Interview: John Cameron Mitchell: HEDWIG 25TH ANNIVERSARY MOVIE TOUR at Théâtre Beanfield

Some interviews stay with you because of who you're speaking to. Others stay with you  because of where the conversation takes you.

When I was producing and performing as Yitzhak in a Montreal production of HEDWIG AND  THE ANGRY INCH in 2018, Hedwig composer Stephen Trask visited our company for a  masterclass, attended our dress rehearsal, and joined us for a talkback after opening night.  Playing Yitzhak changed me as an artist. It taught me about vulnerability, physicality, and the  extraordinary humanity at the heart of a story that has meant so much to so many for more than two decades.

So when I had the opportunity to speak with John Cameron Mitchell ahead of the 25th  anniversary tour of the film, I knew I wanted to skip the standard questions and talk instead  about the artistry, empathy and punk spirit that continue to make Hedwig feel as vital today as it  did 25 years ago.

John Cameron Mitchell is celebrating the 25th anniversary of the landmark film HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH with a North American tour featuring special screenings of the newly restored 4K version of the film, live performances and conversations with audiences. Originally created with composer Stephen Trask as an Off-Broadway musical in 1998, HEDWIG became a beloved cult-classic film in 2001, touching generations of audiences through its fearless exploration of identity, love, resilience and belonging. Ahead of his Montreal stop, I spoke with Mitchell about the enduring legacy of HEDWIG, finding strength in being a misfit, and why empathy remains punk rock.

Thank you so much for taking the tine to speak with me today, John. I’m incredibly excited for the Montreal stop next week, but before we dive into the tour, I have to tell you that this interview is a bit of a full-circle moment for me. One of my oldest friends is Michael Cerveris. When he came to LA to do the show in 1999, I think I brought every, single person I knew to experience it with me. In fact, he included photos I shot of him at The Roxy and the Virgin Megastore on his website for decades. Through Michael, I met Stephen (Trask). Flash forward to 2018. I produced and performed as Yitzhak in a production here in Montreal. Stephen came in and taught a masterclass for my company, sat in on our dress rehearsal and did a talk back with the audience after our opening night performance. To be honest, tackling Yitzhak completely shaped how I grew as an artist. I used to sit downtown for hours just studying the weight and stride of how men walked so I could accurately inhabit that specific, heavy masculinity. It ended up bringing some of the greatest reviews of my career, but more than that, it gave me a massive reverence for just how deeply complex your writing is.

So, sitting across from you on Zoom today feels deeply special. Because you and Stephen have shared this masterpiece with so many of us, I really wanted to skip the usual questions and talk about the real, tactile artistry of this journey. But I just had to fan girl a little and tell you about my connection and deep, deep, deep love for the show.

Awwww. I love it. Thank you.

When you hand-picked Michael to replace you in the original off-Broadway production how did it feel seeing another actor take on  this role that you had created? Was there anything different that you noticed about the role that you didn't  necessarily even realize you had written?

It was very easy to see other people do it because I didn't have to do it. It’s a hard one. I remember the the moment I realized it was after someone mentioned, “you know, you've written a play here, not an act, which means other people can do it.” I remember telling that to Cole Escola about OH, MARY! There is a certain brotherhood, a sisterhood, a siblinghood of Hedwigs around the world. It's so hard that for most people, it's the most difficult role ever. Things don't feel so scary to attempt after the massiveness of Hedwig - physically and emotionally and vocally, you know…So I was just thrilled that someone else could do it. And Michael’s, more of a kind of a real rocker than me, having had this band and such. So he really excelled in those rock songs. Especially Angry Inch. He was like a force, you know. I think playing a woman was a little bit newer for him. So he was still kind of negotiating that. It took time for him to kind of find the light touch. Sometimes straight guys overdo the drag. You know, they're like, “I'm playing a woman!” Whereas a gay guy tends to sometimes just be. Darren Criss did that too, but then settled into it because it was not necessary. It was just, BE the person. You don't have to indicate anything. The drag does a lot of work. You don't have to simper or go over the top. So everyone learns as they do it. It's been really fun doing the tour, seeing how, like your story about it…everyone seems to have a story about HEDWIG after 25 years. A lot of it had to do with certain time in their youth. Showing the film to friends and future partners even as a kind of litmus test of whether they were cool. 

I love it. I did that. 

