“I’ve been on this planet for many years now, and there’s a lot of things that just really get up the crack of my arse,” says extraterrestrial drag performer, international comedienne, and famously blue babe Juno Birch.
What are her biggest gripes right now? “Public transport, can’t stand that,” she replies instantly. “Another thing is technology on this planet. People have this misconception that aliens are this advanced civilisation, but I don’t even know how to work my f**king iPhone, do you know what I mean?”
Thankfully, Juno Birch has an outlet to rant and rave about her disdain for life’s mundanities in her new stand up show, Probed. “I’m basically there to speak to the manager of Earth and do a lot of moaning about things on this planet that I don’t understand,” she explains, chatting via video call from her home in Manchester (by way of outer space).
Today, the drag star is de-blued and de-wigged – “pardon me in the human disguise” – having just arrived home from a trip to Joshua Tree in California, where she stayed in a little orange UFO in the desert. Yes, really.
She adores America, bar the millions who voted for Trump, and hopes to one day move to Las Vegas. “Over there it’s like, ‘Oh my God, you look so cool, you look amazing, how was your day?’ And then you come back to the UK and it’s like: ‘F**k off out the way!’”
Those who do know and love Juno though, really do know and love her. With almost 700,000 Instagram followers and half a million YouTube subscribers, she’s easily one of the UK’s most recognised drag artists – and that’s without the help of RuPaul’s British spin-off, Drag Race UK.
She’s only been performing for six years, but it’s impossible to imagine the British drag scene without her, and fan adoration has led to three headline shows, Probed included. She’s very much settled into what it means to be Juno Birch, from the top of her Dolly Parton beehive, to her strappy white platforms. “Over time, I’ve just become a lazy b***h, and now I just do the same thing over and over,” she smiles.
That said, Probed is unlike Juno’s previous stand up shows, which have leaned more into scripted character comedy and camp musical numbers. “This time around, it’s very raw,” she admits, explaining that it touches on her personal life, most notably her coming out as transgender as a teenager. Don’t expect any death drops.
After several years of taking her audience minds’ off of these “serious things”, why does now feel like the right time to delve into more personal matters? “Because I’m just sick to death of just seeing trans, trans, trans all over the news and everything,” she says. Now aged 30, Juno came out at a time where trans people didn’t warrant constant column inches and TV talk show hours. Plus, she finds “stand up comedy so much more easy to write from a more personal perspective, and my experiences in life.”
In addition to death drops, viewers also shouldn’t expect all of Juno’s “experiences in life” to be entirely rooted in truth. “I’m also a compulsive liar,” she cackles. “So a lot of the things are exaggeration, and a lot of the things are exaggerated to the point where, you know… it’s not true. But it’s f**king funny!”
After coming out as trans, Juno got used to using self-deprecating comedy as a means of making friends and dealing with being the odd one out. As one fan put it recently, she’s kind of like a “blue Alan Carr” in that sense. Yet it took coming out for her to feel comfortable using comedy as armour.
“Before I came out as trans, I was a very different person in school. I was so quiet and I didn’t really have any friends, and I just kept to myself. I’d just sit in class and draw,” she recalls.
The drawing continued into adult life; she used to be a full-time sculptor, and ended up using the women she drew and sculpted as inspiration for what would become her drag persona. “I used to draw the most f**ked up s**t, honestly,” she says gleefully. One drawing, she remembers vividly, was a table with a head stitched on, à la Sid’s toy box in Toy Story. The table was plastered with makeup, and each leg was wearing a high heel.
Coming out while at school forced her personality to take shape. “I just turned into this ultimate b***h, and no one could touch me,” she deadpans. “I just completely transformed. I think it was the confidence because I felt so comfortable with myself and I think that person was hiding all that time in that child.”
Now, that confidence has morphed (xenomorphed?) into ambition. Once she’s done probing life on earth, she’s keen to probe mainstream culture, by heading into the Big Brother house or sharing her out-of-this-world cooking skills on Come Dine With Me.
For a while now, she’s also been writing a sort of semi-biographical, tongue-in-cheek film about herself – the character of Juno, an alien who crash-lands in a desert and became a drag queen. She’d like her own TV show, too, thanks very much. “I know that’s a bit ambitious,” she says. “I’m not bloody Madonna.”
She’s not particularly keen to appear on Drag Race though, despite the undying thirst for her to do so. She’s previously said she suspects the production team will make her seem “too big for my boots” if she was a contestant, considering she’s a queen with a profile. Plus, the show has already inadvertently gifted her with a grand prize: her friendship with All Stars 3 champ, Trixie Mattel.
The duo met “years and years ago” and have worked together numerous times since, with Juno appearing on Trixie’s reality docuseries Trixie Motel, and the pair releasing a makeup collaboration and starring in makeover vlogs together. “She’s just been so supportive of my drag and I think we gel quite well together,” she says.
Most recently, they appeared in an educational video for YouTube together, which is approaching one million views. “It was like a car high heel thing, and we were whizzed up around all the different histories of drag, which was fab. But yeah, [I] love Trixie Mattel. She’s a c**t.”
It all sounds incredibly glamorous, but away from stages, spotlights and spaceships, Juno also has the grounding of her partner, who she’s been with for not far off a decade. In September, he proposed while she was brushing her teeth. Distinctly unglamorous, but subtly romantic.
“People keep saying to me: ‘Are you going to do an alien look for your wedding?’ What a stupid question,” she says, with mock outrage. “Can you imagine that? It’s like asking a dinner lady if she’s going to wear an apron at her wedding.”
Even irate extraterrestrials need some time off the clock.
Juno Birch: Probed is on stage at London’s Soho Theatre until 16 November.
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