Actor.
Comedian.
Playwright.
With his impressive resume, would you believe Leslie Jordan's first love was never acting?
— it was horses!
In fact, the social media star even tried to become a jockey.
Keep watching to find out more about this beloved comedic genius.
Despite growing up in a Southern Baptist community in 1960s Tennessee, Leslie Jordan was honest
about his sexuality from a young age.
He told People in 2021:
"I told my mother I thought something was up.
I didn't even know the word 'gay.'
[...] She didn't pull her Bible out, which I thought she would.
She said, 'I'm just really afraid that if you choose this path, you'll be ridiculed.'"
Jordan was part of his church choir while he was growing up, and religion played a large
role in his early life.
He recalled in an interview with Philadelphia magazine:
"I was baptized 14 times.
Every time the preacher would say, 'Come forward, sinners!'
I'd say, 'Oooh, I was out in the woods with that boy, I better go forward.'"
Although he gave Christianity his best try, as he later told The Guardian, Jordan felt
rejected due to his sexuality and ended up completely leaving the church at age 17.
Leslie Jordan built his acting career by being the funniest person on screen, but he first
created that comedic persona as a child to avoid being targeted at school.
He admitted to WhatsOnStage:
"I was funny as a kid mostly to keep the bullies at bay.
[...] [I]f I could make them laugh, they would leave me alone."
When Jordan came to Los Angeles on a bus in his twenties, he didn't have much of a plan.
He recalled in an interview with The Gay & Lesbian Review:
"I had $1200 sewn into my underpants — that was my mother's idea."
But he soon started using the natural comedic abilities he had honed as a child and landed
a break-out guest appearance on Murphy Brown in 1989 that had everyone from Steven Spielberg
to Burt Reynolds calling.
Jordan told WhatsOnStage:
"My agent at the time said, 'I've never heard of an overnight success but my phone is ringing
off the hook.'
[...] It was a whirlwind."
Leslie Jordan wasn't shy about his love of horses on social media.
Jordan asked in one TikTok video:
"Is there anything alive quite as beautiful as a horse in an open field?"
In a 2019 Instagram post, he introduced his followers to a horse named Aura from The Los
Angeles Equestrian Center, writing in the caption:
"It was deemed I'm too fat for a pony so I am now riding a Saddlebred.
She was once a fancy high-stepping show horse.
As was I.
So we get along swimmingly."
But what his fans might not know is that Jordan used to work with racehorses in Atlanta, and
unsuccessfully tried to become a jockey in his early twenties.
Jordan later recalled in an interview with The Telegraph:
"I don't think I ever could have actually [become a jockey], only because of the weight.
People think it's size, or something — it has nothing to do with that.
You have to weigh about 104 pounds, and honey, my a-- alone weighs 104!"
As an openly gay man in the '80s and '90s, Leslie Jordan was terrified by the devastating
HIV/AIDS epidemic.
He told HuffPost in 2017:
"Back then it was a death sentence."
As he lost countless friends, Jordan became one of the 12 original members of Project
Night Light and used to sit with dying patients, passing out banana popsicles to soothe their
dry throats from the medication.
Jordan later reflected to The Guardian:
"We figured out really fast that no one was going to help us.
[...] I remember once I showed up and it was just this guy [sitting] in a diaper and it
just broke my heart.
So I sat with him all afternoon."
The actor found that his ability to talk for hours was helpful for AIDS patients who were
dying alone, but he was still an unconventional volunteer.
Jordan told The Guardian:
"Me and my friends would do little bumps of crystal meth, then go dancing, so I'd be up
all the next day and go sit with people.
[...] At least they had company.
I was wonderful company."
In his memoir, My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, the actor recalled how he was moved by the
LGBTQ+ community's response.
Jordan wrote:
"When the AIDS epidemic hit, I had jumped into the trenches.
We all did.
[...] And looking back on those days, I do not remember the sadness, I remember the love."
Leslie Jordan's most iconic TV role was probably the hilarious Beverley Leslie on Will & Grace,
who exchanged insults with Megan Mullally's Karen in every scene.
"Do they still say, 'Til death do us part' when the bride is a vampire?"
As he revealed in his memoir, however, the part was originally written for Joan Collins.
After she left the project, the producers decided to look for someone in the same mold
as Truman Capote instead of a Dynasty-style diva, which fit Jordan perfectly.
