Sinful Sunday: In Praise of Beverly Leslie
The late Leslie Jordan gave TV one of its best and bitchiest queer villains in the camp icon of Beverly Leslie.
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Welcome to “Sinful Sundays,” where I explore and analyze some of the most notorious queer villains of film and TV (and sometimes literature, depending on my mood). These are the characters that entrance and entertain and revolt us, sometimes all three at the same time. As these queer villains show, very often it’s sweetly good to be bitterly bad.
The late Leslie Jordan was one of the funniest queer actors of his generation. With his distinctive southern twang and his unabashed embrace of his sissy persona, he was in some ways the epitome of fabulous, and his sudden death in 2022 was quite a blow to those of us who had found him a ray of light in the darkest days of COVID, thanks in no small part to his viral Instagram videos of himself that became a true phenomenon. Of course, he’d had a productive career in show business before that, and one of his most notable roles was as the tragicomic Brother Boy in Sordid Lives, a middle-aged man who has spent far too many years in a mental institution due to his family’s desire to de-gay him. It’s a role that made abundant use of his talents at wringing both pathos and laughs from the audience.
For me, though, he will always be Beverly Leslie, Karen Walker’s rich and closeted nemesis on Will & Grace. During the original run of the show he would pop up once or twice a season, usually to poke relentless fun at Karen when she was at her lowest, and he took particular delight in roasting her when she was in the midst of her marital difficulties with her husband, Stan. Who could ever forget his distinctive “Well, well, well,” any time he happened to enter a room in which Karen was alone, nursing her grievance? The sheer pleasure that Jordan clearly took in the role made him a delight in every episode in which he appeared, as did the truly electric comedy chemistry between him and Megan Mullally.
In fact, Beverly Leslie as we know him was almost not even in the show at all, since the role was originally intended for none other than Joan Collins (who, incidentally, did make a later guest appearance on the show). One can well imagine a very different dynamic between Collins and Mullally, particularly given Collins’ undeniable ability to play bitchy characters. There’s no question that the two are antagonists, yet there is also a strange camaraderie between them, one that is of a markedly different character than, say, the bond that Karen shares with Jack. Instead, they really do seem to epitomize the phenomenon of the “frenemy.” Theirs is a relationship whose intensity stems from their mutual antagonism and rivalry–over Karen’s maid Rosario, among other things–as much as it does for any kind of genuine fondness they might have for one another.
Beverly Leslie is also undeniably hilarious to witness, with his swish and his sashay and his sometimes ridiculous outfits. I’m telling you, you cannot see him walking onto the screen in a sequined cowboy outfit without breaking into gales of laughter. The best part of it is that Jordan himself (and arguably Beverly himself, though more on that in a moment) are genuinely in on the joke. In the words of another famous gay (Albert from The Birdcage): he is well aware of how ridiculous he is. Beverly Leslie’s genius lies in his ability to own it and to flaunt it, in the process defanging the mockery and taking away its power.
Of course, there was also always something faintly tragic about Beverly, at least during the show’s original run. Beneath every mention of his “business associates”--Benji is one of his particular favorites–there is the ugly truth of being a gay man of a certain age in the South. You can live your life however you want, and you can even be as swishy as you want, but you have to at least pay lip service to the cult of heterosexuality. And boy does Beverly Lesie go the extra mile to make sure that everyone knows he is both a devoted husband to Crystal and a staunch member of the Republican Party. This is the kind of man who, it seems, is quite content to remain in the closet, though this does begin to change in the revival seasons.
As Luis G. Rendon points out, moreover, there’s also something more than a little tongue-in-check about Leslie Jordan’s performance of the closeted Beverly. However much he might be willing to toe the line when it comes to keeping up at least the appearance of homosexuality, he also asks us as viewers to be in on the joke, to recognize heterosexuality itself as a colossal masquerade, something as worthy of mockery as Beverly Leslie himself. There’s something brilliantly camp about Beverly and, just as importantly, he knows how to play the game of the early-2000s Republican Party, shelling out much of his wife’s money to make sure that he remains a key player in its infrastructure. Given the blatant homophobia that was such a part of GOP politics in that decade–and the present for matter–it’s deliciously funny to imagine Beverly Leslie/Leslie Jordan himself thumbing his nose at those who believe themselves to be in the morally and socially superior position.
In the series original finale he parts ways with his beloved Benji and turns his attentions to Jack who, coerced by Karen, begins a relationship with him so that he can gain his money. Unfortunately for Beverly, he’s swept off of his balcony by a powerful gust of wind, plunging to his death below and setting Jack up for life. It was, I thought at the time, a rather ignominious end for the diminutive diva, who had brought some true queer sissy energy to the show. Fortunately, the entire disappointment of a finale was retconned during the revival, after it was revealed that it had been a drug-induced delusion of Karen’s. As a result, our favorite Southern sissy makes a number of appearances in the revival series, managing to inject some much needed life and vivacity into what could, at times, be a rather tedious affair.
Even though he is now sadly gone, Leslie Jordan will forever be remembered for giving us such a fascinating and memorable figure, someone who embodied all of the contradictions of Southern queerness. There’s pain there, yes, but there’s also a riotous and unrepentant sort of queer villainous joy and for that, I think, we should all be eternally grateful.