Charles Busch Is Ready to Dish, So Watch Out!

Actor. Writer. Filmmaker. Playwright. Drag icon. These are just a handful of the titles Charles Busch has claimed over the course of his celebrated—and singular—entertainment career, which has taken him from Broadway to Hollywood (with more than a few “rat-infested basement” theater performances in between). While he has carefully crafted his role as a self-described “male actress,” and has a complicated relationship with being called a “drag queen,” “raconteur” might be the more befitting descriptor for the Tony-nominated creator of The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife.

While Busch has been telling stories for nearly half a century now, they’ve rarely been as personal as the ones he’s sharing in Leading Lady: A Memoir of a Most Unusual Boy, which traces his journey from a motherless boy in Hartsdale, New York to the so-called “godmother of drag.”

Busch is one of those rare humans who is unafraid to live life on his own terms, making up the rules as he goes along—then changing them as he sees fit. But even readers who are not familiar with Busch’s signature camp, which can be seen in plays-turned-movies like Die, Mommie, Die! and Psycho Beach Party, will find his endless series of personal anecdotes affecting and hard to put down. In Leading Lady, Busch doesn’t hide anything as he shares random moments from his extraordinary life—some of them heartbreaking, many of them hilarious, and others both at once.

Read more at The Daily Beast.