If you were disappointed by “Scary Movie,” you’re in for a surprise. There’s a much better and funnier over-the-top comedy in theaters this weekend, “Stop! That! Train!” Now, I know what you’re thinking, “A spoof of ‘Airplane!’ and disaster movies starring RuPaul Charles and drag queens? That can’t be a real movie. It can’t be worth buying a ticket.” But, yes, yes, it is. And it has a real movie director in Adam Shankman (“Hairspray,” “Bringing Down the House”), two up-and-coming screenwriters in Christina Friel and Connor Wright who might get a ton more meetings if “Stop!” is a hit, and a breakout performance from the one and only Jujubee.
A longtime “RuPaul’s Drag Race” fan favorite, the Boston native is no stranger to the limelight. Jujubee has been on multiple reality shows, toured the world in numerous live action productions, starred Off-Broadway, and even had her own Wondery podcast. With “Stop!” she gets to flex her comedic acting chops as DeeDee, a somewhat ditzy railroad stewardess looking for validation from her best friend Tess (Ginger Minj) while navigating a potential love interest and a runaway train headed towards an ominous fate. Friel and Wright gift Jujubee with some great one-liners, but it is her incredible and inherent comedic timing that elevates the material. Seriously.
Earlier this week, we caught up with Jujubee and the rest of the cast of “Stop! That! Train” to talk about the little indie movie that, at publication, is earning better reviews than its Steven Spielberg-directed competition. You can watch the full interview here, along with our conversation with Shankman, or embedded in this post, or the edited text version below.
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The Playlist: I was just talking to Adam, and he said that of all the additions you were the one that impressed him the most. Do you remember what you did in that tape that might have sparked that response?
Jujubee: I do. Actually, I sent in my first self-tape, and I’m not really great at self-tapes. I feel like I’m better doing in-person auditions. And with self-tapes, it’s hard for me because you can do it over and over again and you can edit. So, I always tried to do it the best in my first take. And I had my friend Nick Adams, who’s a Broadway star, read for me on the other end. So, I was grateful to have somebody who understood how to do it, but then I had to do another one. And I thought, oh my gosh, was it not good enough? And he said, no, it was great. I just would like for you to now be more earnest and be in this world where you believe it. Because I was so used to working on theater stages where everything had to be so big, and the person in the last row needs to understand what’s happening. But now that you step into a film role, you still have to sell the emotion and the feeling of the scene, but it needs to fit into this tiny screen. So everything did have to become smaller but still convey the message of the emotion, which was tricky for me. But Adam is a fantastic director. He pulled it all out of me, which I’m so grateful for.
Well, I have to say, DeeDee is in her own world in many ways.
All the time.
Was that something that you came up with reading the script? Where did that idea come from?
So, I just spent three months prior working with Ginger Minj. We did “Hocus Pocus Live!” and I play Sarah, and Sarah’s kind of super ditzy and maybe a little brain-rotted. So, I brought a little bit of that, but I feel that DeeDee thinks and knows that she’s a really smart person, but I think she daydreams a lot. And that’s where I would find myself playing a little bit of Sarah. It was injected with some Jujube in it because she’s still fun and flirty, but DiDi is her own person, and she just daydreams, and she believes things, and she believes that this world is great and there’s no bad things. And maybe she’s a little excited for this stormaganza because she’s never heard of one in her entire life.
For someone who’s worked in public for a long time as a stewardess, DeeDee is very sheltered, it feels like.
Oh yeah.
For someone who’s spent 10 years in the real world, she may have spent a lot of time in her hotel room in between cities.
To me, she’s always been Tess’s sidekick, and she’s always referred to Tess like, “Oh, what do we do now? I have this crush. Oh, he doesn’t even know I exist.” And there’s an earnestness and a realness about her because my approach wasn’t to be funny. My approach was to actually see that I was just a person living in this world, and I think that’s where the comedy comes from. You have to really believe that there’s this storm of Gonza happening. You have to really believe that this co-conductor might be your future boyfriend. And I approached it that way. And I do believe that DeeDee only lives to work. She doesn’t work to live. She wants to be one of the cool girls, and she wants to be there with her best friend. And of course you saw the movie. You see that their relationship goes through a crazy train.
It does.
Oh gosh. [Looks at phone] Oh no. Sorry. SAG-AFTRA is calling me.
Do you want to answer? Do they want to make sure you got paid?
No, I think they’re asking about my dues, which I paid yesterday. [Laughs.]
Oh, wow. They are hardcore, aren’t they? Damn. Well, hey, listen, you enjoy voting for those SAG awards. I was speaking to the other queens, and when they auditioned, they didn’t know it was a movie that was going to be in theaters. Did you think it was like that Christmas movie, “The Bitch Who Stole Christmas,” that was on Paramount+?
So, when it was pitched to me, I was told that it was going to be in theaters. So, now I’m believing that maybe I was one of the last people they saw, which I’m glad I got this role. [Laughs.] So, I kind of had a feeling it was going to be in theaters. I don’t think it was going to be in theaters as vastly as it is now. I thought it was a really small number. I’m very grateful. I mean, I was always really excited about this. I didn’t know how huge this project was going to be. And then I stepped on set, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I have a trailer. Wait a minute. Wait, we have drivers. This is cool.”
