Musicals Saved Our Lady J’s Life. Now, She’s Creating One of Her Own.

The multi-hyphenate artist spoke to Jezebel about healing, her latest single, "Future of Us," and her own future as she quietly works on her first musical.

By Audra Heinrichs | July 19, 2024 | 4:20pm

Photo: Getty Images Entertainment

Musicals Saved Our Lady J’s Life. Now, She’s Creating One of Her Own.

In 2020, Our Lady J, the Peabody award-winning writer, producer, and singer-songwriter behind the Golden Globe and Emmy-winning series Transparent, and Emmy-winning series Pose, took up a curious hobby: building a camper from a former Amazon delivery van. This wasn’t just any ordinary pandemic pastime like baking sourdough or binging Tiger King, however. It was her way of honoring the memory of her brother, James, who’d recently died at the age of 30.

“I had known he loved camping and that was something we talked about a lot but I didn’t know that he wanted to build a camper van and go on a trip,” she said. After months of work, the van is in impressive shape. She’s particularly proud of the backsplash. After seeing the photos, I get it.

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Currently, Our Lady J is quietly working on a musical. She remains mum on many of the details but does reveal some of the plot: Two gay men and sex tourists from America get mixed up with a lesbian separatist group of ecoterrorist dominatrixes in Berlin, hijinks ensue, etc., etc.

“Musicals kind of saved my life as a queer person,” she said. “For many years, I’ve been interested in writing since I moved to New York. But having no idea how to write musicals, I ended up getting into music direction for musicals. That’s really how I got my showbiz chops and met many of my collaborators these days.”

She also continues to release new music. In May, her latest single (a collaboration with the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus), “Future of Us,” debuted at the Met Gala. The song is a breathtaking celebration of strength in a time where queer struggle seems to be the only story worth telling in media. It’s fitting, as the Chorus played a pivotal role in helping her develop community as she transitioned.

“I transitioned in 2005, and they were really an incredible home for me artistically, creatively, and also spiritually,” the multi-hyphenate told Jezebel in Shakespeare & Co’s cafe in June. “To be surrounded by so many incredible people who had made it through the AIDS pandemic, and using music as a way to unite and fight taught me a lot about the healing power.”

Healing power, too, was found in a more unlikely place: the camper van.

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“In getting to know my brother through grieving—in getting to know the versions I never got to know—it’s a way of spending time with his spirit,” she said.

Some of Our Lady J’s most genre-pushing work on television (namely, American Horror Stories) was ultimately written in an RV park as she traversed the country in pursuit of inspiration and a new kind of intimacy with her brother. Both, to her surprise, came a lot easier than her start did. Coming of age in Appalachia, Our Lady J dreamed of becoming a musician and composer and learned to write music on the $100 piano her Evangelical Christian parents bought for her at an auction. She then cut her teeth in southern Pennsylvania, then at Interlochen Academy in Michigan where she was awarded a music scholarship, and finally, in New York City.

Somewhere between this job and that tiny apartment, she evolved, as did her queerness. Though the world has been rather slow to catch up, she managed to become the first openly trans person to perform at Carnegie Hall in 2004 and join a TV Show’s writer’s room.

Her television credits are likely where the mainstream (and almost every heterosexual) can recognize her, but music composition has always been her first love. “It’s always been in the background, like ‘how do I get back to that?'” she said.

The camper van may be parked since she’s in NYC at the moment but Our Lady J is well on her way. Some of Broadway’s familiar faces have already been reading for the secret musical and she’s never not considering what new stories to tell. For now, it’s those that bring people reprieve from the country’s increasingly hellish circumstances.

But the next time she’s stumped, she thinks, she knows just where to go.