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Being a multi-hyphenate performer is one thing Nina West is aware of properly. Profitable Miss Congeniality on Ru Paul’s Drag Race season 11, partnering with Dolly Parton on a kindness marketing campaign, making music for teenagers, performing reverse Daniel Radcliffe in Weird: The Al Yankovic Story, turning into the LGBTQ face of Disney’s Pride marketing campaign, and releasing a kids’s e-book—West is doing all of it in heels and a wig that touches the sky.
Talking of that kids’s e-book: with The You Type of Form, West goals to unfold consciousness that kindness is required greater than ever, particularly with laws everywhere in the U.S. with the potential to hazard LGBTQ youth. io9 not too long ago sat down along with her to speak about its inspiration, working with fellow Disney inventive illustrator Hayden Evans, what the season means to her, and her favourite issues to do at Disney Parks through the holidays.
Sabina Graves, io9: Hello Nina! I’ve to start out off by saying I beloved seeing you in Bizarre as the long-lasting Divine on the eccentric movie star pool-party scene. How did that come about?
Nina West: I’m on tour proper now with Hairspray and I received a name on the finish of January, starting of February from my agent saying, “Hey, we’ve got a proposal so that you can come do that challenge that’s sort of prime secret, however they need you to play [drag legend and John Waters muse] Divine.” I feel the day that I went to set was the day that TMZ or any individual posted an image of Daniel [Radcliffe] as Bizarre Al. I used to be there like within the warmth of the secrecy behind the challenge. And it was only a dream come true to be requested to play such an iconic position and with pure camp and pure enjoyable celebrating the lifetime of Bizarre Al, with Daniel Radcliffe and with Jack Black. It’s simply a type of issues that I by no means thought would ever occur. Dan Radcliffe is like essentially the most charming, the sweetest, most disarmingly form and great individual. He was actually fascinated with my drag profession. The director, Eric [Appel] is only a actually unbelievable man and clearly Bizarre Al is so wonderful. I really feel like there’s this actually cool storyline that’s about celebrating your genuine self and celebrating weirdness and celebrating what makes you you.
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io9: On the word of being form, let’s speak concerning the e-book The You Type of Form. Congrats on the discharge, that is unbelievable. I like Hayden Evans’ artwork. I’m a giant Disney fan as properly so I’m accustomed to his work and your work with Disney. So after I noticed each powers mixed, I used to be like, “Oh, that is going to be good.”
West: The challenge took place after I used to be eradicated from Drag Race. I launched this EP of child’s music known as Drag Is Magic. Then the pandemic hit, and it allowed me to settle into it and provides myself over to it in an expensive method that I’d by no means have had in any other case. I began engaged on the e-book actually full time in possibly like April 2020, and Hayden got here into the image comparatively late within the recreation. Hayden was somebody that I introduced to the desk due to his art work. I like the storytelling that he’s in a position to seize by his art work and there’s the Disney connection, proper? There’s one thing about Hayden’s art work, which has similarities to [legendary Disney artist] Mary Blair’s. Mary Blair, however there’s a whimsy to it, and there’s a wonderment to it and an pleasure to it that’s captured in how Hayden does his art work.
Hayden actually knowledgeable how I needed to edit the manuscript and the way I needed to actually take into consideration the presentation of it in a brand new method, which was actually thrilling. And he actually encapsulated the vitality of the character little Nina and the vitality of my drag character of Nina West—I imply, actually captured at each web page flip by its vividness. The textual content actually additionally does help it. One other Disney connection can be that I used to be actually impressed by the Sherman Brothers who wrote a whole lot of completely different [Disney] songs from Bedknobs and Broomsticks, however in all probability most famously Mary Poppins’ “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.”
Mary Poppins is my favourite Disney movie and it all the time impressed me and inspired me to simply sort of suppose outdoors the field. I actually needed to tip my hat to that and provides little Nina her personal vitality and her personal means to have the license to create the world she needed to reside in; a part of that’s how we converse in our language. And in flip, I needed younger readers. I need to reconnect to that, as a result of after I was a child and I heard “Supercalifragilistic” the primary time, I used to be like, “however this isn’t a phrase, and it’s okay.” It was permission to dream and to be inventive. And I actually needed to even have that impression in my e-book.
io9: Let’s dive into your first fandoms. Which of them would you say most impressed your profession?
