Ginger Minj, left, is Tess and Jujubee is Dee Dee in the new camp classic-to-be Stop! That! Train! (Photo courtesy of Bleecker Street/World of Wonder)
CHRIS AZZOPARDI | QSyndicate
Fresh off her RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 10 victory, Ginger Minj is helping steer queer culture’s latest act of resistance in the wildly campy disaster-comedy Stop! That! Train! The drag-filled spoof directed by Adam Shankman follows a runaway train, a RuPaul presidency and a cast of queens navigating chaos with more heart than common sense.
For Minj, the film arrives at a moment when queer audiences could use a good laugh. Minj stars as the relentlessly optimistic Tess, opposite longtime friend Jujubee as DeeDee, an endearingly airheaded fellow steward.
Amid renewed attacks on LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. and the cancellation of some Pride festivals, Minj calls the film’s theatrical release “Pride for everybody on the biggest scale possible” — a celebration of queer visibility, community and joy.
CHRIS AZZOPARDI: This film feels like an antidote to our current political climate. Ginger Minj: That’s why we made it, because everybody needs to laugh right now. It’s one of those movies where it’s better with a group of people.
Growing up, what were the films that taught you that you could be bigger, stranger and campier? Well, I’ve always been big and strange. It was just finding a world where that fit. I was at a slumber party birthday when I was 8, 9 years old. The kid’s family’s favorites were the Airplane! movies. I hadn’t seen them before. So we sat down and watched part one and part two … . It was so funny to me because it was so serious but so stupid, and that’s still one of my favorite comedy moments of any movie ever.
Then, of course, I started falling down the rabbit hole of actually watching the old disaster movies. Earthquake was my favorite and The Poseidon Adventure and finding the absurdity and how it’s so rooted in reality, and that’s what makes it funny. I like when they play it as a drama, and you find the humor in the situation. That’s such an allegory for the world, too. If we don’t laugh, we’re going to cry.
It does feel like an exaggerated version of the America that we’re living in, if there could be one, with RuPaul as president. I will go on record as saying RuPaul should be president. As long as I’ve known RuPaul, and that’s decades, [that’s been true].
Were there any jokes or moments in the movie where you thought, I can’t believe they’re letting us get away with this? In the script, it said I was just preparing a snack basket whenever Donna [Dusk, played by Rachel Bloom] comes on the monitor. We rehearsed it without anything in the basket. And then I get there to shoot, and it’s vibrators and condoms and lube. And then they ended up having to call cut because I had the vibrator on my face, just watching. So there were moments where things would just appear on set and I’d go, “OK, I guess this is what we’re doing now.” They were like, “Well, we have to because Trojan is a sponsor, so we’re using these things as product [placement].” I was like, it’s fine. I’ll use it, but you may not like how I choose to use it.
How fun was it to go head-to-head with Brooke Lynn Hytes, Marcia Marcia Marcia and Symone as your nemeses? It was really fun. I’ve known Brooke Lynn for forever [and] I’ve always loved her. And I’m not going to say that she’s a mean girl, but she is very much that character in the way that she holds herself. She is an intimidating kind of presence. She’s so beautiful, so polished.
She’s a lot like RuPaul in the sense that, yeah, she’s a sister and she wants to kiki and cut up and have a good time, but she’s also still very tall, very statuesque and intimidating. So it was easy to play those scenes opposite her because she’s so good at that. But as soon as they’d call cut, all five of us were like, “OK, when can we go see Wicked part two together?”
What does it mean to you for this to be getting a theatrical release during Pride Month? What I really love about that is that I’m from Florida, so I’m right in the thick of where they’re trying to strip us of our rights and take our Pride away completely. … And I feel like this movie going into theaters during Pride Month is our way of combating that. This is Pride for everybody on the biggest scale possible.
For so long, the community has been asking for stories that aren’t just about queer trauma or coming out. What does a movie like Stop! That! Train! accomplish simply by letting queer people be ridiculous? Well, what I love the most about Tess and DeeDee is that we never had a conversation about gender at all. So if you view these two characters as women, they’re women. If you view them as drag queens, they’re drag queens. If you view them as anything, they can be that because they’re just Tess and DeeDee. And we don’t put the emphasis on gender like everybody tries to do with everything right now.
They try to put everybody and everything into a box and then say, “Oh, that box is wrong. You shouldn’t pack it that way.” So I think it’s really refreshing that you have drag artists playing people. I think that’s really beautiful.
After many years on Drag Race, you snagged the top spot in All Stars 10 in 2025. How do you reflect on that win and what it meant for the drag artists who are more traditional pageant queens? I love RuPaul’s Drag Race. It’s my favorite TV show. I love being a part of it. I love filming it. I love competition. And it was like the cherry on top of a really beautiful decade-long love story for me and my fans and Drag Race and RuPaul. It just felt like it was the right time.