I'm very touched that Hedwig did touch so many people around the world, even in places it was banned. We've always had a wildly diverse crowd. It’s never been just gay or just drag oriented. The audience has been wildly diverse. Really, what's in common is they have a certain empathy, they have a certain sense of humor. That’s what ties it together, because the character is the ultimate, in some ways, loser, you know, the victim, uh misfit, and unless you're just completely dishonest, everyone has felt that way. Some people take that and do something bad with

it. You can't imagine Elon Musk was very popular in school. But he's clearly trying…there’s a madness there and he's clearly trying to compensate for that. But others, their misfitness builds their empathy. “I'm on the outside, therefore I can relate to other people on the outside.” Musk took the other road, which was “empathy is our worst human weakness,” because he, in effect wants to be a kind of AI robot of money making and has abandoned, as all the tech bros did…they start out with, “I'm going to save the world and create world harmony.” Then as soon as Trump came in, they're like, “no, we're going to take these masks off. We just want money. and we want to curry favor with the recent dictator.” So that's the one advantage of the many disadvantages of our current regime. One advantage is that now we know who we're dealing with directly. We know who the opportunists are. It's very clear. We know who the sad people are who have not read the fine print. And then we see other people stepping up. I was just in Minneapolis doing this tour and went to the Alex Pretti/Renee Good shrine. You know, the two people who were killed by ICE. The city in its modest, common sense, do the right thing way, which Canada shares. It’s almost like a Northern thing - Don’t make a big deal out of it. Just do the right thing. Right. It's not that hard.  And nobody tells those people what is right, they already know. You know, the joke was that only Prince knew that the revolution would happen in Minneapolis. I just loved that vibe, which was like, don't make a big deal out of it, but do the right thing. It's also a punk rock capital. I loved it and I was very moved by that. That IS the spirit of Hedwig too, which is punk, but also full of empathy for the misfit. When you have an opportunity to create community through that, it's a rare thing. The unexpected siblinghood of people who like HEDWIG around the world has sustained me, has opened me up to meeting the most interesting people in my life. HEDWIG is like a personal ad that keeps giving. It keeps bringing people to me. 

It's interesting when you talk about the regime. I have Canadian citizenship, but I always say I identify as American. I was born and raised in California, outside of LA and sitting here and watching what's been going on…It’s like…

It’s unbelievable.

How does this even happen? I mean, I know how it happens, but it's just…the amount of people that I've eliminated from my life because they have shown their true colors is astounding. And then there are people who say, “oh, you shouldn't remove people over politics.” I'm like, it's not politics.

It's a way of looking at the world. 

It's basically right and wrong. 

YES. You can say people are deluded, but it doesn't mean you have to have them in your life. You know, I'm all for talking people across divides, finding things in common, but at a certain point, if there is no meeting point, you have to not waste your time. You know, you have to figure out. Build with the people who are buildable, who care about the complexity and diversity of life. It's a joyful thing. When you're a misfit, you understand things like metaphor earlier because you know there's a surface and then there's layers of reality. If everything is handed to you, you're very literal. Things are what they are. And of course they aren't in life. So you're hamstrung, you're crippled, in effect, in your outlook about life. And when you suddenly have to deal with complexity, you crumble. That's why queer people and other outsiders, the ones that weren't destroyed by their otherness are much stronger. For example, queer marriages…they’re intentional. They don't fall into them, right? So they last longer. They're better parents. You know, these are common sense things again. But, what can we learn? What can we learn from queer people, when we're not? What can we learn from straight people? Queer people can learn stuff certainly from their grandmas too. Their straight grandma. It's like, let us not shut it down until the empathy is so shrunken that there's really no place for you in their life and theirs in your life. People do come around. I think there's going to be a great reckoning after this fascist moment. I still think it will pass. It doesn't mean it's not going to change things, but I think the extremity of this will pass and we have a flexibility in the US, even if we have a lack of history and empathy. We do have an ingenuity and we also don't like to be told what to do. So once real fascism happens, the MAGA people will be like, “it was fun when it was a sport to own the libs, but now I don't actually want a dictator.” They're realizing that. 

Yeah. You know, I see a lot of people like on Threads saying, “I no longer support this,” and it's like, thank you for making this announcement on Threads. 

YES. 

Thank you so much. I hope it makes you feel better about what you created.  

YES. I'm glad you really did your research at the beginning and now, grandly, you are abandoning it. Well, thanks so much. Thanks for your help.  

It's interesting too what you say about misfits. It's like I'm part of this whole community of menopausal and post-menopausal women who were the ‘gifted’ student in school, who are now being diagnosed with late stage ADHD. Hi, that's me. But when I look back, I was weird, I didn't quite fit in. But now, my peace is worth more than the noise of a lot of it. I also have zero f-cks left to give. 

