Nina West can thank a phone call from friend Zelda Williams for her biggest acting opportunity to date.
“Zelda Williams calls. ‘My friend has you on their vision board for this movie. Would you be okay if I introduced you?’” recalls West, the drag queen who is also known as Andrew Levitt.
Their mutual friend was Tina Romero, a filmmaker and daughter of late zombie maestro George A. Romero, the revered Night of the Living Dead director.
The younger Romero wrote West a note, recalling how before her father’s death in 2017, she received his blessing on her own project, a movie called Queens of the Dead. The horror-comedy centers on Drag queens and club kids battling the undead during an outbreak at ad rag show in Brooklyn. Would West want to be a part of the movie?
West, best known as a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race, previously worked onscreen in the Weird Al Yankovic biopic, Weird, playing drag Icon Divine.
Her latest film shot this summer, with Katy O’Brian, Margaret Cho, Brigette Lundy-Paine and Cheyenne Jackson among the cast.
“It’s this queer cast of remarkable magic,” says West. “It is camp. It is horror. I’ve never seen an undead movie like it.”
The summer shoot marked a busy period for West, as it came amid the rollout for RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars season nine, which needed her to do promotional duties during weekends off of filming. She used the show to raise funds for The Trevor Project, and also released a T-shirt raising funds for the LGBTQIA+ youth charity.
West is currently touring a one-woman show, and has an eye on doing more film acting roles after Queens of the Dead whether that’s in drag, or without it. Says West: “I don’t need to be in drag to do a role. But it is a skill for sure that I bring to the table, and it’s also informed me in the storytelling that I can do.”