West: It was The Muppets. I’m of the Sesame Avenue technology and that advanced naturally for me as a result of The Muppet Present was in syndication—that was my first actual love. After I was a child at the moment, there have been these actually sort of main moments within the Jim Henson Firm, it was Little Store of Horrors, it was Labyrinth, it was Darkish Crystal. They had been all sort of circling round my childhood. It was all these like displays of Jim Henson. So I’d say my final first fandom and obsession had been the Muppets. And I feel Gonzo might need been [the] first actual second the place I feel I noticed myself, as a result of he was so completely different and he was an outsider. Right here’s this factor or this it that loves a rooster, and it’s simply sort of accepted in the identical world the place a frog and a pig are in love with each other, proper? Like there was simply this whimsy and pure logic to it that actually didn’t make any sense, however it did.
The Nice Muppet Caper is among the greatest motion pictures ever made. Little Store of Horrors is among the greatest motion pictures ever made After which all of it prolonged and all went to my Disney love. So these are all connections, proper? For Little Store of Horrors, Jim Henson Studios created [the Audrey II puppet], however it’s additionally the music of [pre-Little Mermaid’s] Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, and [The Muppets performer] Frank Oz directed it. It’s actually wonderful. This previous fall in September, at D23 Expo, I received to host a Muppet Christmas Carol 30th anniversary panel! I carried out with the Muppets. We sang a medley from the film. I interviewed [Muppets songwriter and famed music man] Paul Williams and [director] Brian Henson, [voice of Gonzo] Dave Goelz, and [costumer] Polly Simmons. As a child, I by no means thought I’d develop up and be sitting on a sofa speaking to the son of my hero. To sit down subsequent to his son, who directed The Muppet Christmas Carol and directed Muppet Treasure Island, it was similar to this loopy second.
And interviewing Paul Williams, who wrote “Rainbow Connection.” We did a Disney Pleasure particular through the pandemic in 2021, and I sang “Rainbow Connection” with Kermit the Frog, which like, “this doesn’t get any higher than this” by some means received higher than that. We’re all on this room collectively. I’m sitting there speaking to the person who’s been Gonzo since Gonzo was Gonzo created. And these items which can be synonymous with who I’m intrinsically on the core of my being.
io9: Since this shall be popping out close to the vacations I’ve to get your suggestions as you’re a Disney Parks professional. What are your festive should do’s on the parks through the holidays?
West: At Disneyland, they’ve particular churros for each season, and I’m like critically obsessive about the churro on the whole, so I’ve to seek out them. I’ve found during the last a number of years at Disneyland The Nightmare Earlier than Christmas overlay on Haunted Mansion is the perfect. Haunted Mansion is my very favorite after which to place Nightmare earlier than Christmas on prime of that? It’s implausible.
io9: Love Mansion.
West: After which what they do with it seasonally additionally makes it tremendous implausible and great. I like the vacation parade [and] the magic of the parks when it snows on Most important Avenue, U.S.A. whether or not you’re in Southern California or the warmth of Orlando. It’s great and unbelievable. There’s something about even the music that they pipe in at park opening and it feels simply so vacation, it’s so great and ideal. For those who can expertise the candlelight processional, it’s implausible. Do holidays around the globe at Epcot, or take the monorail across the Polynesian and Grand Floridian [hotels] and see the bushes. Go from resort to resort and have a look at the attractive decorations—that’s a solution to expertise the parks and the magic of Disney. Or do Disney Springs or do Downtown Disney—there’s simply so could methods to do it the place you possibly can actually really feel the magic of the season, and in addition be fiscally accountable if you have to be. I feel that’s actually what’s great about Disney is they supply an expertise and they’re storytellers. And that’s what I like about them.
The You Type of Form is out there now at booksellers and online.
Need extra io9 information? Take a look at when to anticipate the newest Marvel and Star Wars releases, what’s subsequent for the DC Universe on film and TV, and all the things you have to find out about House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.
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