Fresh off her “RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 10” victory, Ginger Minj is helping steer queer culture’s latest act of resistance in the wildly campy disaster-comedy “Stop! That! Train!”
In theaters now for Pride Month, the drag-filled spoof directed by Adam Shankman, who brought the musical adaptation of “Hairspray” to the big screen, follows a runaway train, a RuPaul presidency and a cast of queens navigating chaos with more heart than common sense. For Minj, the film arrives at a moment when queer audiences could use a good laugh.
Minj stars as the relentlessly optimistic Tess, opposite longtime friend Jujubee as DeeDee, an endearingly airheaded fellow steward. In the film, Tess and DeeDee are reassigned to the Glamazonian Express after Stank Rail goes out of business. But when a vicious storm — dubbed “stormaganza” — derails the journey, they’re forced to step up and save the day.
While discussing the movie, Minj repeatedly returned to the healing power of comedy. Amid renewed attacks on LGBTQ+ rights in the U.S. and the cancellation of some Pride festivals, she calls the film’s theatrical release “Pride for everybody on the biggest scale possible” — a celebration of queer visibility, community and joy. Our conversation also touched on why movies featuring drag performers shouldn’t be limited to stories of trauma or coming out. Sometimes, she says, it’s enough to just let queer characters be gloriously ridiculous.
This film feels like an antidote to our current political climate.
That’s why we made it, because everybody needs to laugh right now. It’s one of those movies where it’s better with a group of people. That’s why I keep telling people: Go to the theater and see this with a group of people because there’s nothing as healing as laughing together.
I understand that you really stuck to what was on the page, but I was delighted to read that the chest bump between you and DeeDee was something that you came up with with Juju.
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Yeah. A lot of our bits we came up with together because we lived together at the time and so we’d be on set all day and then we’d come home and were tired, but we’d sit there with our script going over the stuff for the next day and just be like, “What can we do just to make Adam laugh and make everybody giggle?” So we would try it and Adam would be like, “OK, I like it. Let’s do it again.”
It becomes the thing that really makes their friendship feel emotional by the end.
Well, I’m so glad that it translates that way. I mean, that’s kind of how we are. We work together so much. We’re super close. I love her. She’s one of my favorite people in the world and we chest bump each other all the time. At Pride and everywhere, I want to see everybody boop-boopin’.
Growing up, what were the films that taught you that you could be bigger, stranger and campier?
Well, I’ve always been big and strange. It was just finding a world where that fit. I was at a slumber party birthday when I was 8, 9 years old. The kid’s family’s favorites were the “Airplane!” movies. I hadn’t seen them before. So we sat down and watched part one and part two and the one that stuck out to me the most was when the Girl Scouts get into a bar fight and they start slinging each other around. It was so funny to me because it was so serious but so stupid and that’s still one of my favorite comedy moments of any movie ever.
Then, of course, I started falling down the rabbit hole of actually watching the old disaster movies. “Earthquake” was my favorite and “The Poseidon Adventure” and finding the absurdity and how it’s so rooted in reality and that’s what makes it funny. I like when they just play it for the stakes, they play it as a drama, and you find the humor in the situation. That’s such an allegory for the world too. If we don’t laugh, we’re going to cry.
It does feel like an exaggerated version of the America that we’re living in, if there could be one, with RuPaul as president.
I will go on record as saying: RuPaul should be president. As long as I’ve known RuPaul, and that’s decades, [that’s been true].
Did you have to audition for the role alongside other “Drag Race” queens?
The other girls like to make a big deal out of it sometimes, but no, I didn’t audition for this one for two reasons. One, I had done “The Bitch Who Stole Christmas” for World of Wonder [Productions] and VH1, which was also written by Connor [Wright] and Christina [Friel]. So when they wrote this role for Tess, they literally said, “It’s a Ginger Minj type.” It wasn’t until months later after I had already signed on — Juju had already been cast — and we were talking with Adam for our pre-production meeting and he was like, “This is going into movie theaters. This is a big deal.”
You came to drag through the theater. Did Tess feel more like building a stage character, a film character, something entirely different?
Tess felt like the version of myself that I strive to be at all times. She’s very much a glass half full kind of girl. She looks at every situation, no matter how tragic and traumatic it is and says, “I can work with it. I can make magic out of this. This is my chance.” I just wanted to take the best parts of me and put them together with the things that I truly try to be and make that Tess.
Were there any jokes or moments in the movie where you thought, I can’t believe they’re letting us get away with this?
I do remember in the script, it said I was just preparing a snack basket whenever Donna [Dusk, played by Rachel Bloom] comes on the monitor. We rehearsed it without anything in the basket. And then I get there to shoot and it’s vibrators and condoms and lube. And then they ended up having to call cut because I had the vibrator on my face, just watching. So there were moments where things would just appear on set and I’d go, “OK, I guess this is what we’re doing now.” They were like, well, we have to because Trojan is a sponsor, so we’re using these things as product [placement]. I was like, it’s fine. I’ll use it, but you may not like how I choose to use it. [Laughs.]
