Leslie Jordan is a dream interview. While best known for his Emmy Award winning role as Beverly Leslie on Will & Grace, he is recently featured as witch’s council member Quentin Fleming on American Horror Story: Coven. He has had guest spots on many major shows – from Murphy Brown to Supernatural – is an AIDS and gay rights activist, and a stand up comedian. A charismatic and entertaining storyteller, one could listen to him share his experiences for hours. Jordan will be appearing December 26th at Evolution Wonderlounge in Edmonton for a stand up show. It brings him full circle, as his comedy career has early ties to Canada.

"I love Canada. Canadians remind me of old hippies; it’s just live and let live. I began my standup career in Toronto. Years ago there was a lesbian comedian named Maggie Cassella. She would put together these gay and lesbian comedy nights. She had seen me in a club in Provincetown and flew me in. I thought I would be doing maybe 10 to 15 minutes and she said Oh no honey – because of your Will & Grace fanbase, you’ve got an hour! What am I gonna talk about for an hour?! I jumped up and did it and that was how it all started," Jordan told GayCalgary.com over the phone from his West Hollywood home. Despite growing up in the South, and living in California, he is excited to be in Canada for Christmas.

"I spend a lot of time in London now and it is very cold there. I have a separate wardrobe I was digging through this morning. In LA, every day is 73 degrees, which sounds wonderful but after awhile you wake up and go Oh well; another fucking beautiful day. I thought December 26th was an odd day. I am travelling on Christmas Eve and that will give me a full day there. I have lived in hotels my entire adult life; I am a gregarious recluse. So I am going to have a beautiful Christmas in the snows of Canada. I have never been to Edmonton, or that part of Canada at all, so it will be fun. I’ve heard about that Stampede for years and years and years. I’ll only be in Edmonton a few days, so I won’t be able to make it to Calgary, but I would love to go there."

Jordan has developed multiple comedy shows over his career, including runs in New York and London.

"Many years ago – when I wrote a one-man show called Hysterical Blindness and Other Southern Tragedies That Have Plagued My Life Thus Far – I wrote it to showcase myself for better TV and film roles, but it was so popular it ended up running forever off-Broadway in New York. I wrote another one called Like a Dog on Linoleum, which toured the country. Then I did My Trip Down The Pink Carpet, which Lily Tomlin and her partner Jane Wagner produced. These were full shows, with 55 light cues and bells and whistles; it ended up in the West End in London. What I found was, when I do one night here and there like in Edmonton, it is just me and a mic. I like that best of all. Because it is Boxing Day I will have a lot of stories about growing up gay in the Deep South, and what Christmas was like. I will talk about whatever is on my mind. It’s like a dog and pony show! I do about 44 venues a year now in between TV shows. I just did American Horror Story and I talk about that. It is just me unwrapped, like a musician who just thinks up his set list. I have a million stories to draw from – who knows what will come out, but everyone will have a good time."

Jordan’s shows take him back to his theatre roots.

"I am first and foremost a performer. I fell into the sitcom work, and when you do a show like Will & Grace you get the best of both worlds because we shoot in front of a live audience, so you get that live feedback. I am so spoiled because I have been an actor for hire for many years, and then I do my one-man shows and stand-up comedy all over the world. You get so spoiled because you have a say in what you do. It is the television work that has to keep the ship afloat; that is, the money. Right now I don’t have a lot of TV ahead of me so I have to hit the road. Travel is not fun anymore at all. I have been doing it for 33 years and it has gotten to a point where I have to ask for a first-class ticket. I had to fly home from London in coach; you are three abreast with no elbowroom for 11 hours. It’s the worst, but I love doing the shows and being on stage. The only reason I can do it is because I am single, gay, don’t have children, and am older. I don’t think I could keep this life up if I had family ties because it is never ending. I am in Dallas December 22nd for a charity event, and then I fly to Edmonton and am there until the 27th, then I get a week off and then off to Mexico. Puerto Vallarta is a popular gay destination and I have been at a club there for five years that we pack them in – 2015 is booked solid. I do gay cruises as well with 4,000 gay men. I had to fly from Barcelona to New York to LA. I called a friend in the industry, who doesn’t work as much as I do, and said I am just exhausted and he goes, Oh, fuck you! That kind of put it in context. No one is going to listen to your complaints!"

At post-show meet and greets, Jordan is often asked about his appearances on Will & Grace. The groundbreaking show really was the start of more acceptance of gay characters on TV.

