Murray Hill is larger than life. He’s got a big personality, a positive outlook on life, an infectious style of banter, and an endearing demeanor. It is all presented in a colorful package, suit and all. But it is not just a persona. After chatting with him for just a few minutes, it is clear that he is the real deal. Talking to him is like talking to everyone’s favorite guy at the bar. He’s got stories, jokes, and opinions on life. He’s also got a lot of talent that has taken him from the New York club scene to the stage and screen. You never know where he is going to pop up, from cameos in films to burlesque, from opening for rock bands to performing at parties for Liza, from performing in his one-man show Murry Hill As Himself to co-starring in the hit HBO show Somebody Somewhere. He’s a throwback to classic Hollywood in the style of Benny Hill and Sammy Davis Jr. but with modern flair. He’s unapologetically queer and has moved our community forward in media representation, but without pomp and circumstance, just a lot of heart. There’s a joy to Murray, whether you are talking to him in person or seeing him on stage or screen, but his persona and outlook belie a challenging beginning.
I grew up in a conservative Catholic household and a conservative town. So, my home life was pretty rough. My public life, which when you’re that young is going to school and afterschool programs and sports and all that kind of stuff, is where I really blossomed. I had two very different lives, and I think that set me up quite nicely for the birth of the persona. As I got older, I think I used my humor as a way to disarm all my relationships with people in the town, at church, and my own family. My comedy was to disarm them so that we would all be on the same level. I say it in my show, “If you’re laughing, you can’t be hating at the same time.” It’s actually impossible. So I’ve always had a big personality. Murray looks like all my Italian uncles, and it came out of survival and a coping mechanism, and I’ve made a career out of it and I’m using the same tools that I created to survive then, 40 years later. I’m going to keep building bridges and disarming people so that everyone sees the humanity in the heart first.
Murray knew early on that he wasn’t like the other kids around him.
In first grade I was obsessed with femme teachers, but in a disproportionate way. When I got a couple of years older, I didn’t want to play with the girls, I was just enamored by them. So, I was doing my sports, playing with the guys, tomboy stuff. Then I remember, and this is ridiculous, in Dirty Dancing there’s that scene with Patrick Swayze at Jennifer Grey in the water. He lifts her up and she’s got that wet t-shirt, ahhh. That’s my first memory of consciously being attracted to a woman. And then as quickly as I realized that I was sitting with my brother, and he was like, “What are you talking about? That’s wrong!” Right away it was bad, wrong. So, I was always fighting repression and conservative ideologies and Catholicism and all that stuff. Any feeling I had for a girl or a teacher was bad, bad, bad. I didn’t come out until college. I was a little late bloomer.
Murray would shed his conservative life and find his home, and ultimately his persona, in the heart of the East Village in the mid-1990s, becoming part of the queer club family that would pave the way for other LGBTQ personalities.
What I loved about the nightlife scene was it was all open arms. At that point, New York was a little bit affordable, and everyone went to New York to be accepted for who they were and to find themselves, and to not be judged and discriminated against. The thing about nightlife that was so beautiful, and that I slipped right into, is that it showed me by action, and by these wonderful people, all about chosen family. Back then in the East Village, there were clubs every single night with RuPaul, Mario Diaz, Jackie Beat, Justin Bond, Lady Bunny, Linda Simpson, all those folks. You could go out every single night and spend all this time with these people and you would never ask them about their time before New York. This is our family; this is our safe space. This is where we can be who we are at 2:00am on Avenue A. New York nightlife for me was like going home and understanding what family was. We had so much fun.
I met so many colorful people and that’s when I developed a persona and created an act. At The Cock (club) I sang “My Way” at 3:00am. Everybody was loaded on something. I was definitely on the booze train, and I was so drunk, I couldn’t remember the words! But it was like we were singing at a pub in Ireland. But that was the first time I didn’t know the words, so I just put the microphone out. You have to understand, I’m on a tiny shoebox platform as the stage, clip lights on me, and 200 sweaty people loaded. I put the microphone towards them, and everybody sang out “Myyyyyy waaaaayyy!” I still do that in my act, 30 years later, I put the microphone out to the crowd, and they sing along.