They were like, well, we have to because Trojan is a sponsor, so we’re using these things as product [placement]. I was like, it’s fine. I’ll use it, but you may not like how I choose to use it.
How fun was it to go head to head with Brooke Lynn, Marcia Marcia Marcia and Symone as your nemeses?
It was really fun. I mean, I’ve known Brooke Lynn for forever. I knew her before either of us were ever on “Drag Race” through Continental Pageantry. I’ve always loved her. And I’m not going to say that she’s a mean girl, but she is very much that character in the way that she holds herself. She is an intimidating kind of presence. She’s so beautiful. She’s so polished.
She’s got those high cheekbones. High cheekbones are always a little intimidating.
Yeah, and she paid a lot of money for them, so she makes sure she shows them off.
I would too.
Me too! And she is an intimidating presence. She’s a lot like RuPaul in the sense that, yeah, she’s a sister and she wants to kiki and cut up and have a good time, but she’s also still very tall, very statuesque and intimidating. So it was easy to play those scenes opposite her because she’s so good at that. But as soon as they’d call cut, all five of us were running back to our group chat to be like, OK, when can we go see “Wicked” part two together?
What does it mean to you for this to be getting a theatrical release during Pride Month?
What I really love about that is that I’m from Florida, so I’m right in the thick of where they’re trying to strip us of our rights and take our Pride away completely. They’ve cut funding. They’ve put rules in place so that we can’t celebrate publicly with each other. And I feel like this movie going into theaters during Pride Month is our way of combating that. This is Pride for everybody on the biggest scale possible.
Did making this movie change how you see the possibilities for drag artists in Hollywood and beyond?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think about the first time I sat in a movie theater and watched a drag performer just be a movie star: It was RuPaul in “The Brady Bunch Movie.” It was in my little Southern Baptist town. I went with my mother. I knew everybody that was in that audience because everybody in that town knew everybody and all their tea. And when Ru came on the screen, I remember holding my breath and looking around and seeing all of these people who I know in their heart of hearts are really kind of homophobic because that’s what they’ve been raised and taught. We’re just buying Ru as this character and laughing along. And then when “Too Wong Fu” came out, I remember what a big deal it was, but I was also sitting there going, well, yeah, but all the real drag queens are playing bit parts. RuPaul has a couple of scenes and she’s great. Why isn’t she playing the Wesley Snipes role? So it’s nice to finally have a movie that relies on drag being told from a real drag performer’s perspective. I think that’s monumental.
For so long, the community has been asking for stories that aren’t just about queer trauma or coming out. What does a movie like “Stop! That! Train!” accomplish simply by letting queer people be ridiculous?
Well, what I love the most about Tess and DeeDee is that we never had a conversation about gender at all. So if you view these two characters as women, they’re women. If you view them as drag queens, they’re drag queens. If you view them as anything, they can be that because they’re just Tess and DeeDee. And we don’t put the emphasis on gender like everybody tries to do with everything right now. They try to put everybody and everything into a box and then say, “Oh, that box is wrong. You shouldn’t pack it that way.” So I think it’s really refreshing that you have drag artists playing people. I think that’s really beautiful.
It’s been a little surprising watching different audiences watch it and seeing straight people, like me watching “The Brady Bunch Movie” all those years ago, seeing all of these typically homophobic straight people just buy into it immediately and laugh along because they’re like, “Oh, this is really comfortable and I get this. This is my world too.”
After many years on “Drag Race,” you snagged the top spot in “All Stars 10” in 2025. How do you reflect on that win and what it meant for the drag artists who are more traditional pageant queens?
Honestly, it’s something that I was so hyper-focused on for over a decade of my life. I love “RuPaul’s Drag Race.” It’s my favorite TV show. I love being a part of it. I love filming it. I love competition. And it was like the cherry on top of a really beautiful decade-long love story for me and my fans and “Drag Race” and RuPaul.
It just felt like it was the right time. And the other times that I had competed and gotten close but not won, there were a lot of people who thought that maybe I should have. And in my mind I was like, “No, I don’t think this is the time.” But I always told myself, there’s going to be a time and you will be there for it. And then it just all kind of clicked together for “All Stars 10.” It felt right.
I feel like Tess might say the same about her own journey to the Glamazonian Express.
In the pageant world, that’s what you do. You grow, you learn, you come back and you do better. And that’s what I was just really proud to represent for all of those pageant girls who I do think get a little bit of a bad rep sometimes on the television show. And I think it was really wonderful to be like, “You can get knocked down and you can come back and you can be better than you were.” That’s just how we should try to be at all times. Very Tess and DeeDee.