When it comes to drag, speed is everything. As performer Tilly Capulet wisely puts it, “You’ve got to jump on a train or someone else will do it and get the credit for it.” And jump, they did!
The moment Capulet saw the horror movie “Weapons,” she knew she had to embody Aunt Gladys. She wasn’t alone in this sudden obsession.
Since its August premiere, Zach Cregger’s chilling horror flick has unleashed a new kind of icon: the menacing witch, Aunt Gladys, brilliantly brought to life by Amy Madigan. Her signature look—a vibrant red wig with choppy baby bangs, exaggerated, garish makeup, and unforgettable style—quickly exploded across social media. Now, drag queens from every corner of the globe are embracing Gladys, creating stunning photoshoots and integrating her unique persona into their acts.
It’s a delightfully full-circle moment, given that Amy Madigan herself revealed in an interview that Gladys’s striking, smeared red lipstick was partly inspired by drag. “You want to pay homage to that, you don’t want to make a joke about it,” she noted, perfectly capturing the spirit of this newfound inspiration.
I had the pleasure of chatting with six of these incredible performers, learning what it is about Aunt Gladys that so deeply resonates with them.
Morgan McMichaels
Los Angeles
Even Morgan McMichaels, a seasoned performer, admits to breaking the rules. While watching “Weapons,” she found herself unable to resist her phone. Gladys’s captivating presence spurred her into immediate action. “Against the rules and against my better judgment, every time she was off of screen, I was on my screen researching, you know, ‘flower brooch,'” McMichaels confessed.
A former contestant on “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” McMichaels first saw “Weapons” on a Thursday. By the following Monday, she was already performing as Gladys in her regular show in West Hollywood, set to the haunting sounds of Siouxsie and the Banshees’ “Spellbound.”
“I finally got to do a Siouxsie song with something that’s super popular and super current,” she beamed. While some audience members hadn’t yet recognized Gladys, McMichaels noted this is often the case when she channels other iconic older women, like Alexis Carrington Colby from “Dynasty.”
McMichaels was also fortunate to have an insider connection: she knows Leo Satkovich, the makeup department head for “Weapons.” “I was very lucky to get to pick his brain about her costuming,” she shared, ensuring her Gladys was perfectly authentic.
Perla
Toronto
As a devoted horror fan with tattoos inspired by “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Gremlins,” Perla naturally caught “Weapons” on its opening day. She quickly sensed Gladys’s magnetic pull. “I started to feel that connection like, she’s going to be the hot horror Halloween costume, I need to do this before anyone else does,” Perla recounted. She wasted no time recruiting a friend for a dedicated photoshoot.
The most challenging aspect of perfecting the Gladys aesthetic? The lips. “Mine are very injected and hers are not, obviously,” Perla explained. “So trying to crease them and do all this stuff was so impossible.”
Perla believes that drag queens gravitate towards Gladys because the character herself embodies a drag persona. At home, Gladys appears without makeup, performing spells in a nightgown. “But when she’s interacting with people throughout the film and she’s fully done up in this caricature of herself, there is such a difference between her private persona vs. her public persona, and I think that resonates with a lot of drag artists,” Perla articulated.
Tilly Capulet
Melbourne, Australia
Aunt Gladys was the sole reason Tilly Capulet decided to watch “Weapons.” The trailer initially seemed too terrifying, but then, “the day after it came out I saw on Twitter a picture of Gladys and thought, ‘What the [expletive] is that?’ And that was enough to pull me in to see the film.”
That very same night, she crafted a Gladys performance for a gig. All she needed to purchase was a necklace; everything else, including a wig that just needed styling into Gladys’s signature cut, she already had.
Capulet’s Gladys routine features a sped-up rendition of Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell,” a clever nod to Gladys’s bell-ringing ritual used to command her possessed victims.
Capulet elaborates that, despite Gladys’s villainous actions, she strikes a chord with queer audiences beyond her striking appearance. “She’s an outsider trying to fit in with this weird society, and society kind of accepts her but not really and that’s gay people,” she mused.
Tilda Whirl
Fort Wayne, Ind.
Tilda Whirl has been a lifelong admirer of female villains, dressing as Cruella de Vil and the Wicked Witch of the West as a child, and now bringing them to life as a “fully grown drag queen.”
Gladys offers a unique sense of liberation, partly because she’s designed to look a bit unpolished. “A lot of times as drag performers, depending on the look, we try to be very pretty and polished and perfect,” Whirl observed. “There’s a freedom in being kind of messy and dirty with it, but there’s also a fabulousness to that as well.”
Tilda Whirl has hosted two bingo sessions as Gladys, using a bell as a prop, and performed Lady Gaga’s “Abracadabra” in a few shows. While early audiences were puzzled, subsequent appearances have brought more widespread recognition.
DeJa Skye
Las Vegas
DeJa Skye, another notable “Drag Race” alumna, saw a reflection of herself in Aunt Gladys.
“I will be that in maybe 50 years, actually no, probably 10 years,” she quipped. “I don’t have brows. She barely has any brows. I’m bald underneath my wig. She’s bald underneath her wig. And she just loves a statement outfit. She’s not afraid to be bold and out there.” Skye concluded, “OK, this is actually going to be me, minus the killing spree and the taking over humanity.”
It took her roughly two days to gather the necessary items to transform into Gladys. She had no prior experience with old-age makeup, so she had to squint to meticulously draw in the lines. “I do wish I had a better wig with fuller bangs, but I think I definitely did it justice,” she stated proudly.
She added that drag queens are drawn to Gladys because “we love a strong female.” She continued, “For me, it was just the fact she was not afraid to wear the cosmetics, she was not afraid to be camp, to be outlandish, to be out there and just to be, well, I guess not herself, quote-unquote, but what she wanted to present to the world.”
Gouda Judy
Columbia, S.C.
In Gouda Judy’s reimagining, Gladys defies her gruesome demise in “Weapons.”
“I like to live in a delusional world where I get to see her one more time onscreen,” Gouda Judy expressed. “So I’m letting her survive through me and I’m sure a bunch of other drag artists are the same where she will live forever now as a drag icon.”
Inspired by “Weapons,” she decided to perform as Gladys the very next day, selecting songs that were “sassy, flirty, funny,” including “Dark Arts” by the K-pop group aespa.
When performing to an audience unfamiliar with Gladys, the room can fall silent. But, as Gouda describes, “the people who know it and get it, they’re screaming, they’re wagging their finger the whole time. It’s very polarizing. It’s either crickets of the loudest I’ve ever had.”