'There's clowns in all of us': Jimbo on drag, clowning and winning for the weirdos

Jimbo is not your average drag queen. After leaving her hometown of London, Ont., she moved to Victoria where she joined a vaudeville troupe, Atomic Vaudeville, and took her first clown course.

Even in the world of drag, Jimbo is a bit of a "weirdo," as she puts it. She got her start in theatre, performance art, variety shows and private parties, so when she eventually landed her big break as a contestant on the first season of Canada's Drag Race, she had a lot to learn about the fundamentals of drag. 

"I wasn't really a part of the Victoria drag scene in a typical sense," Jimbo tells Q's Tom Power ahead of the Canadian leg of her North American tour. "I didn't really have a home bar, I didn't really have a drag family, I didn't go out and perform in bars or on stage. I never did that.

"I only had one other drag queen friend in Victoria named Vivian Vanderpuss, who was later on Season 3, I think, and right before I went on [Canada's Drag Race], I was like, 'How do I do a cut crease?!' Which is the most basic thing for a drag queen."

For Jimbo, drag is how she adorns herself while clowning is how she takes "all of that stuff on the inside" and shares it with an audience. "Clowning was really what opened up performance for me," she says. "That's when I understood performance and I understood what that was to perform."

That being said, Jimbo thinks a lot of drag queens are clowns who just don't realize it.

"There's clowns in all of us," she says. "Everyone has a clown in them, it's just whether or not you let it come out."

The first time Jimbo ever performed as a clown in drag, she took on the character of her evil ex-stepmother.

"I embodied her and kind of exorcized her demon from my psyche in this wild clown turn that left people crying and laughing and shocked," she tells Power. "It was a good one. When I show pictures from that one, people are like, 'Holy f--k. Whoa, that's some darkness.'"

After her elimination on Canada's Drag Race, Jimbo went on to compete on the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race: UK vs. the World and RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars Season 8, where she finally took home the crown. Looking back, she says she's happy she didn't win Canada's Drag Race because it gave her the opportunity to compete on the two other shows.

"And I won like three times the money that you win in Canada," she says with a laugh.

But the real reason Jimbo does what she does is because of her fans, particularly the weirdos who relate to her.

"The world is filled with weirdos — unseen, beautiful weirdos — that are out there working their ass off, trying to have a good time, trying to have love, trying to be free and when they see someone doing it, it's exciting," she says.

"I have fans and weirdos and beautiful people all around the world that when I won, they said, 'I won with you.' I felt that…. I love meeting my fans and my people that are still saying, 'I'm so happy you won. I've been waiting.' It just feels like a shared win."

The full interview with Jimbo is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Jimbo produced by Catherine Stockhausen.