio contest where you call in and tell of the worst Christmas you ever had.
Next came an idea he had for a character that, shall we say, suddenly develops a longing for a missing part of himself.
“A transgender lesbian who kind of misses her pussy,” he tells me with a gleam in his eye. “So I made her the daughter of the stripper and there’s
three generations of white trash including a ten year old boy named Ronnie Lee Posey and he’s been told by the choir director that he has potential.”
The show opened in San Diego last weekend and despite his fears that audiences might miss seeing just him out there telling personal stories, they loved it.
“It opened like a house on fire,” beams Jordan.
Though the new show isn’t chock full of his personal holiday experiences, Jordan still loves to drag out the stories from his past and doesn’t even hesitate when I ask him about his favorite Christmas memories. He recalls the time he asked for a bride doll at age three and there it was under the tree come Christmas morning.
“I didn’t think I was going to get it and when I saw it there under the tree I peed myself. I just squatted on the floor and peed,” he says to my delight. “Another year I came downstairs and there was a saddle under the tree, like a little pony saddle.”
Sure enough, Santa Claus had brought him his very own pony that he named Midnight and kept in the backyard until he was fourteen years old.
This year he will be spending the holiday with his mother and twin sisters in the beautiful house that he bought for them in Chattanooga, Tennessee eight months ago. He’s looking forward to enjoying everyone’s company in their pajamas and being grateful that they are fortunate enough to be blessed with everything they need.
“You get older and it’s more about just family, which I love. Spending time with the family and not having to do all that other stuff.”
One last question and I will leave the hardest working gay man in show business to get settled in and acclimated to the time change he has experienced after spending most of the day on planes and in airports.
What are some of your favorite holiday songs? What Christmas carols reach out and touch your, um, heart?
“Fall on your knees,” he says with a chuckle. “What’s that one? Or ‘don we now our gay apparel’.”
Audiences probably shouldn’t come expecting anything close to a holy night but rather one that will provide non-stop laughs and quite possibly a new theatrical holiday tradition that we can enjoy for years to come.
Want to go? Here’s a ticket sales report straight from Wanzie:
The Dec. 3 presentation of Leslie Jordan’s DECK THEM HALL’S YA’LL is now technically sold out. Online Sales have been closed out.
There are essentially 10 scattered seats available and a bit of standing room, both of which will be doled out on a first come first served basis via wait list. Wait listing may only be done in person, at the box office, Dec. 3 beginning at 6:30p.m.
As of this posting, there were approximately 70 seats remaining for Dec. 2.
Clicking the poster at the top of this page will take you to the box office.
