Bad Boy Cameo on Drag Kinging, Joy, and Positive Masculinity

Sometimes you think you are saying yes to fun.

A class. A stage. A persona. A chance to play.

And then something much deeper starts moving.

This episode begins in a hard place, with Jo making a choice for joy before she knew exactly where that choice would lead. What follows is not just a story about becoming a Drag King. It is about finding your people, finding your body again, and finding a version of masculinity that feels like home.

Watch or Listen

You can listen to the full episode here

Chapters

Chapters in this episode:

00:00 Welcome to The Kings of Joy Show

01:12 Jo’s origin story

05:24 Finding Queers of Joy and Kings of Joy

10:08 Creating the first Drag King persona

12:34 How Bad Boy Cameo was born

17:03 Drag Kinging and positive masculinity

21:46 Gender exploration and pronouns

27:28 Building inclusive queer community

35:04 Advice for aspiring Drag Kings

39:35 What a thriving Drag King scene could look like

44:05 Why Kings of Joy matters

What You’ll Hear

• A year of heartbreak turned toward joy
  
  
• The body-based relief of queer community
  
  
• How Bad Boy Cameo was invented
  
  
• Positive masculinity through Drag Kinging
  
  
• Reinvention after the first persona fell flat
  
  
• A more expansive understanding of gender
  
  
• Why inclusive queer spaces still matter
  
  
• A vision for a thriving Drag King scene
  
  

The Story

Jo aka Bad Boy Cameo did not come to Drag Kinging from a place of certainty.

She came looking for joy.

That matters, because so many people imagine Drag Kinging as something you do once you already know yourself. Once you are confident. Once you have your style figured out. Once you know exactly where you fit in queer community. But this episode of The Kings of Joy Show tells a different truth.

Sometimes Drag Kinging is what helps you find out.

Jo’s story begins in a season of rupture. The end of a marriage. Severe depression. A life that had cracked open in ways that were painful and disorienting. At New Year, she made a decision that sounds simple on the surface and was anything but simple in practice. She looked up at the stars and declared that 2023 would be “my year of joy.”

That line sits at the heart of the episode.

Not because it wraps things up neatly. It does not. But because it shows what can happen when someone chooses joy before they have proof that joy is available to them.

Alongside that decision was another one. Jo knew she needed queer community. She had always known herself as bisexual, but years of being in a long-term relationship with a man had made queer community feel harder to access than she expected. That experience will feel familiar to a lot of people. The quiet ache of knowing you belong somewhere, but not quite knowing how to get there. The frustration of feeling legitimate in yourself but still struggling to find spaces that reflect you back.

At first, Jo imagined she might find that community through sport. Then one night at a gay pub, while watching a Drag Queen perform, something flashed through her memory. She remembered seeing Drag Kings at Mardi Gras. She turned to her cousin and said, “I want to be a drag king.”

That is one of the great things about this episode. It honours instinct.

Not everything arrives as a five-year plan. Sometimes it arrives as a sentence in a bar, a bodily pull, a clear inner yes before the rest of your life has caught up.

From there, Jo found Queers of Joy and then Kings of Joy. What she describes next is one of the strongest moments in the whole conversation. After struggling to get childcare and nearly missing the night altogether, she walked into the Red Rattler and felt “the relief that my body went through to be in that room with my people.”

That is not just a nice anecdote.

That is a body telling the truth.

There is a kind of belonging that you think your way into, and then there is the kind that lands in your nervous system before your brain has even finished processing where you are. Jo describes finding a room full of trans people, non-binary people, neurodivergent people, and queer people who felt recognisable. Not because they were all the same, but because the space itself made room for difference.

That distinction matters.

Kings of Joy is not about fitting people into a narrow model of what a Drag King should be. It is about creating a culture where people can explore masculinity on their own terms and be met with camaraderie, creativity, and joy.

Jo’s first persona was not Bad Boy Cameo. It was the Art Professor Traeverse. This part of the story is so useful because it shows that persona-building is not always a straight line. The first King can be part of the process without being the final destination. Jo created the Art Professor through cultural history, Shakespeare energy, and academic seriousness. But as she says, “the problem with the professor was that he was too serious.”

He did not give her enough room to play.

Then Bad Boy Cameo was born.

And honestly, what a gift that persona is. A washed-up 1990s Home and Away actor who has never really stopped auditioning. Every performance becomes an audition for a new role. That concept is brilliant because it gives Jo as a performer endless range. It gives her comedy, theatricality, reinvention, and an excuse to try anything. King George doing Eminem. Footloose with Kevin Bacon energy. Character, camp, and commitment all folded together.

But beneath the fun, something more profound was happening.

