'Fruit Fly' Leslie Jordan back on stage

Do gay men become their mothers? That is the question asked in Leslie Jordan's hilarious and touching new romp, Fruit Fly. Jordan travels back in time using show-and-tell to take the audience on the ride of a lifetime. Childhood recollections combine with perilous teenage shenanigans, Jordan is in his element as he witnesses the astounding metamorphosis of his aging mother. The Rage Monthly recently caught up with the award-winning actor who proves his storytelling skills abound-on and off stage-making for a fun and thought-provoking time anywhere.

It's been awhile since I had a conversation with you over coffee. I was working for a different publication and you were just nominated for the Emmy for Will & Grace. How have you been?

I'm good. Just got done having breakfast and am walking near the corner of Fairfax and Sunset in Hollywood.

Is that the corner you're working these days?

Yeah... (with a southern drawl)

I bet you are.

Honey, I had to quit working years ago. It got down to nickels and dimes. I should be worth more now. When you and I met, I hadn't won it yet. I was only nominated, but I ended up winning it.

Indeed, congratulations!

Well it was so unexpected. You know, Will & Grace was well off the air by then. I was nominated for Best Guest Actor and I said to my manager, "I've been on the show for four or five years now. How am I a guest actor?" I mean, I thought of myself as recurring, if not a regular. The rule is, if you do less than five episodes in one year, then you're considered a guest actor. That final season I had done less than five episodes, and my God, the competition then. You had Ben Stiller, Alec Baldwin, and Patrick Stewart that I was up against-Martin Sheen had been on his son's show. His son's show is not on anymore, you know? (Chuckles) It was pretty exciting winning. But when it's an Emmy for Best Guest Star, it's not presented Emmy night. It's presented the week before at what is called the "Creative Arts Emmy" which are the Emmy's for sound and lighting-you know, all the really boring sh*t. I didn't know it. I flew my mother out to be seen in a limousine, I bought her a new dress, we got there and there wasn't a single star in sight. I was so disappointed! (Laughs)

Seriously? Talk about a tease.

I know it was horrible I tell you.

At least your mother got a new dress out of it all... and you did win an Emmy!

Well, that's true. And to think that Cloris Leachman won that year-she played the grandmother on Malcolm in the Middle-and this was her ninth Emmy, she was the most decorated actress in Emmy history. They wanted her to become a presenter at the real Emmy's and they thought that she and I would be cute together. So I got to be a presenter! When you win, you just win that Emmy, just that statue. Now when you're a presenter, honey, you get that $50,000 gift bag! That's how they get all those people to present.

Wow! That's pretty nice luggage for the man who rolled into town on a Greyhound bus from Tennessee! No doubt you took that limo ride to present. Hopefully you made it up to your mom?

Honey, I got everything from trips to New Zealand and $5,000 pearls for my mother. It was like you can't even imagine. People donate because they want their product to be seen with famous people.

Sounds like it's almost better to win the opportunity as a presenter...

F*ck winning-you're nervous then! At least when you're presenting you're not that nervous. (Laughs)

Too funny! So what do you have going on now?

Well, I've been doing my show called My Life on the Pink Carpet, which went to New York. I did 45 cities with it. It went to London, and I decided after all of that and being on the road, I wanted to get my TV career back up and going, so I'm spending more time in Los Angeles now. I've got to keep the ship afloat, you know? So what I'm doing is with the Celebration Theatre-the oldest gay theatre in Los Angeles. They offered me all of January and all of February, which is when the pilot season is. They wanted a world premiere, with completely new material. So, I sat down and I came up with this idea of a show called, Fruit Fly. It answers the age-old question of, "Do gay men really become their mothers?"

Oh, I know the answer and it's kinda frightening! (Laughs)

It's true! I found all these wonderful slides... It's gonna be show and tell of me and my mother from the day I was born, all the way to present day. It's really, I think, the best one I've written. I've had four now, four autobiographical one-man shows. So, honey, you would think, "When's she gonna'get tired of talking'bout herself!?"

Well, you should never really ever get tired of that. After all, you are your number one PR agent, you know?

Exactly! So this one is really interesting. It's a journey with my mom and it ends up with a cruise to Alaska. I took my mother on a gay cruise to Alaska, which was, I thought, going to be a nightmare. It was really kind of wonderful-2,000 gay men adopted my mother. She became the queen of the boat! That's the title I use. My sister said, "Well I guess you're a fag hag now mom." mom said, "Oh, I don't like that term." So someone told her a new term and she says, "I'm a fruit fly."(Laughs) So that's the title of the show - Fruit Fly.

Speaking of fruit flies...I see you're spending some time with the ladies in their final season on Wisteria Lane?

I am, I am. I really want to continue and be on Desperate Housewives right now. They've got a little story line going this season and I play an art dealer who gets into cahoots with Teri Hatcher's character. You know, I've known Marc Cherry (Desperate Housewives creator and executive producer) since he was Dixie Carter's assistant. I knew Teri Hatcher from when I was on Lois & Clark years ago. I knew Vanessa Williams from Ugly Betty. So I plan to do a few more episodes of that. It's a lot of fun!

You're a busy man these days...

Yeah I am. I won't be able to extend, so it's important that people come January and February. I've got Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights and a Sunday matinee for the queens my age.

Well, my mama taught me to never ask a lady her real age, so I won't. However, this is our health and fitness issue and you're a spry little thing, so what do you do to keep up with the younger generation?

When I got sober 15 years ago, I joined a gym and that was the first time I paid any attention to it. I am really diligent about the way I eat-I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't do drugs. I just need a lot of sleep- minimum of nine hours a night-and I swim. We have a heated pool in my condo, where I live and I swim 10 laps a day, exactly. I do the breaststroke up and back. I then added this thing called the sidestroke, which gives me a nice little stretch. Then I do the butterfly, which gets my heart going. I do the backstroke and then I finish it off as fast as I can go. I did it in the rain two days ago and some people thought I was crazy.

Seven days a week I swim-that's one thing I really do, I'm really active. It's such a simple formula-you eat right and exercise and you feel good... but it's so f*cking hard to keep it up! I realized that I may never ever be able go to the gym. I don't like it. I hated it in school and so I finally found swimming and enjoy it. I think the most important thing about exercise is to find something that you enjoy and makes you feel better-I don't do it to get skinny. I do it because it makes me feel good and young again.

Well, a person is only as old as they feel and it sounds as though Fruit Fly sends you on a trip down memory lane and back to your youth?

It does, it goes through when I was young, I got in a lot of trouble for being gay. It was a really difficult coming out process. My dad had been killed in active duty in the Army. They gave us a lot of money for my education. I told my mother when I was 17 that I wanted to take that money and not go to college, I wanted to move to Atlanta and become a female impersonator. (Laughs) I was the ugliest little drag queen, I have pictures of it, I was Miss Heather Fox. To my mom, gay was being in drag and I got the clap one time and everything. It was just awful. Fruit Fly is just kind of this gay man's journey with my mom. Now she's just my best friend in the whole wide world. I just adore her. I've got slides, I've got a lot of music, oh honey I'm just shameless.

Fruit Fly premieres on Thursday, January 5 at 8 p.m. and runs through Saturday, February 18 at Celebration Theatre, 7051B Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. Tickets are $34 and are purchasable by phone, at 323.957.1884