Drag moves to the silver screen in Stop! That! Train!

May the light of RuPaul shine upon me. I was gagging when a sweet moment of sincerity spiralled into a hilarious smackdown between RuPaul's Drag Race superstars Ginger Minj (AKA Joshua Allen Eads) and Jujubee (AKA Airline Inthyrath). We've hopped online, tragically too early for cocktail hour at my end, to chat about their top billing in comical disaster movie, Stop! That! Train! Think Leslie Nielsen in Flying High! but much queerer. It all started so innocently. "Juju and I have been very close friends for 11 years now," Ginger says. "We practically live together on tour. We know each other's nuances, when we should be there, and when we should back off. We've definitely grown through our pain together." And then the 'bye, girl,' moment erupts, as Jujubee pulls a theatrically affronted face thunderous with shade. "I never knew we had any pain," Jujubee intones faux-imperiously. "I'm just discovering this in this interview. Thank you so much, Stephen A Russell, for allowing me to hear the truth come out of Ginger Minj. What are you saying? What kind of pain?" Ginger blinks: "Are you saying I told the truth?" To which Jujubee responds: "Finally. Put it all over the internet. That needs to be the headline." Chemical reaction Watching Ginger Minj and Jujubee spar playfully is a hoot, as is Stop! That! Train! They play Tess and DeeDee, two employees of the unglamorous Stank Rail who smuggle their way into a better gig aboard the Glamazonian Express. Facing the wrath of snooty first-class attendant Amber, played by fellow Drag Race queen Brooke Lyn Hytes, is only half the battle. There's also the small matter of the once-in-a-generation 'stormaganza' that's bearing down on the train, in the face of which even RuPaul's President Gagwell is powerless. Director Adam Shankman tasked Ginger and Jujubee with playing Tess and DeeDee (relatively) straight, anchoring the movie’s outrageous misfortune. "The rest of the cast is in Airplane! but the two of us are in Thelma and Louise," Ginger says. "That was so great, because with Drag Race, the acting challenges are about being as big as possible. Being a scene-stealer. "But this was an opportunity to be the antithesis of that, and it was such a challenge, but so much fun." Jujubee concurs. "There's a beauty in how grounded their comedy plays." Shankman directed The Wedding Planner. He also officiated Stop! That! Train! co-star and Buffy alum Sarah Michelle Gellar's union with Freddie Prinze Jr and is a Bob Fosse Award-winning choreographer. "That's why the shots are so beautiful," Jujubee says. "He's always thinking about the movement behind the scenes." The film features a sweet and saucy romance for DeeDee in the compact shape of M3GAN actor Brian Jordan Alvarez's hunky train conductor, Cal. "I'm three times bigger than him and begged to be put in the background," Jujubee laughs. "Can I just hold his hand from back here, so I look a little smaller? If we were floating in the ocean and there was a door, I'd let him on." But the real love story is the friendship between Tess and DeeDee. "There's no faking chemistry," Jujubee says. "You can't act it. You either have it or you don't. It's science. I don't know what chemical we make, but it's explosive." Ginger grins. "It's probably a chemical imbalance." Canadian club Canadian Drag Race host Brooke Lyn Hytes (aka Brock Hayhoe) relished embracing Amber's queen bee energy as the antagonist to Tess and DeeDee. "I feel like I was typecast," she cackles. "I have that face." The hardest part of getting into character was letting go of control over costume, hair and makeup, allowing Salvador Pérez Jr, Jeri Baker and Kerry Herta do their thing. "Drag queens are so used to driving the bus when it comes to their career and what they look like," Hytes says. "We're self-made creatures, so to give that over to somebody else's vision takes a lot of trust. But it turned out so well." As did Stop! That! Train!'s ritzy dance numbers, choreographed by Jamal Sims. "He's amazing," Hytes says. "I'm a bit of a backseat everything, giving suggestions, and have a hard time not stating my opinion. But it was a very collaborative environment." Hytes knows her moves, having been a ballet dancer as a kid. "I was in the boys' class, doing the male steps, and I realised pretty quickly they weren't for me," she says. "I wanted to be the swan, not the prince. And if I'm not interested in something, I'm putting zero effort in." Instead, Hytes headed to the drag troupe Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo and on to Drag Race, now hosting the Canadian edition. It's an opportunity she does not take for granted. "Drag Race has changed all of our lives," Hytes says. "It's changed popular culture. There aren't enough words to describe how grateful I am for everything it's given me. None of us would be here doing anything without RuPaul and World of Wonder. So please don't fire me." Movie stars Ginger Minj is equally effusive about the power of her president. “I grew up in a little Southern Baptist town where all the good Christians knew each other,” she recalls. "When The Brady Bunch Movie (1995) came out, my mom took me to see it. The cinema was full of people I would see at church on Sunday, and I remember holding my breath when RuPaul came on the screen." She needn't have worried. "Everybody laughed. They bought into it. And in my head, when my mom looked at me and smiled, I was like, 'Oh, I can do that. I can be that. It gave me hope." That young queer kids can look up to her and Jujubee as movie stars alongside Gellar brings them both such joy. "All I ever dreamed, as a kid, was to be a movie star," Jujubee says. "So sharing this queer joy with the masses is really cool. The film's full of people who have always been othered. Who felt like the odd one out. "And now they get to be a fabulous star in this equally fabulous disaster movie that explodes like a confetti cannon with particles that go everywhere for all eternity." Stop! That! Train! is in cinemas now.