It’s Rainin’ Merman!

Written by | Entertainment

In a world of beige, be nuclear pink. Face the wrong way in an elevator, thrash dance to muzak, and eat a whole damn pizza crust-first. Straight people already think we’re ‘strange’ so let’s be mega, ultra, supercalafragilistically S-T-R-A-N-G-E!

“Sometimes being weird is amazing!” beams Jeffery Roberson, aka Varla Jean Merman, the love child of Ethel Merman and Ernest Borgnine. “But sometimes, weird just doesn’t work. You have to take a risk.

Varla’s humble beginnings were a danger du jour. “I used to film videos on the streets; that’s how I started in New Orleans. I was filming John Waters inspired little videos and we would give them to the gay bars in New Orleans, and they would play that behind dance music because this is before MTV. So I would film people’s reactions, but now people are taught to fear drag in small towns. If To Wong Foo happened now, if they went to a small town, they’d all be murdered.”

Devastatingly dark yet eternally insightful, Varla traces the state of drag from her early days to the queer-and-now. “That’s what happens when something gets so popular – people wanna tear it down. So, I would not sell my videos on the streets in Florida because people would get angry. ‘Their team’ has been taught that drag is evil and it’s just so ridiculous. Drag queens are not pedophiles; don’t get me started. It’s just flippin nuts.”

With a hilarious aside, she quips, “Even though I love the people I know here, Florida itself is just – oh my God – it’s not ideal.”

You said a gator-sized mouthful, Varla!

The convo ping-pongs playfully from era to era. “I just can’t believe that I get to do this for a living. It’s been a wild ride. I was in advertising in New York and I got into the Broadway show Chicago ‘cause I had a really high voice and I was doing a little bit of drag and then a woman from Provincetown saw me at Caroline’s Comedy Club. She said, “You should come to Provincetown. You’ll make more money in three months than you make in your advertising job all year long.’”

But the road to queer fame is never straight. Taking our discussion on a delightful detour, Varla recounts, “I was on a show called Karaoke Showcase in 1991 hosted by Bowser from Sha Na Na. I was just starting out and it was filmed at Universal Studios in Orlando and I forgot that in the green room, I put a piece of chicken in my bra because I thought I’d pull it out and eat it during my number, OK. I’m singing Like a Virgin and the chicken fell out from between my legs while I’m on stage and then I picked it up and ate it, but it’s a family show so as soon as the chicken leg falls out from my crotch, then they just cut to me singing the last note.”

Her appetite was whetted and her loins were even wetter. It was time for Varla Jean Merman to birth her big break: Girls Will Be Girls. “I remember reading the script where she says, ‘I’ve had more kids pulled out of me than a burning orphanage.’ This is before Family Guy so I thought ‘Oh my god, that’s too offensive.’”

Yup. Varla was oh so right about being oh so wrong. “When we went to Sundance, a lot of high-powered people walked out, but then it becomes a cult hit. Two years after the movie, people would come up to me and say ‘Oh my god I saw your movie. I was the only one in the theater.’ I was in Provincetown, like 2005, I’m walking down the street, and someone throws a handful of candy at me and says ‘Take these for the ride, ya huge cow!’ And I’m like what the fuck, help me, and then I was like wait a minute that’s from that movie.”

Sweetly successful, Varla parlayed her plucky personality into mainstream projects like Project Runway, Ugly Betty and All My Children. In addition to the campy creativity she’s been flexing for decades, Varla has pragmatic advice for other up and coming kweens. “A lot of these girls, they’re not hanging around accountants,” she explains. “You gotta financially set yourself up because it is a career. It is a career. It’s not just horsing around in your hometown making a few extra bucks. It is now a viable career, so you need to treat it like one. Girls, open a SEP IRA.”

Sage words from your fiduciary fairy godmother!

So, what’s the logical next step for a ‘stable’ career ‘woman’ who’s got it all? “I might be a little too old to have a baby, but you’ll have to come to the show and find out.” Color us intrigued. Do go on. “I wanted to do a show about motherhood. I don’t exactly have the best relationship with my mother… She’s never asked me what I did for a living, and I’m 56 – I don’t know if that’s a southern thing. It’s southern denial.”

But nurturing flows naturally from Varla Jean. After all, she learned from the best, even if they weren’t biologically bound to her. “I’ve had so many people in my life who have been so maternal towards me and taught me things, and so this show is about motherhood, about all the people who have influenced me and raised me.”

The result? “I’m opening my new show June 13, Unlike a Virgin, after I workshop it in Palm Springs,” declares Ms. Merman. “That’s the great thing about Provincetown: I get the show really good and then I do it every night, every night. I do about 80 shows in the summer.”

The seaside hotspot is experiencing a drag renaissance, which is a far cry from its sapphic past. “When I first started in Provincetown, it was all lesbian comics because all the gay guys had literally died. So lesbians owned the town in the ‘90s. They bought the whole town up. And, you know, they sold it back to the gay guys,” Varla notes with a warm guffaw. “Now it’s like the Branson, Missouri of drag.”

To stand out from the sisterhood, Varla is bringing her odd fierceness full circle and getting maximumly weird again. Unlike a Virgin plays out like a pregnant fever dream featuring heartfelt stories, gender bending joy, and the most adorbsies scene stealer in showbiz: Varla’s pooch Jasper.

Ever the devoted dog-mom, the drag legend is lining up gigs through the end of the year to keep kibble on the table. “I’m gonna be in Palm Springs for Pride with Jurassic Drag, a whole different show. We did Jurassic Drag there a couple years ago with me, Miss Coco, Jackie Beat, and Sherry Vine, all of whom I totally adore. And I will be doing that at the Palm Springs Cultural Center.”

That brings Varla to the final ingredient in her recipe for success. In addition to financial planning, whimsical weirdness, and a heaping helping of crotch-chicken, she identifies the crown jewel in her reign of merry madness.

“You need obsessed gays. I get such a great audience, so I just thank the fans for coming to see me because it’s really given me just the best life ever. I can’t imagine how this has even been my life – to just come up with really stupid shit.”

One woman’s ‘stupid’ is another man’s sublime. Thank you, Varla Jean Merman, for swimming the seas of strangeness, and congratulations on your foray into motherhood. You’re vamping for two and camping it up for the masses.

Last modified: July 7, 2026

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