Stupid Cupid

“There are some people who were simply born to be the life of the party, and nightclub fixture Lady Bunny appears to be one of them,” wrote Vogue magazine. The internationally known drag icon, comedian, recording artist and jet-set DJ is as famous for her big-banged bouffant and her notoriously naughty wit as for her ability to get a dancefloor jumping. A Manhattan gal since the early 80s, Lady Bunny shares Atlanta roots with fellow drag star and former roommate, RuPaul, and is most famous for co-founding and emceeing Wigstock, the annual New York City Labor Day outdoor drag festival that ran for nearly 20 years.

Wigstock featured performances by a parade of exotic nightlife stars including Amanda Lepore, Kevin Aviance, Lypsinka, Joey Arias, The Voluptuous Horror Of Karen Black, as well superstars such as Debbie Harry, Boy George, and Neil Patrick Harris and John Cameron Mitchel (both as Hedwig). Considered by many the second and far hipper Pride celebration, and drawing thousands, Wigstock marked the end of the summer for the LGBTQ community and remains a landmark chapter in New York City’s queer cultural history.

Since Wigstock and the days of cutting her comic teeth reducing even the toughest New York City crowds to shrieking hysterics, Lady Bunny’s fame has gone global. She tours constantly, taking her bodaciously bawdy brand of humor to audiences from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, London, Marrakesh and Sydney.

From headlining clubs to Pride events worldwide, Bunny has been lucky enough to share the stage or screen with many of her idols including Patti Labelle, Joan Rivers, Bea Arthur, Charo, Elvira, Lynda Carter, Chaka Khan, Grace Jones, Loleatta Holloway, Jocelyn Brown, Martha Wash, Margaret Cho and Christina Aguilera at Radio City Music Hall, who tweeted, “Upstaged at my own show! #Diva.”

A psychedelic whirl of thigh-skimming op art prints, frosted lips, double false eyelashes and “pounds of paint” beneath a thunderhead of blonde wigs, Lady Bunny is not only gloriously glamorous and devastatingly funny, but a firmly established comic queen in a league of her own. 

One-woman show titles like “That Ain’t No Lady!,” “Trans-Jester,” “Pig In A Wig,” “Clowns Syndrome,” and most recently, “Cuntageous,” offer a not-so-subtle hint as to what to expect, but few are prepared for the shocking brilliance of Lady Bunny live. From riotously risqué to vividly vulgar, Lady Bunny gleefully delivers full-strength, downright dirty, gobsmackingly un-P.C. adult humor. Accompanied by a retro groovy soundtrack, she pivots and shimmies between racy rapid-fire jokes, stinging social commentary, one-line zingers, self-deprecating snorts, and her trademark potty-mouthed pop song parodies. “Lady Bunny made me weep with laughter, often while groaning with disgust,” the New York Times raved, “And isn’t that what the best low comedy is all about?”

While her mind may be in the gutter, Lady Bunny’s quick-witted humor is authentic, smart, irreverent, and topical. In her disarming honeyed drawl, she astutely skewers political correctness, calls out gentrification outrage, spit-roasts politicians, taunts vaunted celebrities, and schools audiences on the unique legacy of New York City drag.

Lady Bunny’s comic genius can also be seen in films and television, most recently in “Wig,” the HBO Wigstock documentary made with Neil Patrick Harris, and the feature film, “Hurricane Bianca: From Russia with Hate.” She was the “Dean of Drag” on three seasons of “RuPaul’s Drag U,” has been roasted by Joan Rivers, roasted Pam on “The Comedy Central Roast Of Pamela Anderson,” and emceed the LGBT prom in one of the most popular episodes of “Sex and the City.”

Bunny DJs lavish fashion week affairs, corporate bashes, and private parties as well as–yes!–gay weddings and bar mitzvahs. Her specialty is nailing what your crowd wants to hear. As she always says, “Please give me requests because I’m spinning for your party and my goal is to get your ass the dance floor; I can play what I want at home!”

