‘A movie for everyone, not just Drag Race fans’: stars of drag comedy Stop! That! Train! on making the summer’s funniest film

Director Adam Shankman and drag queen actors explain putting a brilliantly madcap twist on Airplane! style parody

Drag queens are never more striking than when they’re set against an everyday background. “Kristen Stewart is a buoy … ” the Laotian American beauty Jujubee muttered spacily to herself in the hallway of Bleecker Street Media’s New York office, reading out the tag-line of a framed poster for the 2024 sci-fi/romance Love Me. The former RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant and star of the new disaster-comedy Stop! That! Train! was lingering outside an office cubicle in a structured blazer and fishnets as an attentive PR took her order for lunch. By that point she’d been in full wardrobe and make-up all day fielding press, including a mid-morning stop with her castmates at NBC’s Today with Jenna & Sheinelle.

I’d heard Jujubee and her co-star Ginger Minj before I saw them, laughing like glamorous hyenas from another room. When they made an entrance, they did so in coordinated cheetah print looks, greeting me with the kind of mega-watt smiles that told me I was now their audience. I was impressed by how “on” they were, but could imagine it was taxing to keep up. How had the whirlwind of press been for them? “It’s been a lot of work but it doesn’t feel like it,” Ginger admitted. “The tour has absolutely mimicked the making of the movie.” “We have to schedule our sleep,” Jujubee added as she slowly began to peel off some cumbersome press-on nails. “But I’m so high on life and all of us have been able to stay in the moment, and live in this stormaganza of press.” They immediately started cackling again.