- I'm Michael Patrick King.
- And I am RuPaul Charles.
And we are in studio with the Hollywood Reporter.
(groovy music)
- We're here to talk about AJ and the Queen.
- We like to go anywhere and talk about AJ and the Queen.
- Yeah.
- We're so in love with them.
- Yes, and you know I thought I might be appropriate
to discuss, why Netflix?
Why did AJ and the Queen land at Netflix?
- It seems like the obvious choice.
This is where people watch programming.
So, you know, Netflix, and we did go out to other places.
- We had a lot of bites but the idea,
the thrilling idea of being for sure doing 10 episodes
and on a platform that has more of an expansive
idea of it can be something creative and something
not defined by one element, and also the length.
It was important.
We love the idea that you could click on
Netflix and see our 10 episodes named after
each of the city that the characters travel to.
It just seemed like, oh yeah, that's right,
New York, Cleveland, dun de dun de, Dallas.
- Yeah.
And it is a bingeable program.
- So bingeable.
And that in the way it was crafted was with
that in mind too.
Because, you know, the things that I go back to
like the "Wizard of Oz" or "Grease" or,
you know, I just watch "Soapdish" again the other night.
- Yeah fantastic.
- You know, where it has these sort of tent pole
arches, these happenings that you think,
you know what, I have 10 minutes.
I can watch that much, or I have an hour, or you know.
So that's the show,
the show is crafted for people who watch their
television in big chunks or in little increments.
- Right, and there each episode has a journey on a
bigger journey, but the fun thing about Ru is
kind of taste in when we were creating it together
was like, we'll do the musical numbers and then after
the people see the narrative they can come back to
episode three and see Tina Turner.
- The music, 'cause I do a Tina Turner number
in there too.
- Not that she's in the show.
- Yeah.
- That would be great, yeah.
- She's there in spirit.
- But the idea that it's all there at once
and you can go back at your own pace
and enjoy it again in your couch in January
and new year and just sit back and go across
the country with AJ and the Queen.
- One of the things if you're a fan of RuPaul
there's a performance in every single episode.
- Sometimes two.
And we have, I've lost count of how many of the girls
from Drag Race are in the show.
- 22.
- I heard 22.
- Is it 22?
Okay, I'll take that.
- 22 and there could have been 42
because they're all amazing.
And for this first trip this first season we
picked these 22 kind of because of the rural locations
where they were.
Okay, so who's Pittsburgh?
Who's Louisville?
But the other thing too about,
for RuPaul fans you said he gets to perform,
but he gets to lip sync, which is even for RuPaul fans
is a rare treat because Ru hasn't really done it up
in terms of laying it all out there in terms
of singing and dancing,
and he does in every episode.
- And you also do celebrity impersonations,
is that something you've ever done before in the past?
- I have done terribly.
I in the past have done terribly, you know.
- Oh, he does an amazing Diana, you do.
You do, and that is not terrible.
- I do Diana.
I do a few others.
- [Michael] You do Tina.
- I do Tina.
I do Olivia Newton John
and I think do we do Cher.
- That's the easy one.
- Do I do Cher?
- You do do her.
You do a little bite of Cher.
- And I actually I do this Jamaican character where
I have to have one of the other actors on the set
help me with a Jamaican accent.
(RuPaul laughing)
- Yeah, and that's full on Carol Burnett for me.
- Yeah, it's totaled.
- I mean that is, Ru is playing a character
that he did from a one woman show called
"Jamaican Me Crazy."
(RuPaul laughing)
But that's a treat too because that's clearly just comedy.
That's Ru not even singing and dancing.
It's like, oh look there's Ru as a Jamaican nurse,
a seven food five Jamaican nurse
that people just see to accept.
- So wait, we've talked a little bit about the
fantastic musical numbers in the show,
but you know this is, you created this.
You wrote it.
You produced it.
It's very personal to you.
So are any of these events that happened throughout
the show based on any real life events.
- You know together we put the show together
with gathering all of the humanity we've gathered
in our combined lives.
And it shows there.
It's so heartfelt.
It's so funny and moving and fun,
musical numbers, tears, and it's a snapshot
of American today and the America that we grew
to love and that we are trying,
wanna get back to, you know.
And it feels like America's gone a little bit off the rails.
And this show is a love letter, sort of an alignment,
a realignment for America.
Michael you're the creator of The Comeback.
- Yeah.
- I assume that a big reason why you two
decided to work together being that
Ru you're such a huge fan of the show.
How does Ruby Red and Valerie compare as characters.
- Well, you know, it's interesting you say that.
- They both have red hair.
- Well they were both have red hair.
But there is a certain gullibility that both
characters have and that are an openness,
and sort of a protective layer too that both
characters have, and an optimism.
They're both very optimistic even in light
of some really horrific situations.
'Cause Valerie Cherish has to witness
some real horrors of Hollywood.
- When Lisa and I created Valerie,
Lisa Kudrow and I did it together,
one of the things that we thought
was so harrowing about her was how obsessed
she was with getting show business right.