For all the many projects Murray has been a part of, he’s always been referred to and labeled as the community he comes from. Media headlines refer to him as drag king, trans, or queer man Murray Hill. In Murray’s ideal world, those labels wouldn’t be a necessity.
I think there needs to be room for some nuance here because some people need to identify themselves verbally, and that’s what they want to do. “I’m queer” or “I’m trans” or whatever it is, to declare an identity and take up that space and be empowered by it. My whole thing about how I was raised, part of a generational thing, is I don’t want to be treated any differently than anybody else. I want to be treated the same. I want to have the same rights as you. I want to be addressed by my name, I don’t need to have 40 things in front of it. My personal political stance is I am so much more than my sexual orientation and my gender identification. If you said in front of every man like “the male comedian Dave Chappelle,” it sounds weird, right? Because it doesn’t happen. That’s where I come from, I just want to be addressed and seen as an equal.
Murray has been a trailblazer in the drag king world. This coming year, Murray will host King of Drag on Revry TV. It is the first ever televised drag king reality series. Having performed as a drag king since 1995, Murray is elated to be the hype man for the drag king community.
There’s been a lot of controversy over the years that drag kings want to get on RuPaul’s show. My whole motto in this has been, from the very beginning, “If you don’t see yourself represented, go out and represent yourself.” I’ve never wanted to be a contestant on Drag Race, because I am not a drag queen. I would like to be a guest judge, but I don’t want to be a contestant because I want to showcase OUR community. We have to have our OWN show. And that’s not as a separation or a different silo, but this is a community that exists. And I was part of the early representation and now it’s all over the country, and it’s all over the world. And I think it’s important for me because I finally broke through some mainstream media with TV and film and now I’m in a position where I can bring everybody else up and get the spotlight on the kids and show everybody what this scene is. And it’s not just the opposite of drag queens and it’s not just drag kings being like Drag Race, it’s this whole community of people that don’t get the representation, they don’t get the bookings, they don’t get a chance to be on TV ever.
I’ve pitched the show for decades. The response? “What’s a drag king? No one’s going to watch this, it’s too niche.” We could fill up your whole magazine with all the rejections. So, when I met Damian from Revry, I knew that he was not your typical streaming CEO gatekeeper. You have to make an effort to do this, you actually have to make an effort to be inclusive and to be intersectional. It takes action, you can’t just say it. So, when I was speaking to him, I realized that he knew what he was talking about in terms of intersectionality, and he knew this community, and he was in full agreement that it’s time for this community to have its own show and to be represented. The difference between talking to him and any other network executive that I’ve talked to in the last 20 years is that I didn’t have to start off my meeting explaining who I was and explaining who drag kings are. We were already past that and we were in agreement that this has to happen and we’re going to do it.
Regardless of the long list of queer descriptives that come with Murray’s celebrity status, he has managed to break through to mainstream media. He appeared with Amy Schumer in Hulu’s Life & Beth, alongside John Cena and Awkwafina in Paul Feig’s hit movie JACKPOT!, and co-starred with Bridget Everett in HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, and served as a special guest correspondent for ABC News and Hulu. How did he manage to bridge the gap between queer and mainstream work?
The biggest thing that got me to where I am is I did not stop in the face of defeat. As much rejection as I received from networks, from theaters, from clubs, so much this whole 28 years I’ve been doing this, what’s kept me going is the audience. And it’s kind of what’s going on today. The loudest noises are the “no’s” and the “who are you?” niche. “Nobody wants to see this.” And then I’m playing in Alexandria, Virginia, making everybody laugh, being as edgy as I always am and there are all kinds of races, all kinds of ages, folks from the military, politicians… and they’re all coming together and laughing. So that’s what kept me going because I saw it, I saw that Murray isn’t something to be afraid of, it’s something to celebrate. I bring people together and that goes back to the early days of disarming folks. I believed in myself even though, and I’m not going to lie, I’ve been impacted by a lifetime of discrimination from my own family, to society, to the increased trolling on my Instagram page since the Presidential Inauguration. In the face of hate, I’ve kept going.