Guests go crazy when Bunny twirls from the DJ booth to join them on dance floor for an impromptu lip sync number. “So you’re basically hiring a DJ and a clown for the price of one!” she cracks. The annual Hamptons Charity Tea Dance for the LGBT Center latched onto Bunny as their regular DJ for over a decade, claiming that, “We’d been doing this event for years but Bunny was the first DJ to get our crowd to dance!”

As the in-house DJ for Visionaire and V magazine, Bunny has travelled the globe, spinning atop the Eiffel Tower, Tokyo’s Mori Tower, the Fendi Showroom in Milan, London’s Harvey Nichols, Van Cleef & Arpel’s 40th birthday bash in Paris. She even made history as the first DJ to ever spin at Paris’s palatial L’Opera Garnier. Of that night Bunny says, “I often giggle that even though I was the first, I was opening for a famous main floor DJ: He went on, and the dancefloor walked!” Back in New York City, Lady Bunny can be found DJing her long-running boogie in the basement, the “Disco Sundays” tea dance at The Monster.

Like many DJs, Bunny moved into songwriting and recording. In addition to writing and producing her outrageously funny pop song parodies, she has released several solo singles, including “Take Me Up High,” which hit #18 on the Billboard Dance Club Song Chart, and two duets with RuPaul—Throw Ya Hands Up” and “Lick it Lollipop.” Bunny’s currently in the studio working on new music.

From the dancefloor it was just a hooker-heeled hop to the art world. Lady Bunny performed original music and commentary in “The Tyranny of Consciousness (The Waning of Justice),” a scene-stealing installation by pioneering video artist Charles Atlas at the 2017 Venice Biennale. Art stars assume astro vivid focus chose Bunny to DJ in the center of their pop art roller boogie disco installation celebrating the 10th anniversary of the luxurious Faena Hotel in Buenos Aires. And after New York City home décor guru Jonathan Adler designed a Lady Bunny pitcher (“My mug’s on a jug!”) a few years ago, she was thrilled to be chosen as one of his muses for his original “Inspiration Points” AOL web series.

Lady Bunny has been photographed by Andy Warhol and many of the world’s most influential fashion photographers, including Francesco Scavullo, Mario Testino, Ellen Von Unwerth and most recently the duo Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin for V Magazine’s October 2020 “Thought Leaders” issue.

V, along with The Daily News and Time Out NY named Bunny as one of the most stylish New Yorkers. She has been featured in the glossiest of fashion magazines, from Vogue to W, Pop, Another and Luis Venegas’s Candy. Her shows have elicited rave reviews from The New Yorker and The New York Times. A writer herself, Bunny penned quips for Star Magazine’s “Worst of the Week” column for eight years and has interviewed numerous stars, including Scarlett Johansson, Marc Jacobs, Anohni (of Antony And The Johnsons fame) and Leigh Bowery for bygone gay fanzine Pansy Beat.

Lady Bunny can be seen co-starring with Flotilla DeBarge in “DAP,” the duo’s video parody of Cardi B’s “WAP.” Their relentlessly filthy version racked up over 100,000 views in its first week and cheered by fellow comedians Margaret Cho and Jenifer Lewis.

Since COVID-19, Bunny has appeared virtually at Boulder’s Fringe Festival, the Palm Springs International Comedy Festival and participated in Amazon Prime’s virtual LGBT “Pride Inside” Festival. She also launched her on-demand 35-minute comedy special, “Cuntageous,” in which she unveiled new parodies of Lizzo and Madonna hits and performed an insane cover of the Peggy Lee 1969 classic “Is That All There Is?” with punk drag rapper Christeene.

Up next, a new podcast with RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars 4 winner Monet X Change called “Ebony and Irony,” a new on-demand duet special with Bianca del Rio called “HHN: Hateful Hags Network,” and a deliciously demented holiday special downloadable starting December 2020.

A living drag legend, international sensation, razor-witted comic, fab DJ, and one kooky queen, the Lady Bunny experience can be summed up in her own words from V Magazine’s “Thought Leaders” issue: “My humor is outrageous, my look is over the top, and my politics are in your face. That’s just the way I am!”