Cover Story: Trixie Mattel’s Hollywood Housewife Horrorshow
Plot Synopsis: A buxom starry-eyed ingenue from rural Wisconsin moves to Los Angeles with dreams of fame, only to be tormented by a gang of bloodthirsty clowns…
A shrewd businesswoman will stop at nothing to get ahead in the cutthroat cosmetics industry, even if it means performing a series of ritual disembowelments…and YouTube tutorials…
What at first seems like an innocent friendship with a professional colleague from the Soviet Union soon spirals into a feverish odyssey of drug use, vaginal penetration with a rusty rake, and teeth extracted without anesthetic in a lesbionic frenzy…
Doom is imminent at a dilapidated roadside motel, presided over by a cross-dressing maniac…and conveniently located in Palm Springs.
These are just a few of the ghoulish delights you may encounter when reckoning with the prolific sprawl of country music sweetheart, unlikely atheist icon, and upwardly-mobile blonde bombshell Trixie Mattel. Ever the gracious Halloween Hostess, the ravishing Ms. Mattel has taken time out of her busy schedule playing hardball with the coastal elite to show us all that spooky season has to offer, including:
*Proper pumpkin-carving etiquette.
*Crafty and cost-effective table settings for a Satanic Mass.
*How to barely conceal the abject terror of the human condition by bobbing for apples.
*Spiderweb Doilies!
*Tips on becoming an effective cult leader…and so much more!
Is there nothing that Trixie can’t do? Stay tuned for urban legends, split personalities, and haunted dolls as Trixie tells me all about her Hollywood Housewife Horrorshow.
Kamikaze Jones: I want to start off by addressing your fears. What is the most horrifying experience you've ever had in Hollywood?
Trixie Mattel: There's honestly several.
KJ: I would love to hear them all if you're willing to revisit them?
TM: Yes, of course. I was at the Critics’ Choice Awards. I was nominated for Best Comedy Special and I was there by myself, because all the other comedy specials nominated were Netflix or Hulu, and everyone was with their teams and I was self-produced. I knew I was going to lose to Bo Burnham, but I had my little Jeremy Scott outfit on, and I was feeling my little fantasy. This woman (lets call her “Kelly”) comes up to me and she goes:
"Trixie, it's Kelly!"
I go "Hi."
She goes "Kelly from (censored) Publicity Company! We talked a few years ago about you being my client."
I say "Yeah, it was really sweet of you. I guess I've just been with the same publicist and I really like the chemistry, it's been working out."
She goes "Oh, well, if you were my client, you wouldn't be standing here at the back of this long line!"
Which was so cunty, and I was in full drag and on my last nerve so I go:
"Oh, is that what you do, Kelly? You walk to the back of the line and drum up business with the least famous person you can find?"
And she goes "I don't have to drum up business."
Out of nowhere, Venus and Serena Williams come up and grab her arm-in-arm, and they walk away to the front of the line with Will Smith and Jada Pinkett. So…that was pretty humiliating. Then they closed the red carpet in my face, so I didn't even get to do the red carpet. So I went home in an Uber alone in full drag and sat on my couch with my wig off and watched myself lose the category. That was a pretty bad one, nightmare-wise.
What else is pretty scary? Um, I get photographed a lot by straight people and the lighting always sucks.
KJ: The fear of exposure! Have you ever been on a Hollywood True Crime tour?
TM: No, I live in Hollywood, so I live in a true crime tour: trespassing, public defecation, masturbating outside the 711 down the street from my house. Los Angeles itself is a human rights violation.
KJ: I visited LA for the first time this year. It really is a land of palpable delusion.
TM: Totally. People's lives are dedicated to pretending to live. Pretending to jog. Pretending to take out the trash. Everything is pretend.
KJ: It felt that everyone had that look in their eye that Gloria Swanson has at the end of Sunset Boulevard, where she realizes she's being perceived.
TM: Everybody's on the lookout to be discovered.
KJ: California is known historically for some of the most notorious cults of all time: Heaven's Gate, The Manson Family, The Church of Scientology. I'm wondering: If you were a cult leader, what would your belief system be? How would you run your cult?
