Bob The Drag Queen Is Living His Broadway Dream in Moulin Rouge!, Says Megan Thee Stallion 'Has This in the Bag'

Bob The Drag Queen has conquered a lot of stages—and Broadway has officially joined the list. The comedian and RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 8 winner is currently making his Broadway debut as Harold Zidler, the ringleader of chaos, glamour and champagne dreams in Moulin Rouge! The Musical through March 22.

Zidler has quietly become one of Broadway’s most delicious wild-card roles, previously inhabited by Tony winner Danny Burstein and pop provocateur Boy George, as well as Broadway and TV favorites Tituss Burgess and Wayne Brady, with Megan Thee Stallion waiting in the wings. It’s a part built for larger-than-life personalities who know how to command a room, flirt with an audience and keep the party moving. In other words: Bob.

What makes this moment especially satisfying is that Broadway isn’t a novelty stop on Bob’s résumé—it’s a long-held dream finally clicking into place. He studied theater, toured the country doing children’s theater (sometimes literally driving the truck), auditioned for Wicked in his youth and always believed he’d land here somehow. He just took the scenic route—via stand-up comedy, drag superstardom, global tours, podcasts, television and a bestselling novel (Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert, out in paperback March 10.)

Now, Bob is living in a very red world eight shows a week, trading punchlines for pop anthems and discovering that Broadway may not be restful—but it’s one hell of a reset.

Welcome to Broadway. How’s the old gal treating you?
I’ve adjusted quite nicely. I enjoy the regularity of my schedule, which I’m not used to having as a stand-up. My career is quite eclectic these days, so this is a fun little respite, so to speak. I don’t know if they would ever call Broadway restful, but for me, it has been quite a little reset.

Between your comedy gigs, drag gigs, podcasts and YouTube content, it must be nice to just relax in someone else’s show.
Well, yeah. It’s nice to be in one spot for a while.

I’m happy you’re getting a little Broadway vacation—in a very high-energy show! What’s it been like actually jumping on that stage every night?
I learned a lot from this cast. There are a lot of Broadway veterans in there. André Ward [who plays Toulouse-Lautrec] was actually in Xanadu, the first Broadway show I ever saw, which is funny, because he’s also in the first Broadway show I was ever in. He made a really big impact on me and didn’t even know it until I told him.

This role has become such a fun platform for fantastic stars. Broadway’s Danny Burstein won a Tony Award when it first opened, and we've seen Tituss Burgess, Boy George, Wayne Brady and we just found out Megan Thee Stallion is next up. What do you love about Zidler?
I enjoy the MC, the Master of Ceremonies, because it correlates a lot to the work I do in my real life—hosting for years in New York City, hosting the Madonna tour, hosting Werq the World. I hosted the Out Loud comedy special on Netflix. Hosting and emceeing are very much in my wheelhouse.

I was fascinated to learn you are colorblind. It makes me wonder what the eye-popping world of Moulin Rouge! looks like for you.
Well, it’s red, incredibly red. That is a shade of red that I recognize. I don’t know how everyone else sees it, but I know how I see it, and it looks bright, bright blood red to me!

You moved to New York in 2008 and said Broadway was always the dream, but you didn’t feel ready as a singer and dancer back then. What were those early days like?
I auditioned for quite a few Broadway shows. I auditioned for Wicked, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular, national tours. I still can’t sing and dance very well now—probably less now than back then—but I’ve learned a lot more about performing, stage presence and acting.

You’ve said you always knew you would end up on Broadway somehow.
In my opinion, you just have to get in front of the right people.

You wound up doing a lot of children’s theater around the country back then, which can be a great living for aspiring performers.
I worked for the Missoula Children’s Theatre [in Montana]—I was actually driving a truck around. I worked for CLIMB Theatre [in Minnesota] and the Grumbling Gryphons Travel Children [in Connecticut]. I went to school for theater education, so children’s theater wasn’t a means to an end for me. I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed education through art. I was in plays like Rumpelstiltskin, Snow White, Anansi the Spider, and then a show called Shattered about methamphetamine prevention for high schoolers and a play called The Ghost Net about environmental awareness.

There’s more of an intersection between Broadway and Drag Race these days, with many queens from the show doing Broadway, or wanting to. In the early years of the show, I didn’t hear much about contestants’ theater backgrounds.
I went to school for theater. Being a New York City drag queen... a lot of us are actors who found our way to the cloth, as I call it. There are drag queens who did Broadway before Drag Race—Milan [aka Dwayne Cooper] was in Hairspray, Smokey Joe’s Cafe, Sweeney Todd, Motown... Varla Jean Merman was in Chicago.

Speaking of theater roles, you also played Belize in Angels in America at Berkeley Rep in 2018.
Yeah. I worked with Stephen Spinella, Tony Award winner for the original cast of Angels in America [who played Roy Cohn]. I also worked with Tony Kushner and Tony Taccone, who at the time was the artistic director of Berkeley Rep.

Would you like to do more unexpected roles like that?
The short answer is yes. I’ve only done two large-scale theater productions—Angels in America and Moulin Rouge! Theater was my first love, but she didn’t really love me back. My first reciprocal love was stand-up comedy. There are no gatekeepers in stand-up. With theater, you really have to go through auditions and channels.

You’re a great stand-up. Are you always thinking about comedy, plotting out jokes?
I find humor in a lot of stuff. Most comedians are people who have been deeply hurt at some point in their life. A lot of comedians are sad or have been very sad, and they find humor in the saddest things, which makes stand-up comedy relatable.

Have you been mining humor from the Broadway experience?
Oh yeah. I’m always having a laugh backstage, sometimes even onstage when I shouldn’t be. It’s a grueling schedule, but we’re all sharing the experience together—the good, the trying, the bad. I was there when they announced the closing of the show to the company. I’ve had a lot of Broadway experiences in a short eight weeks!

You’re coming up on the 10th anniversary of your Drag Race win this May. How does one celebrate such a milestone?
Shockingly enough, I don’t have anything planned. Maybe I’ll make a [social media] post like, “Ten years ago I won RuPaul’s Drag Race.” That might be the big plan. [Laughs.]

Is your Broadway dream bigger than Moulin Rouge! The Musical? Think you'll be back?
I would like to do more Broadway for sure. I’m always working on my stand-up and writing shows myself. Hopefully this is not the last time the Great White Way sees my face.

Finally, what’s your number one piece of Broadway survival advice for Megan Thee Stallion?
I think Meg’s probably got this in the bag. She’s younger, has more energy and more resources than I do! I’m honored to pass the baton on to my namesake—we have the same middle name, Thee. We’re from the legendary family of Thee: Charlamagne tha God, Cedric the Entertainer, Kermit the Frog, Barney the Dinosaur. We all meet up at the family reunion once every ten years!

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