And I think the difference between Valerie and Robert,
which is Ru's character is that he was
obsessed with getting life right.
He wants to align correctly to have
a healthy spirit and soul.
And Valerie, the horror of her was that she
was misaligned and all she wanted to do was be
in the spotlight.
- And Michael, as a writer of Sex and the City
would Ru be considered a Carrie, a Miranda?
- Okay, RuPaul would be RuPaul.
There'd be Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, Charlotte
and RuPaul.
Would Robert Ruby be one of those characters?
I think Ru is undefinable as any,
you can't link him to anything.
But the character Robert would probably be a really
interesting Charlotte.
Charlotte a romantic, but also with a little bit of
a Miranda smarts, and then Ruby of course
is Samantha and Carrie.
She's stylish.
She knows things.
She's impulsive.
She's ahead of the curve and she's fierce.
- So Ruby gets to, Ruby and Robert
get to really instill some life lessons on AJ.
Can you tell me a little bit about your bonding
experience with the actress that plays AJ, Izzy.
- Well we spend side by side six months side
by side every day holding hands.
I'm listening to her.
Her say, "Ru, hold you hands out."
or, you know, telling stories, side by side.
So once we finished filming
I could still feel her presence next to me.
And I still do to this day.
And I've used this, many years of therapy,
I've used that feeling, that essence to be able
to reparent my own 10 year old,
the one that lives inside of me who acts up
and does all these other things.
So it's been this brilliant gift
on so many different levels.
But for me, whenever I feel, you know, not so
star like I imagine my 10 year old and I can
feel my 10 year old standing here and I think,
oh, you know what, hey you wanna go for some yogurt.
I'm gonna take you for some frozen yogurt.
Or, you know what I'm gonna do?
I'm gonna take you and go on the Staten Island
fairy right now.
It's free, you get to see the Statue of Liberty.
So I think of myself taking care of this 10 year old.
So not only do I have a new friend in Izzy G for life,
but I also have sort of a touchstone for my own 10 year old.
- It also, seeing them together was special because
they were both so different, but they both
were starting a new thing together.
Ru is going to a level of acting that
he hadn't yet exposed and she was doing it
for the first time.
And the other interesting thing about it was,
you know, show business and making things
can be very intense and Izzy was a great
anecdote to the intensity 'cause she's 10
and she's pretending.
And no matter how late the show is going
she's still like, "Hi!"
and you just, it's like oh yeah, it's pretending
and there's a person there that doesn't have a,
isn't covered in any sort of armor yet.
So we constantly had to appreciate the fact that
she's like a, she's like a mood,
a bad mood breaker.
All of a sudden it's like, oh yeah, Izzy.
There's a kid here and we're playing.
We're playing, as adult men we're pretending.
And she's a 10 year old pretending.
- Ru, how did it feel to dive into the more
dramatic moments, 'cause there's some moments of
darkness on this show.
And you know, what was that like kind of going
through that process.
- I've said this many times.
I'm Scorpio.
I'm controlling.
I like to control the things around me
and I knew that I was in a place
where I could let that go on Michael's set
because he gives permission for everyone to just
let it out.
Just get it out and to, I felt safe with him.
You mentioned The Comeback.
I did a scene in The Comeback.
and he did this small adjustment for me.
And in that moment I knew that I could trust him.
I knew that I could trust him with my emotions.
- We wrote the show together
so by the time we got to the set
we both had created this thing we tried to make
come to life.
So it was a dream.
But yeah, it was something.
And to see him do that emotionally,
to see him open up like that and when he saw
the first episode cut together
when I showed him the very first rough cut
for his reactions he said, "Wow.
"I thought this was gonna be the show where
"I revealed myself to the world and turns out
"it's the show where I revealed myself to myself."
So it was naked.
I mean he has freckles and it was,
he was very emotionally there.
And it was thrilling.
- How wonderful, well, last question to you.
Can you tell us one performance to watch out for,
or one moment of the show, maybe your favorite,
something you're looking forward to the
audience seeing without giving away too much.
Just tease it out.
- There's so many.
You know, like I said, I do a number in every show,
sometimes two, so many.
I think my favorite though is probably the Tina Turner maybe
because we go from, it's a fight, it's literally almost a
fist fight to running on stage.
- Two drag queens both doing Tina Turner together.
And one is seven foot five and Black,
and one is short and White.
So it's full on.
You know, when we created a show we wanted it to be
like big laughs sometimes.
And there's a lot of great numbers.
I mean, that's a high point.
And I think there's another surprise to our show
which is there are very small moments
between AJ and Robert that have giant
emotional high points for me.
So simple, just two beings connecting and looking
at each other is a giant emotional spike
and if we can get those to go with the giant
music and comedy spikes to me that's what we tried to do.
We tried to show big emotions when it leads
to comedy and big emotions when it leads to maybe reality.
- Okay, well, congratulations on a wonderful first season.
- Thank you.
- You can see AJ and the Queen on Netflix.
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