He later told Philadelphia magazine that Mullally was his favorite actor to work with, explaining,
"She's like me.
[...] We'd just get in front of that camera and it was just like verbal ping-pong."
In return, Mullally later wrote in an Instagram tribute following his death that Jordan "was
flawlessly funny, a virtuoso of comedy."
His performance also bagged him a Primetime Emmy for outstanding guest actor in a comedy
series in 2006.
As the actor told Philadelphia magazine, the Emmys ceremony made Jordan so nervous that
he had to keep stopping his limousine on the way to find a bathroom.
Jordan told the outlet:
"They'd have to pull the car over at the Chevron station.
It's just too much pressure.
[...] [Award shows are] a panic attack waiting to happen."
But he also revealed that the Emmy win mellowed him out and made him stop worrying about finding
the next job.
Jordan added to Philadelphia magazine:
"I just relaxed and decided to let it all come to me as it did, and I've never worked
more or been happier in my life."
Leslie Jordan wasn't just a prolific actor: He also picked up a pen over the years and
received acclaim for writing his own material.
After his play "Lost in the Pershing Point Hotel" was turned into a film in 2000, Jordan
then turned his childhood stories into both an autobiography and a play with My Trip Down
the Pink Carpet.
He also performed his one-man show "Fruit Fly" around the world, which was a meditation
on one particularly important family relationship.
Jordan reflected in an interview with WhatsOnStage:
"Do gay men really become their mothers?
Really, it's a love letter from a gay boy to his mother from day one to the present."
In a 2020 interview with the website, The Original Van Gogh's Ear Anthology, Jordan
observed how he had been able to examine his own life through the medium of writing over
the years, saying,
"I think writing is the most cathartic thing a person can do.
It slows your mind 'down to the speed of a pen' and you get clarity.
I am always a little amazed at what a great life I have had.
And the ability to write about it is God-given and I cherish that ability."
Leslie Jordan has spoken highly of working with Ryan Murphy on his anthology series American
Horror Story, which introduced the actor to a whole new audience.
While explaining the level of creative freedom on a Murphy set, Jordan told the Gay Times:
"It always starts with a wig, honey, it always starts with that wig!
It's like summer camp.
[...] It's so much fun to do a Ryan Murphy show."
He also praised his co-stars, including icons like Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates, and Lady Gaga.
Jordan's experience with Gaga on AHS: Roanoke was particularly memorable, since the pop
star apparently surprised him with some unconventional improv during a scene.
Jordan recalled to The Telegraph:
"She took me out into the woods, and said: 'Listen, I don't want to sexualize this character,
and I tend to, and I'm not sure what I need to do,' and then she went into a reverie which
I wasn't privy to — she just stood there."
He went on to explain how he watched as Gaga silently figured out what she was going to do.
Jordan told The Telegraph:
"So by the time the director said 'action,' I STILL didn't know what was goin' on!"
Eventually, the musician climbed on top of him.
Jordan admitted to The Telegraph:
"She was rubbing, you know, her hoo-ha, and hollerin' at the moon, and shaking her hair,
and I remember just lying there thinking: how do I GET into these situations?"
Lady Gaga's acting method may have been, well, admittedly odd, but Jordan ultimately gave
the onscreen result his seal of approval.
Leslie Jordan found an unexpected wave of popularity when he started posting videos
to amuse himself during the global COVID-19 pandemic.
He told ET in 2020:
"I was being silly — I thought all my friends have done exercise videos with these flat
abs, I thought, 'I'ma do one,' and I got a backscratcher and I made it into a routine,
like a baton, and I think that was the one.
[...] I just started doing funny things on Instagram."
Other videos soon followed, like Jordan telling stories about his childhood in Tennessee or
reacting to the Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion's song "WAP."
5.5 million followers later, and his new online popularity led to Jordan publishing another
book of his stories titled How Y'all Doing?: Misadventures and Mischief from a Life Well
Lived and dropping a gospel album called Company's Comin' featuring none other than artists like
Dolly Parton — both in 2021.
Speaking about life during lockdown, Jordan told the Gay Times:
"I think the reason people responded is because I was the one saying, 'What are we gonna do?!'
[...] I voiced what people felt and I was having fun!
I started being silly."
He also expressed his joy at people finally finding the real him.
Jordan added to the Gay Times:
"You're looking at a 40-year career.
For them to discover me, like you said, as Leslie Jordan and love that, there's something
very endearing about that."