Alaska Thunderfuck 5000 — the extraterrestrial phenomenon from the planet Glamtr0n, née Justin Honard — is perched on a hard-shell travel case in a midtown Manhattan rehearsal room, sipping hot tea from a flask with the posture of a 1940s movie star. Books balanced on her head, spine rod-straight, she is weeks away from stepping into the corset and wig of Mary Todd Lincoln for the first national tour of Cole Escola’s Tony-winning comedy *Oh, Mary!*. It is the biggest mainstream theatre gig of her career. She would not have it any other way. “I would go to the planet Remulak for this show,” she says, referencing the Coneheads home world. “I didn’t even think about it. I was just like, ‘Let’s make this happen.'”
From the Castro to the Great White Way
The pipeline from RuPaul’s Drag Race alum to leading lady of a Broadway smash has been years in the making. Director Sam Pinkleton first clocked Alaska over a decade ago at a Showgirls tribute in San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, where she played Nomi Malone. “It was electric,” Pinkleton recalls. “I was like, ‘This person is a star; you can’t take your eyes off her.'” He later cast her in a 2021 Los Angeles mounting of Head Over Heels, the Go-Go’s jukebox musical reimagined as a queer rave. “I couldn’t believe how much she cared and how great she was technically,” he says. “I have since worked with a lot of drag queens, and I’ve had exclusively great experiences because they are really hard workers. You know, they make everything happen on their own.”
That work ethic was forged early. Raised in Erie, Pennsylvania, Alaska was a shy, watchful kid who found transcendence in the over-the-top femininity of Jessica Rabbit and Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman — “Not real people,” she notes. A theatre degree at the University of Pittsburgh followed, complete with a murderous wasp in The Insect Play and a grounding in directing, playwriting, set design and costume construction. Every skill a drag superstar in the making could need.
Then came Drag Race season five in 2013. Still widely regarded as the series’ golden year, the cast included Jinkx Monsoon, Detox and Alyssa Edwards. Alaska finished as runner-up, catapulted from scraping together cash for a 12-pack of beer to international fame virtually overnight. “It was being shot out of a fucking cannon,” she says. “I was in my late 20s, but still mentally I was still a child.”
Sobriety, Stamina and the Role of a Lifetime
The whirlwind brought excess. Alaska and her then-partner Sharon Needles — the season four winner — “made every single mistake that you can make. There was no gameplan. There was no roadmap. We suddenly had money and we never had a fucking penny before. It was do every drug, drink every thing.”
A book by Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön shifted the trajectory. “She does a really good job of talking about meditation and consciousness in a way that a dumb American can understand,” Alaska says. Two and a half years of sobriety followed. These days she maintains a moderate relationship with alcohol, a discipline that has her in fighting shape for *Oh, Mary!*’s punishing physical demands. “The rehearsal has been really intense,” she says. “It’s like doing cardio every day. Which is great, because I hate cardio.”
The show itself is a gloriously deranged historical romp. Escola’s Mary is stifled by duty, drinks to escape her closeted husband, and longs to reclaim the cabaret stardom she surrendered for the White House. Alaska connects with the character’s warped ambition on a cellular level. “This isn’t a comedy show to me,” she insists. “This is deathly serious. It’s very real, and I think that’s why so many people can step into the role and make it seem like it’s written for them.”
She pauses. “I feel like I can make sense of this role. I can’t name any other role where I feel like I make sense. I mean, being a weird drag queen person, queer-bodied person existing in society … that’s exactly what I felt like when I grew up.”
Hollywood’s Glass Ceiling (in Heels)
The journey from nightlife stages to legitimate theatre has not been frictionless. Alaska credits Jinkx Monsoon — now a Broadway star in her own right — for kicking the door down. “She’s slammed open so many doors for so many people,” Alaska says. “And she continues to do so. I’m glad to walk right through, honey.”
But stereotypes persist. “It’s definitely better now. I mean, I’ve been doing drag for almost 20 years. On a Hollywood set, a dog would get better treatment than a drag queen. And that’s not even an exaggeration. That’s hard, and that shit still exists and still happens.”
She was not invited to audition for the recent Drag Race spin-off film *Stop! That! Train!* — a snub that still rankles. “My job as a podcaster is talking about Drag Race. I still work with all the girls from Drag Race all the time. Yes, it’s in the past, but still it’s very much a part of my life. I wish I was more in that universe, but they won’t fucking invite me. So if they read this, maybe they could call me.”
RuPaul’s camp never got in touch? “No,” she says crisply. “I agree.”
Fifty States, Fifty Dates, Zero Fear
*Oh, Mary!* recouped its Broadway investment faster than any show in the 2024-25 season. Now it hits the road for a four-month sprint through Hartford, Saint Paul, Boston, Los Angeles and beyond — a tour that will plant a gloriously queer, subversive comedy in the heart of a politically fractured nation. Alaska is unfazed. “I think it’s pretty great. It’s going to be interesting because there are going to be people seeing the show who don’t go see Broadway shows all the time. I’m excited to shock people.”
She leans forward. “I mean, it would even be important even if we didn’t have a piece of shit in the Oval Office. But I think it’s always worth being who we are — loudly, fiercely and hilariously. That’s always a good thing.”
The tour wraps 17 January. Two months later, Alaska embarks on the Revolution Tour — 50 dates, 50 states, from Fayetteville to Fargo. Even arena-headlining pop stars would balk at the logistics. “I know,” she grins. “This is just something that my fiancé and I have wanted to do for a while. There’s a lot of states that we just haven’t been to, let alone gotten to do drag in. There are gay people everywhere, and they don’t often get to go out to a drag show.”
She throws her head back, laughing at the sheer audacity of the schedule. “Well, nobody has told me no!”
Why it Matters
Alaska’s ascent from Erie basement kid to leading a Tony-winning comedy across America is more than a personal victory — it is a marker of how far queer performance has travelled from the margins to the mainstream without sanding off its edges. *Oh, Mary!* does not ask audiences to tolerate its weirdness; it demands they surrender to it. In a cultural moment where visibility is increasingly weaponised and legislated against, a drag queen playing Mary Todd Lincoln in Peoria is not just entertainment. It is a quiet, sequinned act of resistance — proof that the most subversive thing a marginalised artist can do is refuse to shrink.