"I won an Emmy – which is unheard of. It was for Best Guest Actor in a Comedy. I was on the last five years but the rule is, if you are in less than five episodes in a season, you can be considered a guest actor. So I got this nomination and I was up against Ben Stiller and Martin Sheen and Patrick Stewart –and I won! That is pretty amazing. I really do think [that] when they write the history of gay characters on television, Will & Grace was the turning point. I have always felt there were two ways you could combat homophobia. One is through humour, which I learned in junior high dodge ball when they would holler ‘smear the queer’ and I had to tap dance or get creamed. The second way is to put a face on it. Here, in America, early on those characters were welcomed into people’s homes. Will & Grace was created by a straight guy (David Cohen) and a gay guy (Max Mutchnick) who were like a married couple. David would worry it was getting a little too gay and then Max would go We are leaning too republican! There was a wonderful balance. Gay fans would write in that Will should be kissing boys. Well no, you can’t just rush that into people’s homes. There were shows that came along after that like Queer as Folk that got that in. When I first started on the show, I would have people come up to me and go You’re on TV aren’t you? When I would say I was on Will & Grace, if they were straight men, they would inevitably say My wife/girlfriend watches that. They would never admit to watching it themselves. By the end of the run there were guys on the street doing construction that would yell I love you on that show and I would think to myself, Well, that’s progress. Will & Grace was the turning point. I have always thought that gay characters took almost the same path as African-American characters took in the 1970s. First it was just the neighbour. Then it became ‘African-American shows’ and now it’s just characters. I used to know every single gay character in television. Now, most of the top gay characters, I can’t even keep up with them. I like that; it is just a character and he happens to be gay. We have made a lot of progress."

The banter between Jordan’s Beverly Leslie and his nemesis Karen Walker, played by Megan Mullally, was a highlight of the show.

"My favourite to work with is probably Megan Mullaly. She is like me; she is not an actress that does a lot of preparation. She trusts the writers and, for her, it is just verbal ping-pong. We would go out there, I would throw my line at her and she would throw her’s back, and the adventure is in front of the camera. I love that kind of acting. I can’t bear the ones that want to sit there and chew and pontificate – let’s just do it! I am not sure what my objective is in the scene. Honey, it’s the paycheck. Now get your ass out there and have some fun."

Jordan’s career has tied in with many iconic females in the industry. He has worked with women like Lily Tomlin, Jessica Lange, Rue McClanahan, Delta Burke and Debra Messing, among others.

"The only one I was really in awe of was Lily Tomlin. Lily Tomlin had been my comedy idol since I was a kid. When I first met her, I told her that I love Sister Boogie Woman, which was off a record my sisters and I would listen to. I told her I could act it out and she said please don’t! I had a crush on her. The first night we worked together she asked why it had never happened before. I went home and wrote her a love letter that in my 50-plus years on the planet I had never met one person that I thought I would love to mentor me. This is the person that I want to be. Forget the fact that she is a comedy legend – she is an amazing human being. She has the three things that make up a good human being: curiosity, generosity and kindness. I have identical twin sisters and I would tell Lily stories about growing up with twins, and she was fascinated. When you talk to Lily, it is just you and her, and she can’t get enough."

Working with Golden Girl Rue McClanahan in her final acting role on Sordid Lives was another career highlight. Due to issues with pay, Jordan got to know her better post-taping when members of the cast hit the road together.

"I was so in awe of her. We shot Sordid Lives in Shreveport, Louisiana, which is this cesspool of vice. They have all these weird rules, like you can’t gamble except on boats. There are these huge casinos, but you have to go across these rickety bridges to go on house boats. Ms. Rue loved to gamble so we didn’t see much of her! We didn’t get paid, which wasn’t Logo’s fault. We got paid for shooting it, which is very little, [but] what we as actors look forward to is the residuals. A year went by and we had gotten nothing. If you and I were going to make a movie, we would give money to a payment service that would take care of taxes and payroll. Apparently the payroll service went bankrupt, so Logo would send them the cheques and these guys were using those cheques to rob Peter to pay Paul. So we didn’t get paid. Del Shores, who wrote Sordid Lives lost his home. Rue had lost a lot of money – I think in the Bernie Madoff scandal – and had to go back to work at 73. We hit the road because we were broke!  So it was me, Del, Rue, Carolyn Rhea, and Rue had never done stand-up. She was having a lot of trouble with her back so we would walk her out and sit her down in a chair. She kept saying I’ve never done this, I don’t know what to do! Cut to an hour later, and we couldn’t shut her up! All she had to do was sit and tell stories about The Golden Girls and people were rapt. I would tell her You’ve got to wrap it up honey; we each get 20 minutes! I got to know her really well, warts and all. She was the sweetest woman until she took pain pills – that made her mean! She was one of a kind. They broke the mould when they made Ms. Rue."

A show that has largely featured strong women is American Horror Story. Seasons Coven and Freak Show feature icons Jessica Lange, Kathy Bates and Angela Basset. Jordan had a three-episode storyline on Coven as Quinten Fleming, a member of the witch’s council who, not surprisingly, meets a gruesome end.

"Jessica is a movie star. She has breathed that rarified air for so long. She is friendly, available, very present with her work, but you don’t get much. It’s not like we sat down and chatted about when she was having babies with Mikhail Baryshnikov. She doesn’t give anything away; it was just work, and there is something to be said for that. I had been out on the road and I got the call about it. I went straight to New Orleans, having not wardrobed or read a script. Ryan Murphy is so protective and secretive about the show – we don’t get scripts. I am sure Jessica Lange or Kathy Bates do, but those of us that are hired to move the story along just get daily pages. It is like shooting a story where you don’t know what the story is, so you are so reliant on the director. I was just in awe of this cast. My new favourite actress on the planet is Francis Conway. Francis has done amazing work over the years. I was so in awe of her process and how she works. I would try to ask her a question and she would go I CAN’T TALK RIGHT NOW! She is all work. I remember thinking to myself, You’ve been doing sitcoms for too long – you have a degree in theatre and know how to do this shit – now buckle down and go to work! I was really proud to be in scenes with an actress of Jessica Lange’s caliber, and I held my own. I did pretty well."

