Gretna’s own Roy Haylock, better known as international drag superstar Bianca Del Rio, returns to New Orleans on April 24 at the Mahalia Jackson Theater with his newest solo comedy tour Dead Inside. With the theater seating over 2,200, it may be a little smaller than London’s Wembley Arena (capacity: 12,000+) which his It’s Jester Joke tour sold out in 2019, but a tad larger than Bourbon Street’s Oz where he used to host Drag Bingo.
I recently spoke with Haylock who was in Ontario getting ready for a show that evening. Asked how things were there, he quipped “Canada–it’s better than America”, but one could detect an underlying irony in his voice.
“It’s kinda a blur when you’re on the road like this,” he said. “It’s my sixth solo tour so you just roll with the punches.” He has learned, though, after the occasional missing piece of luggage, to “always be prepared for any occasion” which basically translates to “always travel with a turban and a caftan.”
Bianca Del Rio (photo by Shaun Vadella)
Haylock has been “shlepping around the globe” for ten years now and sometimes it’s “really hard to remember where you are.”
The first leg of the Dead Inside tour covers 60+ dates in North America; Asia, Europe, Australia, and South Africa will follow, taking Bianca into 2025. The only continent she hasn’t appeared on yet is Antarctica, but Haylock seems willing to go there, as he claims “I’ll do a show for the fucking penguins.”
Asked how Covid affected him, Haylock replies “I was planning to take some time off anyway, and bought a house and settled in Palm Springs since it’s cheaper than plastic surgery.”
Palm Springs? “I love Palm Springs. After all those years of busy towns–New York, New Orleans, Los Angeles–it’s calm and pretty low-key. I go home and hibernate till I’m ready to go on the road again. I never thought I’d be a California person, much less a Palm Springs person, but the rest is history.”
Now I’ve never been to Palm Springs so without any prompting from me he continued, “I’ve embraced my old age [hmmm…at a youthful 48, Haylock won’t be getting AARP mailers for a while but to each his own] so I just keep adding lashes to cover wrinkles. What’s the alternative? You’re dead or you’re not working. I’m gonna plow through as long as I can, though I do think there’s an expiration date on all this shit.”
Expiration dates aside, there’s always the matter of his brand of humor. With Bianca Del Rio being the putative love child of Don Rickles and Joan Rivers (Bianca was the penultimate guest on Rivers’ In Bed with Joan), Haylock observes “I’m from the old school; people like it who come to see it. It’s different than appealing to the mainstream. I’m a niche.”
Haylock is proudly Hispanic, “my mother’s from Cuba, my father’s Honduran,” but states “as far as being ‘PC’ is concerned, it’s a fucking joke. I’ve always been ‘PC’–‘Pretty Cunty’”, and confidently adds “the smart people get it.”
I wondered if Dead Inside had changed or evolved much since it began touring in San Diego in February. “The show changes every night,” Haylock answered. “I start out with more material than I need. There are things I put in and take out. I have a large map of things [to talk about] and leave enough air to adjust.”
At one of the gay Mardi Gras balls this year, I was chatting with Dewitte Loe, spouse of Jeffery Roberson Loe (aka Varla Jean Merman) who said that Jeff can’t just “do” Varla, he needs the wig and make-up and outfits. I wanted to ask Haylock if he feels the same way about Bianca, but at the mere mention of Varla’s name, he chimed in “I love Varla and have been a huge fan for many years.”
Bianca Del Rio and Varla Jean Merman hosting the 2017 Bourbon Street Awards
After recalling a time when they both happened to be in Norway and wound up “drinking in a bar till 9am with the sun out”, he said that, for him “Roy and Bianca are the same person.”
As for New Orleans, Haylock’s most recent visit was for Tiffany Alexander’s birthday roast (“I love nothing more than to come back and be a total cunt to Tiffany Alexander.”) and if he doesn’t get back here as often as he once did, this hometown boy states, “I forget how much I miss it and how much I enjoy it.”
I vividly recall meeting Roy for the first time when, as a spear carrier in the 1998 New Orleans Opera production of Samson and Delilah, I had gone for a fitting at the Mahalia Jackson, and I started talking to this quiet young man who was there working on some of the opera’s outfits.
Now, Haylock says, “It’s all surreal appearing at the Mahalia Jackson where I brought the costumes down for shows. Never would’ve thunked that I’d wind up back there like this. How fucking lucky I’ve been. It’s surreal on so many levels.”
I had other questions for Roy, but my allotted interview time was up. In true Bianca fashion, he signed off with “I’m excited to come back home, excited to come back to New Orleans, excited to find out who’s dead and who’s alive and who I still owe money to.”
I suspect anyone who has a ticket to Dead Inside is pretty excited too.
[For tickets and more information about future Dead Inside tour dates, go to https://www.thebiancadelrio.com/dead-inside-tour]
