Leigh Douglas on the Queer Art of Playing the MAGA Villain

“I was always a princess girl growing up,” admits Leigh Douglas. It’s a disarming confession from the writer-performer behind ROTUS: Receptionist Of The United States, the sharp, biting political satire transferring to London’s Park Theatre this month following a sold-out Edinburgh Fringe run. But Douglas isn’t looking back at the fairy tale through rose-tinted glasses. In fact, she suspects the call is coming from inside the castle.

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“There’s no doubt that most of them promote conservative ideals of femininity, gender roles and female identity,” Douglas says of the Disney pantheon. “Dare I say, they all—with the notable exceptions of the clearly queer-coded Mulan, environmental conservationist Pocahontas and small business owner Tiana—would likely be Trump voters (or at least their princes would be).”

It is this friction—the bleeding edge where nostalgic girlhood meets hard-right reality—that fuels ROTUS. While the play is fiction, its DNA is extracted straight from the headlines. The narrative centres on Chastity Quirke, a White House receptionist, ex-sorority chapter president, and staunch Republican navigating a personal reckoning. The character is a composite sketch drawn from real-life figures like Cassidy Hutchinson, Sarah Matthews, and Karoline Leavitt—women who stood in the eye of the political storm.

But this isn’t just another Trump spoof. God knows we have had enough of those, and frankly, the reality is often more absurd than the fiction. Instead, Douglas is interrogating something far more specific and insidious: the psychology of the “Pick-Me Patriot.”

Palaces of Fallacy

The public fascination with the women behind the men of the MAGA movement is hardly new. From Marjory Taylor Greene to the polished press secretaries spinning lies from the podium, these figures command a morbid curiosity. For Douglas, however, the intrigue lies not in their eventual downfall, but the sheer architectural complexity of their denial while the faith holds.

“Watching the fall of any love-to-hate figure, whether it be Julius Caesar, Regina George or Marjory Taylor Greene, is always going to be compelling,” Douglas observes. “I am absolutely greedy for every tell-all book, interview and Instagram Live that any of these women do once they break with MAGA. I’ll hoover up every factoid and revelation.”

Yet, ROTUS attempts to map the cognitive dissonance required to be a woman upholding a system designed to suppress you. It’s a paradox Douglas finds fascinatingly dark. She posits the key to understanding figures like Karoline Leavitt isn’t to mock them, but to trace the twisted path of their reasoning.

“I think what’s most compelling about figures like Karoline Leavitt is actually attempting to follow the logic of their arguments,” she says. “They will build palaces out of logical fallacies rather than admit to the cognitive dissonance of disavowing feminism whilst themselves, as women, holding positions of power. The compelling thing about MAGA women is that they are extremely good at building a pretty, aspirational, pseudo-inspirational façade.”

Douglas argues that when you strip away the “live, laugh, love” aesthetic and the curated Instagram feeds, the logical conclusion of their arguments is invariably “white supremacy, Christian fundamentalism and patriarchy.”

Here, the playwright offers her most stinging sociological critique. For these women, she suggests, the patriarchy isn’t a cage—it’s a fortress.

“Rather than seeing patriarchal systems of oppression as a threat in any way, they appeal to a sense of safety and familiarity with their insistence that they are sticking up for ‘normal’ women,” Douglas explains. “In fact, they are preserving their place at the top of an oppressed food chain as conventionally attractive, white, straight-sized women.”

In Chastity’s world, power isn’t abstract, and it certainly isn’t sisterhood. When asked what holds more weight for her character—her sorority credentials or her social media stats—Douglas is blunt about the transaction at the heart of the character’s soul.

“Her 300,000 Instagram followers every time. Chastity is a capitalist. Followers are money, money is power, and power is everything.”

The Queer Superpower

There is an inherent irony in Douglas—a self-described “lefty-liberal lesbian”—inhabiting the skin of a woman who would likely vote to strip away her rights. One might expect the process to be infuriating, but Douglas describes it as “deeply queer,” a reclamation of power through performance acting almost like an exorcism.