Even with Murray’s celebrity status, he still has to explain his identity from time to time. In a Metrosource exclusive, Murray revealed that he recently filmed with Arnold Schwarzenegger for the upcoming film, Man With the Bag. Murray was blocking a scene that he was sharing with Arnold while dressed in a Santa suit. The director kept referring to Murray and Arnold was confused as to who the director was talking about, because the director kept saying “he” and “him.” Murray was unphased.
At that moment, I saw the bigger picture that I am with one of the biggest, most masculine, straightest action heroes in the history of show business. A big A-list star. I am Murray Hill with Arnold Schwarzenegger! Now am I going to sit there and be offended that he’s misgendering me and doesn’t know what the hell’s going on? Or am I going to use this opportunity to have empathy? Obviously, he wasn’t coming from a negative place. He just didn’t know what was going on. It’s not part of his world. Or was I going to use my humor and compassion? This is a huge moment for me to be with him, for trans men, for drag kings. It just hasn’t happened before. So, I made it a warm, funny interaction and he looked at me and said, “I think I get it now.” And then action. And then he was patting my shoulder. And that was it. So, part of me being mainstream is I haven’t wavered who I am, which is a warm, open person who wants everybody to get along.
This February, Murray will embark on the West Coast tour of his one-man show, Murray Hill As Himself. The show is a throwback to the old Vegas-style shows (in fact, he will appear in Vegas) with a band with big opening and closing numbers, guest stars, and plenty of comedy. Think Don Rickles meets Belle Barth. Murray will make fun of everything that is going on in the world, not through anger but through camp. Through his comedy, he will hit some hard points, including the current political attack on the queer community. Proceeds from the show will benefit One Voice, a non-profit dedicated to providing goods, services, and opportunities to the underprivileged, including everything from crisis intervention to long-term programming that lifts families out of poverty, while providing avenues for the rest of the community to become involved in helping families in need. Currently, One Voice is helping the families and workers affected by the Los Angeles fires (onevoice-la.org). His stop in LA on February 20th will be at Lodge Room (lodgeroomhlp.com), and on February 22nd he will be at the Revolution Stage Company (revolutionstagecompany.com) in Palm Springs.
In addition to his touring show, Revry’s King of Drag, and other film projects, Murray will release his memoir Showbiz! My Life As a Middle-Aged Man through Simon & Schuster. Even with a star on the rise, he remains humble and down to earth. The loud suits, jokes, and big band numbers are not an act, they are elements of who Murray really is. How is Murray the person different than Murray the persona?
As long as I’ve been in show business, I’ve been in therapy. I don’t think all my show business gigs have covered the cost of my therapy, but that’s another story. Murray is the manifestation of survival on an unwavering mission to represent the good and the compassion and empathy for everyone, and to represent the queer community. I feel like I’m old school, looking out for everyone and I think personally, I am the survivor. I know it’s a very subtle difference, but it’s like me, the person, had to go through all the shit from my own family, my own community, starting from day three up until two days ago with someone telling me I need to go to a mental hospital and find Jesus and go on Lithium. I take all that in and I survive that because I choose to use it in a positive way. We all have friends who are beaten down, suffer from depression, and who may have suicidal thoughts and are scared. I have all those things too, but I’ve managed to get through it and use it. Murray is my reward for survival. I got through my own life, I’m still standing, and now people can see my energy and my openness, and my desire for equal rights and anything I do. And now I get to do it on TV, people can pick that up. I go to Palm Springs where people can pick that up. So, Murray’s the reward for the struggle.
And Murray’s message to his fans?
Keep your chins up. My live shows are about being a fun, respite, safe place for people to laugh and to be who they are. No one’s going to get trolled or anything. And what I would say to people is to lean into these experiences and your community. In LA, you see everything that’s happening with the fires. But what is happening there is the community and people are taking care of each other. That’s beautiful. And that’s how we’re going to get through all this. So, what I would tell people is to lean towards the love, be present in your community, limit that social media, come to the show, and we’re going to be all right.
Follow Murray Hill on IG: @MurrayHill
[Photos by Bettina May]Last modified: February 1, 2025