Theatre News

Leslie Jordan Brings Pink Carpet Show to London

Will and Grace star Leslie Jordan will make his West End debut with his one-man show My Trip Down the Pink Carpet which looks set for a London run early next year. Dates and venue have still to be announced for the show, which promises to be a “theatrical romp”, charting Jordan’s rise from small-town America to Emmy award-winning Hollywood actor.

Part autobiography, part Hollywood tell-all, My Trip Down the Pink Carpet combines a selection of true stories from Jordan’s life as told in his recently published memoirs. The show combines celebrity encounters, offbeat observations and Jordan’s own comic take on fame, addiction and gay culture.

Jordan won an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series as Beverley Leslie, the nemesis of Will and Grace‘s Karen Walker. He has already revealed that the role, which he played against Megan Mullally, was originally written for Joan Collins, but that she refused to have her wig torn off in a fight scene with Mullally. Press material promises that this is just one of the many insider stories Jordan reveals on stage.

Jordan has also made appearances on a string of American comedy TV shows including Ally McBeal, Boston Legal and Monk as well as Sordid Lives alongside Rue McClanahan and Olivia Newton John.

My Trip Down the Pink Carpet tells the tale of how Jordan, raised in a conservative family in Chattanooga, Tennessee, boarded a Greyhound bus bound for L.A. with $1,200 sewn into his underpants and never looked back. His penchant for high camp has given him a varied Hollywood career, however along the he has narrowly avoided temptations such as drug and alcohol dependency ruining it all.

The show, which played a limited Off-Broadway run at the Midtown Theater from April to July this year, is produced by Bruce Robert Harris and Jack W Batman, Dennis Grimaldi, Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner, Jean McFaddin/Susan Falk and Daniel Wallace in association with Julian Stoneman.