The thing is, you do have f-cks to give about things you care about. But the things that you don't, it’s very easy to let them go. It's really not a hard thing to lose your nerves about stuff that don't matter. I was a very scared kid, I would say. Moving around the world, my dad was in the army. There was definitely a sense of…"I've got to fit in. I’ve got to fit in.” We moved every two years. Being closeted did double that tension. But there was an incredible kind of freedom and also reinventing yourself wherever you went, which was similar to theatre or film. Where you can say, “I'm going to try this because I'm new. They won't know that it's, that it's not me.” So in a way, playing roles, strengthened parts of me that were, let's say, metaphorically, muscularly weak. I played a butch character and then said, “Oh, well, that's part of me too, that masculine energy.” Playing Hedwig, I was scared of my feminine side. But now I realized it's a strength. So there was a real sense of learning. Hedwig was almost a dissertation. After I played the role, it's like, I finished and I didn't need to act anymore. And I didn't act for another 10 or so years until Lena Dunham asked me to do GIRLS, which I was nervous about. But that got me acting again.

You just finished a run playing Mary Todd Lincoln in OH, MARY! Do you find that some of Mary's chaoticness is sort of seeping into what you're doing now with your tour?

I've been performing live constantly. Mary didn't change or add anything. I mean, it was fun to do the cabaret part to kind of get my Broadway thing back, but to me, you know, singing is just second nature. The one thing that made my music, my live performance better, was just doing a lot of live shows in a row, the way a band does. I was never much into touring.Now I'm enjoying it because again, the nerves go away, the f-cks go away, and then it's just about connecting to the song and the audience. I'm doing things vocally that if I was in theatre, I'd be nervous about, because you know, everything has to be perfect. In rock and roll, you can be a looser and rougher and make mistakes and try stuff. And then there's a miracle when it becomes better. When I sing these HEDWIG songs, I know them so well, that I can do different things with them. I love that. I'm doing a show this Friday in New York with a lot of friends, a lot of guests. It’s a bit of a retrospective. It's a Pride show as well, but I have like 10 guests, you know, including the singer from Psychedelic Furs and other Hedwigs. It's going to be a good time.  

Oh, that's amazing. On this tour, you've got this 4k print of the movie. Is it something you watch with the audience?

No, I've had it. I've had it with that. At some screenings I do a kind of stoned director's commentary, but only if I'm really stoned. I’ve watched it millions of times. I don't want to become a broken record, even in my comments about it. So I don't feel the need to be watching it for sure, but sometimes I do.  

So the sometimes that you do, are you noticing things that maybe, you know…

It’s more like I'm looking at it because it's a great transfer, seeing little details in the background and stuff. Sook-Yin Lee, the star of SHORTBUS, who was also in HEDWIG, is going to join me. I don't know if you saw her last film PAYING FOR IT, which was very good, about her relationship with Chester Brown, the famous Canadian comic book artist. She'll join me in Montreal for both HEDWIG and SHORTBUS screenings. We are very much siblings in art and friendship. One of my favorite things she said was, “John, you’re…there’s only a few real artists in the world, meaning that their whole life is about that. And you're one of them.” I think she is too. Coming from, in effect, nothing, in suburban Vancouver and then being plucked out of her punk band to be in Much Music and such. She’s never let go of her artistic roots.

I'm so looking forward to that! I have a question from  one of my followers, Morgan, in San Antonio, Texas. I was down in San Antonio doing a comic con for some film and TV work I did way back in the 90s. Whenever I go to a city, I always look to see if there is a production or a concert I can go see? There was a production of HEDWIG, so I went to check it out, in an LGBTQ church. I was on a little hiatus from doing HEDWIG’s Canadian tour. Morgan played Yitzhak in that San Antonio production and was amazing. She would like to know, of all of the songs that you do, even though you've done them over and over again, what is the hardest one for you to do vocally, emotionally, or physically?

I guess it would be Midnight Radio. Wicked Little Town was always a little hard because you're singing quietly, but you're singing higher. And I actually did lower the key slightly when I went on Broadway. As my 98 year old cabaret singer friend, Marilyn May says, “there’s no shame in lowering the key.” She's still singing at 98. She's brilliant. I wrote some songs with Linda Perry for a kind of modern day Jesus as a rock star TV series idea that we had, which I realize in retrospect we probably would have been assassinated for. We wrote some great songs and one of them I do a lot, though it's too high. I have to lower it for this weekend. 

My cousin Ashly, who's a huge Broadway lover, texted me to tell me that she saw you in OH, MARY! AND she saw you perform HEDWIG with the knee brace.  

A lot of people did. It was very fun. Even though I hurt myself, I realized it was an opportunity to have fun. I added about 15 minutes of jokes, including “ladies and gentlemen, you're seeing the show with the original cast!” 

John, it has been an absolute joy to chat with you. Thank you for keeping this punk spirit alive for 25 years, and thank you for your generosity today.

Thank you, Noelle! I will see you when I get there.

HEDWIG 25TH ANNIVERSARY MOVIE TOUR

When: Tuesday, June 30, 2026 at 7:00 PM (Doors at 6:00 PM)

Where: Théâtre Beanfield 2490 Notre-Dame Ouest, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3J 1N5

Get your tickets online: evenko.ca

For more information visit hedwig25.com

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