TM: Well, many cults are started by people who have entertainment backgrounds. Failed actors, failed dancers, failed singers. It's people with some kind of charisma and magnetism that they misuse for evil. If I had a cult we wouldn't be very profitable. It would be like The Masked Avengers, where we would put on outfits and go do things like pick up trash, or feed the homeless. A merry wellness gang would be my vibe.
KJ: I was envisioning a lot of flowing caftans for you. Laurel Canyon. Goop-adjacent. An ayahuasca ceremony, maybe?
TM: All we would eat is sides and desserts from Midwestern BBQ. We're making cherry fluff. We're making pasta salad. We're making potato salad and green bean casserole. It's a lot of delicious high-calorie side dishes.
KJ: Did y'all do ambrosia in the Midwest? Is that a thing for you?
TM: Of course! Girl, have you ever had the treat that's like caramel drizzle, apple slices, and chopped-up Snicker bars with whipped topping? Something I love about the Midwest is there is no lack of creativity when it comes to experimenting with kooky recipes. That would be the primary mission of my cult: is that we only eat weird Midwestern side-dishes like tater-tot hot dish and shit like that.
KJ: Growing up in Wisconsin as an indigenous person, I'm wondering if you have any connection to the Ojibwe legend of the Windigo, or if there's any haunted Lake Michigan stories you have from your youth?
TM: Are you kidding?! Do you know about Haunchyville? Mama, Haunchyville, they say it's outside of Janesville, Wisconsin. The legend is that all the little people who were in the Wizard of Oz took their paychecks, moved to Wisconsin, and created a tiny village, to get away from society in order to have their own community, their own world. They say it's guarded by a big super tall man who drives a pickup truck and carries a shotgun. Everyone knows one person who's been there.
KJ: In Connecticut, primarily in Loosey LaDuca country, actually, we grew up with the urban legend of the melon heads—feral humanoid children hiding in the woods. Kind of a "The Hills Have Eyes" narrative.
TM: I’m sure they know how to Let Loose.
KJ: You've spoken often about Brian [Firkus] and Trixie sharing a body in the past. I'm wondering how that feels in terms of navigating interpersonal relationships. Is it a Jekyll and Hyde scenario for you?
TM: You know, I used to think that drag queens who were in the dressing room and didn't drop the character were annoying, but as I've gotten older—did you watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Remember how Ben and Glory split a body? In drag I really do feel like a different person entirely. It's a different brain. Brian's brain shuts off, Trixie's brain installs like a USB drive. I have a different mental acuity, I have a different sense of humor, I have a different walk, a different voice, everything from my attention span to my temper is really a different person. Brian is so normcore. Trixie is this vibrant, bright, confident, funny sexual being.
KJ: The performance artist Paul Soileau [AKA CHRISTEENE] has spoken to me about that threshold in the past.
TM: CHRISTEENE is amazing. She lives to poke the bear. She lives to fuck with the system. She does drag activism in a way that is a big Fuck You to everyone.
KJ: Outside of that persona, Paul is a very lovely, thoughtful queer with a gentle twang from Louisiana. It's cool to see that dichotomy.
TM: Trixie, honestly, is my impersonation of a rich, famous, beautiful, confident American girl. She's made to be stupid, vapid, self-involved. Not a good person. She's sort of my critique on Americanized Caucasian wealth and beauty. She's a capitalist, whereas out of drag, I'm a diehard socialist. I think everybody over a certain tax bracket...I literally think if you make a million dollars, everything over that should just be given back, should go towards the homeless, children, schools, teachers. The rich should be taking care of the poor in this country all the time. I live in Hollywood, and up this hill right here, there's people in $30 million homes, and then there's people outside these mansions sleeping on the ground. How can these realities exist this close together? Capitalism will never truly work because humans consistently abuse the system in their own favor.
KJ: This brings me to the work of a socially-conscious musician and idol of yours: philanthropist and national treasure Ms. Dolly Parton. I have a lot of questions about Southern Gothic narratives in country and bluegrass music, which manifest a lot in Dolly's early songwriting and often tackle issues of class. We've got pacts with the devil. We've got murder ballads. We've got babies drowned in the crick. Do you have a favorite Gothic country song?
