STEVEN LINDSEY | Contributing writer
StevenCraigLindsey@gmail.com
For years, Mary Tyler Moore turned the world on with her smile. But it’s worth arguing that Nina West has taken over the role of cheer spreader to millions of fans. The moment her out-of-drag alter ego, Andrew Robert Levitt, popped on the Zoom screen for this interview, that infectious grin lit up the laptop screen and set the stage for a fun half-hour of banter.
Voted “Miss Congeniality” by her peers on the 11th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nina West deserves her reputation for kindness and positivity. They’d certainly be the first to pop over with a cheese-laden casserole the moment she heard someone had a sniffle.
So, who better to host the epic 10th anniversary tour of A Drag Queen Christmas when it makes its Dallas stop next week at the Music Hall at Fair Park?
Tickets for this always-hilarious holiday extravaganza start at only $45, quite the bargain for a lineup of eight beloved queens, including several past Drag Race winners. Next week’s scheduled cast includes Roxxxy Andrews, Sasha Colby, Sapphira Cristál, Plane Jane, Jimbo, Crystal Methyd and Angeria Paris VanMichaels.
To get in the festive spirit for the show, Nina West chatted with Dallas Voice just before Thanksgiving about career high points leading up to today.
Dallas Voice: To get in the proper frame of mind for our interview, I listened to “Cha Cha Heels” again, and now I have a new earworm I can’t get rid of. So thank you. Thank you, and f**k you! Nina West: (laughs) You’re welcome!
I fell in love with that song when you first released it in 2019, and it’s such a great tribute to all of John Waters’ great movie characters. I am a super fan. I love him so very, very much. And he’s, like, the nicest person in the entire world.
I think many people would be surprised to know that he’s also a massive fan of Christmas. It seems so against type for him. But clearly, you love Christmas, too. I love — I LOVE the holidays. I love Christmas. I love drag. I love touring around the country, especially during the holidays. I mean, there’s nothing like getting off of your tour bus in the morning, walking around and seeing little holiday villages or little ice rinks that have been put in, trees that have been erected for the holiday. It’s really cool to see how every community celebrates. And I mean, loving Christmas as much as I do, it’s just awesome to host this tour for the fourth time.
So, I’m always morbidly curious about life on the tour bus. Is it like Jean Smart on Hacks with fabulous rooms? (Laughs). No, it’s bunks. We have bunks. There’re no individual rooms, and there’s a common space at the front of the bus. There are eight or nine queens on the tour, plus two dancers, so that’s 11, and there are 12 bunks. So usually, after the show, we sit around and we will snack on food, watch something on TV, laugh and kind of process the evening. Then, everyone slowly fades to their bunks again. We’re still getting used to it.
After such a rigorous schedule and doing the show night after night, do you still like Christmas after the tour? I love it so much. I think I’m the only one who secretly listens to Christmas music while the tour is happening. Everyone else has kind of got their Charlie XCX or something else blaring, and I’m over here with all my Christmas music out. I’ll find a different Christmas playlist to listen to every single day. Or I’ll put on a Hallmark Christmas movie. I love it.
Are there any queens on this tour you haven’t performed with before? It’s my first time performing with Plane Jane, Plasma [not on the Dallas roster] and Sapphira. I’ve never worked with any of the season 16 girls and they’re so much fun.
Anything special planned for this 10th anniversary tour? I mean, everything is just bigger. There’s a bigger light show, bigger screens, you know, bigger production. It’s fabulous. And no one does this like Murray and Peter.
How do you all decide who’s performing which songs? The only song we’re not allowed to do is Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas.” People start submitting ideas, and Murray and Peter work with each queen — cultivating, creating the show surrounding that. And all those conversations are had individually with every queen. And then they put the show together as a whole and create this really wonderful kind of tapestry of holiday, queer, drag, art, fun.
I myself tend to do an original song for the tour, and so this year I’m doing a new song that I wrote called “Calista,” which is my very fabulous reindeer who comes to save the holiday during a time when the other reindeers are all sick and can’t do the job. But here comes Calista, and she’s fierce and fabulous.
Was the reindeer named after that Calista? Honestly, I will tell you the true story. I worked on a movie this summer with Dominique Jackson from Pose, who I’m in love with. I wanted to create a narrative of a story that was intrinsically LGBTQ, intrinsically queer. I wanted a reindeer that was queer and fabulous, and that’s where my inspiration for writing that song came from.
I wanted to create this own legend in this own holiday classic that’s not like Rudolph, but it is like Rudolph. She’s fierce; she’s fabulous; she’s too busy. But she comes in just at the right moment and with a switch of her tail, she can save the day. Dominique was the impetus for all of that because she’s so strong and so fierce and deserves her own story and her own fairytale happy ending.
Before we end, what are your personal favorite holiday traditions? Oh, gosh, I love decorating my tree. That’s something I did every year growing up. I would decorate my grandmother’s tree, and I would help my mom put her tree up. Because of the tour, I put mine up on Oct. 31. So putting up my tree is a really big one, maybe the most important thing I do during the holidays.
And then having Christmas Eve with my best friend Patricia has been a staple for, like, 24 years. It’s a tradition of just being together and doing our own little holiday tradition. We’d always go to the gay bar after we were with our families. It was like commemorating the holiday with a bunch of people who didn’t have a home to go to.
As queer people, we kind of create our own traditions, and I love the things that I’ve created with my friends and my chosen family.
What Christmas wish would you like to throw out in the universe? In these very challenging times, I hope that people are able to come together, specifically our LGBTQIA+ community. I hope we’re able to use our collective power to stand up and defend and protect one another. I think we’re stronger together than we are apart, and I hope that we as a community can further unite to make the next chapter of our lives together successful and thriving for each and every one of us.
A Drag Queen Christmas stops in Dallas on Wednesday, Dec. 18. Doors open at 7 p.m.; showtime is 8 p.m.. The tour is 18+ only. DragFans.com