Jo speaks openly about the way masculinity had sat in her life before Drag Kinging. As a teenager she was often mistaken for a boy, and that was a source of shame. As an adult, her ambition and directness were sometimes read as “masculine” in a critical way. She was told to soften, to be more feminine, to make herself easier to read.

Drag Kinging changed that relationship.

“Being a drag king has allowed me to kind of really step into that masculine and find the positive masculinity that exists in me.”

That line is one of the clearest articulations of what Kings of Joy is here to do.

Not replicate the worst of masculinity. Not imitate a harmful script. But create space for people to find a masculinity that is playful, sweet, expansive, self-aware, and alive. A masculinity that does not require shame. A masculinity that can sit alongside dresses, makeup, jeans, softness, swagger, tenderness, humour, and theatricality.

Jo talks about how this shift changed everyday life too. Before, she might stand in front of her wardrobe unsure whether to choose jeans or a dress, carrying an undercurrent of judgement about what each choice meant. After Drag Kinging, that judgement lifted. A suit day could be a suit day. A dress day could be a dress day. Neither cancelled out the other.

That kind of freedom matters.

It is easy to assume a Drag King journey only lives on stage. This episode shows how often it spills beautifully into the rest of a person’s life.

Another important thread in the conversation is education and exposure. Jo is honest about realising there was so much she had not fully understood before entering Kings of Joy. Pronouns like she/they. Trans masc experiences. Top surgery. Different ways people move through gender. This is handled with humility, not guilt. It is about the power of actually being in community with people whose lives widen your understanding.

That widening is cultural work.

It is one reason why visibility matters so much. When people know Drag Kings, know trans people, know gender-diverse people, know bisexual people, know queer community in real life, they have fewer places to hide behind assumption. Jo speaks powerfully about how even queer communities can exclude, and how much it has meant to find a space that is deeply queer and still genuinely inclusive.

That conversation is one of the reasons this episode matters beyond one person’s origin story.

Jo also reflects on what it means to be a parent raising sons while actively exploring positive masculinity herself. There is something beautiful in that. Not just theory, but practice. Not just saying the world needs better masculinity, but living it. Modelling it. Making it visible.

And then there is the movement-building layer.

Jo is not only a performer. She is also part of the Kings of Joy producer team, helping make events like Drag Kingdom and Bois Night Out happen. This feels important because thriving Drag King culture does not emerge from wishful thinking alone. It takes people willing to build stages, host rooms, gather artists, support each other, and keep showing up.

When Jo imagines a thriving Drag King scene, her vision is simple and bold. She wants a world where when she says, “I’m a drag king,” people know what that means. More shows. More visibility. More audiences. More cities where Drag Kings are not an underground secret but a recognised, celebrated part of culture.

That future is not here by accident.

It is built by people like Jo. People who followed the pull. People who said yes before they had certainty. People who walked into the room, felt their body exhale, and decided to stay.

Movement Context

Season 2 of The Kings of Joy Show is documenting a global Drag King movement through the stories of people who are not only performing masculinity, but expanding what masculinity can mean. These are not just interviews. They are records of cultural change happening in real time.

Kings of Joy is a global Drag King community helping LGBTQIA+ people break free from constraints around gender, sexuality and self-expression so we can be 100% at home in our own skin. Jo’s story is one powerful example of what becomes possible when joy, community, and queer self-expression are allowed to lead.

Single Clear CTA

If you’re feeling the pull to explore Drag Kinging yourself, start here

About Danica Lani, The King Coach

Hey you 👋 I’m Danica Lani - also known as The King Coach. I’ve mentored 150 first-time Drag Kings since 2020, and I’m here to say: if you’re feeling the pull to explore gender through performance, you’re not alone - and you’re not too late.

Whether you’re new to this world or quietly dreaming of stepping into your masculine side on stage, there’s space for you here.

Kings of Joy is a global Drag King community helping LGBTQIA+ people break free from constraints around gender, sexuality, and self-expression - so we can be 100% at home in our own skin.

✨ Ready to name your King? Download Claim Your Drag King Name in 4 Simple Steps - a free guide to choosing your Drag King name.

About the Guest

Jo aka Bad Boy Cameo is a performer, improviser, and storyteller with a lifelong love of the stage. In this episode, she shares how Kings of Joy entered her life at a pivotal moment and how Drag Kinging became a pathway into joy, queer community, and a more expansive relationship with masculinity.

Bad Boy Cameo is the Drag King persona Jo created after an earlier persona no longer fit. Framed as a washed-up 1990s actor who is always auditioning, Bad Boy Cameo gives Jo room for humour, reinvention, and bold theatrical play. Jo is also part of the Kings of Joy producer team, helping build the Drag King scene through performances and events including Bois Night Out.

The Kings of Joy Show is produced by Bambuddha Studios. Their support has made it possible to document and share these conversations with care and cultural integrity. Learn more.