Jordan’s charisma and 4’11 stature would make him a natural fit for the current season. Unfortunately, another opportunity came calling that he could not refuse.

"They offered me five episodes on Freak Show. Then, out of the blue, I got an offer to do a reality show in London. I said to my manager No way – why would I do that? We have got Freak Show. He said Leslie, it is more money than I can believe. We are talking a really healthy six figures. I don’t get that kind of money. When I worked on Horror Story, they pay the three Oscar winners so much that those that do the peripheral parts work for scale. It’s $8000 a week, but still, scale vs. this money I could have made. So for the first time in my career I turned something down and it was American Horror Story: Freakshow. They locked me in a house on Celebrity Big Brother and I made a complete ass of myself. I spit on Gary Busey, and on day 12 got kicked out for bad behaviour. I had to turn down Freakshow! I haven’t gotten to watch it yet so I don’t know what character it was. I hope it wasn’t Twisty the Clown! I don’t know what he had written for me, but it was going to be five episodes in a row, and then I was probably going to meet a grisly end."

Whether it is his openness about addiction, being an openly gay actor, or a connection with his characters, Leslie Jordan has consistently resonated with people, especially those in the gay community.

"I got off a bus in 1982 from the hills of Tennessee, from a very devout Southern Baptist family, and I discovered West Hollywood – where there were queers hanging from the trees and I was home. People ask me what the secret to my success is. People come to Hollywood with an idea: I will stay here for five years and if I don’t make it I will go home. I was just here. I built this amazing career and I was never in the closet. In the 1980s you would go to the bar and see every gay casting director and producer in town then, during the day, it was very buttoned down. We all tiptoed around each other for years. The industry I grew up in doesn’t even exist anymore. Because I was never in the closet, and landed in Los Angeles in ’82 during the height of the AIDS crises, I figured out very quickly we were going to get no help and had to take care of our own. So I had another life outside of my acting, where I learned to be of service. We did what we had to do and hit the trenches. I was there for the beginning of AIDS Project Los Angeles and Project Angel Food. We would cook meals and deliver them to people with AIDS. I have been honoured over the years, and am really glad that I learned that, because I still feel we have to take care of our own. People knew me as being funny but also for what I contributed. I went into recovery in 1997 and there is a huge recovery community. I have been to Vancouver and Toronto for recovery conventions. Now, with social media, I am so open about that kind of stuff – it all kind of meshed together. I have a very rabid following amongst my tribe. I am aiming now for some sort of crossover audience. When I do my stand-up I can sell out maybe a 300-seater. A couple of times I have been booked in 1,200-seat theatres but I don’t do well. Once you get past the gay community I don’t have a big following, so I am working on that."

Leslie Jordan has seen so much in his lifetime: from the AIDS crises to the acceptance of gay characters on TV.

"There was so much shame on HIV. It was a horribly shameful way to die. People would say it was cancer; people were dying alone on the only AIDS ward in LA because family and lovers had turned their backs, and even nurses wouldn’t come in. We had a group called Project Night Light that I was active in. We would take banana Popsicles and walk the halls of LA General and offer them to patients. The medications at the time made people’s mouths so dry. I learned to shut my big yap and listen. We have reached a point where I am still very active with AIDS organizations, but it’s not on the red carpet; it’s not the disease of the moment. So we have to stay active. If you came from where I came from – in a pew in a Baptist church scared to death that I was going to burn in hell – to where we are today, it is just mind blowing to me. I was thinking yesterday, [on] all the kids in the street, and African American kids getting shot by cops. I was thinking, they can march in the streets until the cows come home and it will bring some attention to the cause, but it is not going to change anything. I think that is what the gay community realized: that change comes from within. My big challenge right now is getting young gay men to vote. Get out of the bar honey and vote! We have to! Look at all the changes we have been able to bring about through the court system. It may not be popular opinion, about gay marriage, but it is right."

As our conversation winds down, there is emotion in his voice as he speaks about how much things have changed, from the world he knew as a child struggling with his sexuality.

"I am thrilled [with] where we are today. I went, not too long ago, to a church in Dallas called the Cathedral of Hope – a gay church. We walked in and I burst into tears. My friend was like Get a grip! What’s wrong? Never, in my wildest imaginings as a kid in a Baptist Church pew learning to hate myself, did I think that I could go from that to this church. It was amazing. They had a choir that was a cross section of humanity and a full orchestra. Honey, queers know how to do church. I sat there and sobbed the entire time because I never imagined I could be in a church with my tribe of gay people. I’m done; that’s enough for me. I can go to my grave now. We have gone as far as I need. I know we still have a lot more to go, and I wish everybody well, but I am just enjoying the fruits of the labour right now."

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Contributor Jason Clevett |

Person Leslie Jordan |

Topic Celebrity Interview | Will & Grace |