AfterElton Interview: Miss Coco Peru Discusses Her New Show, Bartending on “Watch What Happens: Live,” and a Scary Voicemail from Bea Arthur
Posted by Louis Virtel on October 19, 2012
When I was younger, I looked up to people who were like Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, people who created characters and got discovered that way. l always knew early on that I was gay and I wanted an openly gay performer. Back when I started, that was pretty rare. I was trained in the theater and I went to college for theater, and I decided to do drag as a way to express myself both in theater and as an activist. I always find that people who are able to do all of that an inspiration. I feel like Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler, early on, did that. She was very sexual. I loved that. She started in the bathhouses and gay men wrote her material. Of course she had the performance style to pull it off, but she also had gay men writing for her. That’s why her voice had that gay sensibility.
