While the name “Maestro” might feel like a reference to another iconic Doctor Who villain, there’s something quite singular about the character played by Jinkx Monsoon in the show’s return this May. Literally climbing out of a piano before consuming all of the music in the world, Maestro turns out to be one of The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa)’s most formidable opponents, overshadowing the time-traveling alien’s first encounter with The Beatles in “The Devil’s Chord.”
The RuPaul’s Drag Race champion and Broadway star says that Maestro was a “dream role,” a character that represents “where science fiction meets Greek mythology — you could look at them as a god or as a demon, but what they are at the end of the day is an extremely powerful embodiment of music. And as a musical person, I felt very ready for the challenge.”
In terms of the casting, showrunner Russell T Davies wasn’t thinking about Monsoon specifically while working on the script, but as soon as he was finished, he knew she was the obvious choice. “And we booked Jinkx very far in advance, I remember, because when you’re dealing with a drag queen of that stature, they’re booked months and months and months ahead of us,” he tells Consequence. “I’m delighted that worked out. It was brilliant.”
Monsoon and Davies first met through a longtime friend of Davies named Michael, who Monsoon would eventually marry. Says Davies, “I was literally texting [Michael] on the night he said ‘I’m off on a date,’ which turned out to be with Jinkx Monsoon, which is amazing. I phoned around sort of saying, ‘What do you know about Jinkx? Is Michael gonna be alright?’ And every single person said [Monsoon] could not be a nicer partner.”
And, Davies continues, “the next thing you know, he said, ‘I’m leaving Manchester, I’m going to travel the world with Jinkx.’ That’s sort of a showbiz tale that you don’t expect to happen.” The couple is now divorcing, which Davies says “is very sad, but it’s very amicable. They’re both moving on to different parts of their life.”
In “The Devil’s Chord,” Maestro literally fights The Doctor in a full-fledged “music battle” — musical notes flying around the screen like bullets — though, Monsoon’s favorite musical moment from the episode was getting to use her voice “as a weapon. My friends have joked for years that if I became some kind of superhero or supervillain, it would be that I had some kind of supersonic screech, because the people who live with me know that I only sing at a hundred percent. So the fact that I was able to short-circuit the sonic screwdriver with my voice — that felt very cool. I was really excited for that moment.”
Behind the scenes of Doctor Who, courtesy of Disney+
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