TM: Sort of a morose tale? Yes, thank you for asking. I learned to play guitar from my grandpa, who was a professional musician his whole life. There's a beautiful song he would sing called Long Black Veil. My friend Trapper Schoepp does a gorgeous version of it. It's about this guy being framed for a murder, and he has to either give an alibi, or be executed for the murder. Because he was having a secret romance with his friend's wife, he can't provide an alibi. After his death, she walks the hills in a long black veil and weeps beside his grave. I didn't really get how sad it was until I was an adult. I kind of tried my hand at that. I have a track from my second album called "Red Side of the Moon."— Everybody always says that Dolly Parton is a secret lesbian.
KJ: Like Dusty Springfield?
TM: Yes. I don't believe that, but the idea that she might be has always interested me. So I wrote this song called "Red Side of the Moon" that talks about a woman named Judy, and the trials and tribulations of what it would be like to be in love with someone closeted who's in the spotlight. I love happy sounding songs with miserable lyrics. The Go-Go’s were incredible at that.
KJ: You're known as an avid doll collector. What is the spookiest doll in your collection?
TM: I collect this doll called Dusty. Dusty was popular when Women's Lib started, in the Gloria Steinem era. A company called Kenner made Dusty, and if you look her up she isn't exactly a beauty...
KJ: She's kind of giving... one of these images is like if Tan Mom starred in Midsommar.
TM: She only lasted about a year and a half before she was pulled from the shelves and I love her. I probably have the biggest Dusty collection in the world. Nobody wanted her but something about her being a failed doll was a sign of the times. She really was a big symbol that women were struggling for control over how they were perceived.
KJ: You've said some insightful things in past interviews about the social history of dolls, and their anthropological context.
TM: The great thing about being a doll nerd is dolls are nothing if not historical landmarks. We can learn so much about the history of gender performance through dolls. We can learn a lot about what women were expected to be by looking at what types of toys we were encouraging little girls to play with.
KJ: I went down a rabbit hole doing research for this interview and found the original Halloween Hostess Barbies going for $800 and up on the Walmart website.
TM: I have a lot of those old Barbie costumes. The one where she’s in the clown outfit. The one where she’s a snappy little witch. Most of my Barbies are at the Trixie Motel or at my drag studio. At home we only have one black and white swimsuit ponytail Barbie.
KJ: If there was a slasher film set at the Trixie motel what would the premise be?
TM: I think the guests all go insane and the staff has to fight them off.
KJ: Is there iron in the water? Is there a bad batch of GHB at the circuit party?
TM: Everybody gets sunstroke and wakes up and goes on a rampage. This sounds corny but it's hard for me to imagine anything bad ever happening at the motel, even with the large amount of Goths that stay there.
KJ: If you and Katya are in a horror movie, who's dying first?
TM: Oh, are you kidding me? Katya is never going to die. I don't drink anymore. I don't do drugs. I run 3-5 miles a day. I floss. I will be dead by next year, I'm sure. Katya will continue to treat her body like a dump truck and live forever.
KJ: Lastly, if you were to fuck any classic horror villain, who would it be?
TM: Oh God. Jason. Jason is this big hulking—I love men of size. I love men who eat. I love men who eat two dinners. I love men who lift weights. I like big massive men. Big heads. Big ears. Big hands. I love giants, right? Big bellies. Big muscles. Everything big. Jason's quiet. He loves his mom. He can't die. He kind of owns a campground. I own a motel. It's kind of the same thing. I think we can make it work.
KJ: I think he could definitely lay it down.
TM: Plus, he only kills straight people. That is ideal husband material.
Trick R’ Treat, Trixie, we can’t wait to see what horrors you’ll unleash upon us next!
—
Creative Direction & Interview by Kamikaze Jones @kamikazejones_
Art Direction, Photography, Set Design, and Collage by Savana Ogburn @savanaogburn
Lighting by Ethan Benavidez @ethanbenavidez
Assisted by Sadie Spezzano @sadiejspezzano