“It feels empowering to step into Chastity’s shoes, as I’m sure anyone who’s ever made their friends laugh with an impression of their bully will understand,” she says.

However, the performance goes beyond mere mockery. Douglas suggests the queer experience provides a unique vantage point for deconstructing the villain, largely because the community has spent so long identifying with them in pop culture.

“Queer people have an interesting relationship with villains, I think, as so many of the Disney villains we grew up with were, in retrospect, queer-coded,” she notes. “As much as it feels empowering to make audiences laugh at Chastity, I also think it’s a bit of a queer superpower to be able to find the humanity in a villain as well.”

This empathy is crucial to the dramatic stakes of ROTUS. If Chastity were a monster from the first scene, the satire would be toothless. By allowing the character to have a heart, Douglas ensures the eventual unraveling of her worldview becomes a tragic necessity rather than a simple punishment.

“Although in many ways her views do make her villainous to a lefty-liberal lesbian like me, it was important to me to have compassion for Chastity, her context, and ultimately allow her to have a heart in the end,” Douglas says.

The Safety of the Kitten Heel

The risk of flying this close to the sun is real. Douglas laughs about a review that once labeled ROTUS “apolitical”—a bizarre take given the subject matter, but one that proves how easily the line between parody and reality blurs in a post-truth world. To stop the show from being mistaken for the real thing, Douglas knew she had to break the fourth wall, and perhaps a few heels.

“That was a funny review!” she says. “I think this is a huge part of why the cabaret- and drag-inspired elements of the show are important to me. The show wouldn’t work for me if I was telling the story in an entirely naturalistic way. These aspects of queer performance allow me to depict some truly heinous views with a wink to the audience.”

This is most evident when Douglas shifts into playing the male characters, a transformation using the absurdity of drag to undermine the patriarchy she is depicting. It is a visual gag carrying a heavy thematic load.

“When I play the male characters especially, there’s something innately silly about me pretending to be a large Texan Republican man while costumed in a kitten heel,” she says. “It shows just how much gender is a performance and undermines a binary, heteronormative understanding of the world. There’s also the added fun that I’m therefore representing these bigoted men in a manner they would find horrifying.”

A Cabaret of Complicity

ROTUS is not a dry political lecture; it is a show that sings. Literally. Original music by viral comedian Sarah Hester Ross drives the narrative. For Douglas, the decision to include song is about more than just variety; it is a tactical choice.

“Cabaret has always been a form of political resistance, and it was important to me to give a nod to that in ROTUS,” she explains. “Cabaret as a form requires a twinkle in the eye. That twinkle is what builds a rapport and trust with an audience.”

In a cost-of-living crisis, Douglas is acutely aware that a ticket is a promise to entertain. But beyond the theatrical “razzle-dazzle,” the format serves a protective function. It allows the audience to lower their defenses before the political knife twists.

“No matter what the material or how serious a message might be, you as a performer are making a promise to entertain the audience,” she says. “When a show is reflecting something frightening, it feels all the more important to give the audience some theatrical razzle-dazzle so that a) an audience feels safe with me, and b) we can all have some fun together in the midst of the darkness.”

The result is a production that can swing from the absurdity of Carrie Underwood’s Before He Cheats and Shania Twain’s Man! I Feel Like a Woman—tracks Douglas identifies as essential to the “Staunch Republican Girlboss” playlist—to the crushing reality of political complicity.

Ultimately, however, the razzle-dazzle must give way to the reckoning. While she is careful to avoid spoiling the specific turn of events, Douglas is clear that Chastity’s carefully curated palace of fallacies cannot remain standing.

“The innate hypocrisy at the core of Chastity’s beliefs has to unravel, otherwise the show would simply be promoting bigoted views,” Douglas concludes. “There’s also something compelling about what happens to a character when their entire worldview gets upended, and that’s all the more dramatic if they begin in the most self-righteous, dogmatic place possible.”

Featured Image: Leigh Douglas – ROTUS – Supplied by Production

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ROTUS: Receptionist Of The United States plays at Park Theatre, London, from 20th January – 7th February 2026. For tickets or more information, click here.

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