That’s a good thing. And I want to get back to the movie, but just going down this road for a second, you’ve traveled to Toronto and New York for early screenings of it. Can you talk about what the difference is between watching people watch your movie, talking to them afterwards as opposed to being on “Drag Race” and doing a viewing party? How different is it?
Oh, it’s a different kind of special. I love both. I mean, the “Drag Race” audience, they will follow you everywhere. They love us. They love RuPaul. They love what we’ve done with drag and how we’ve pushed drag into this mainstream form. But specifically with “Stop! That! Train!,” this is the first film of this nature where it’s being seen in theaters with a leading cast that’s made up of primarily drag queens. And I love that it pushes drag excellence to the front lines of acting because obviously we all know that drag queens can perform, we can lip sync and we’re great nightclubs and we’re great on the microphone, but to see us actually dive into these roles and to play these characters that are so relatable to so many different people, I think it allows people to see that drag artists can do everything and drag is for everybody and everybody.
When you got the script, the full script, because I don’t think you got it when you auditioned, right? You must have just gotten sides…
No, we got two sides, two scenes.
When you got the script, do you remember the line DeeDee had that made you cackle first?
The line that makes me forever laugh is right after I come out of the bathroom, and this is right after Tess is daydreaming about her life. And I just say, “My doctor says it’s a pressurized urethra.” Because I’ve never heard of a pressurized urethra before. I knew exactly how I wanted to deliver that line. And just leading up to that moment, the scene was so wild, and the other girls are at the bar, and they’re talking smack about us. They talk about Symone’s character, Ayshleiygh, saying something about girls with big gums. And I’m like, “Oh my gosh, that is so funny.” So the comedy just keeps rolling, and then my ditzy ass just comes out of the bathroom, and I just deliver that line, and it’s so random, but it’s so funny. That’s the funniest line to me. And then the second funniest line is, “I was born with adult teeth.” It’s so stupid.
When I watched it, I did actually laugh out loud. And it’s also you, and it’s the direction, it’s the editing. It’s just so well comedically timed, and it’s a testament to all the work you guys did. I know that your fellow queen said that there was some improvisation that you guys did. Not everyone wanted to do it. They actually said a lot of the guest stars didn’t want to actually improvise. Were you surprised?
No, I wasn’t because the script is so good. And that’s the thing, we didn’t want to change anything about it because it was so funny. If anything, a lot of us stayed really true to the writing, but I found the gift was we had the writers on set, and Adam was great with letting us play. So, we would film the scenes as written, and then he would give us a few takes just to play around. And if I had an idea about how DeeDee would’ve said something, because sometimes when writers write, they do write the way they speak. And I felt like I think DeeDee would say it like this, “Can I do this?” They would be so game. I was really grateful for that because it allowed me to expand my character a lot more.
You’ve done television before, and I think you’ve done indie movies. Am I correct? Is this your first movie?
This is my first movie. This is my first movie. I was in one episode of “AJ and The Queen.” I was in the final episode, and I got third place there too. Could you believe it? Oh my God. But yeah, this is my first film, and I’m so grateful to be able to co-star with some great actors and Ru and to be directed by Adam Shankman. This is one of the coolest things. And if I never ever make another movie ever again, I’m O.K. because I got to do this.
You’ve done Off-Broadway, and you’ve done touring shows, which essentially is a stage production, again and again. How was this process? Did you feel like it was super fast? Did you feel like it was a ton more work? I mean, you’re in almost every scene. You’re in half the movie.
I really didn’t have time to think. We only had 19 days to do it. So, it was a fast-moving train, not even to be punny about it, but yeah, it felt like everything was so perfectly timed out. I know that pre-production must have been wild because everything was perfectly timed out. There was never a moment where there was a lull. People came in when they needed to come in, and I think Adam Shankman did a really great job timing everything out for people so that we didn’t have to wait around too long. And it didn’t take many takes. Adam’s one of those directors that when he knows he got the shot, he’s going to say, “O.K., let’s move on.” And I’m one of those people that’s like, “Are you sure you got it?” He’s like, “Yeah, I just watched it.” I’m like, “Well, let’s try it again.” Also, when I was doing my own stunt with the window, I don’t want to give too much away for people who haven’t seen it, but I loved it, and I wanted to keep doing it. I wanted to keep flying because it was my first time doing that and I wanted to have the fun.
You just reminded me about that! You had never been on wires before, I’m guessing, right?
No, never, never. And they talked me through it. I was really excited. I didn’t know how any of that worked. I said, “How are you going to get rid of these wires in post? I don’t get it.” And they explained to me, they’re like, “Oh, we take a video of just the set and then we overlay it and then we just erase.” I was like, “That is the coolest thing ever. I would’ve never thought that that’s how this worked. This is so cool.” And the wind that was blowing was just a leaf blower. I mean, yeah, I mean, it’s cool. It looks real.
But you know what? Even on a hundred million dollar budget movie, it’s a leaf blower too.
It was cool.
It’s movie magic. Now that you’ve had this experience, do you have the movie bug? Are you calling your managers and agents ready for more self-tapes or auditions from Boston?
Absolutely. I think it takes a certain kind of crazy to want to keep making movies, and I’m exactly that kind of crazy. I love art in every form, and to be able to perform not as just me, but through my drag character, I think is a really beautiful thing. And I hope it inspires little Juju and small town USA, or small town, wherever in the world, that anything and everything is possible.
“Stop! That! Train!” is now playing nationwide.
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