![\"(L-R)](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1761267734_150_QUEENS-OF-THE-DEAD-Still-6.jpg\")
(L-R) Jaquel Spivey, Tomas Matos, and Nina West in \u201cQueens of the Dead.\u201d (Photo provided by IFC\/Shudder)<\/p>\n(L-R) Jaquel Spivey, Tomas Matos, and Nina West in \u201cQueens of the Dead.\u201d (Photo provided by IFC\/Shudder)<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t take Nina West long to decide she wanted to be part of the new movie \u201cQueens of the Dead.\u201d When she heard it was a Tina Romero queer zombie film, that was basically enough.<\/p>\n
Opening in theaters this week, \u201cQueens of the Dead\u201d is a zombie apocalypse comedy thriller where club kids and drag queens in Brooklyn have to save themselves and the city. Romero, the daughter of legendary horror filmmaker George A. Romero (\u201cNight of the Living Dead,\u201d \u201cDawn of the Dead,\u201d) has rounded up a huge queer cast, including Katy O\u2019Brian, Margaret Cho, Cheyenne Jackson, Dominique Jackson, Tomas Matos, and West. <\/p>\n
West, who starred in Season 11 of \u201cRuPaul\u2019s Drag Race,\u201d and Matos, from Andrew Ahn\u2019s \u201cFire Island,\u201d spoke to Georgia Voice about the project.<\/p>\n
West calls her character, Ginsey Tonic, a house mother. She is a queen of a certain age who has been working for a long time and is not used to things disrupting her schedule or flow.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe calls all the shots, and so when something like this happens in her world, it is completely unsettling,\u201d West said. \u201cShe is cool, calm, and collected up until the point where we have some chaos break out. You see her completely crumble. She has a delicious arc. There\u2019s a lot more to her than this stern, rigid drag queen who sees life in a very specific way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
On the other end of the spectrum, Matos \u2013 who is non-binary and uses they\/them pronouns \u2013 calls their character Nico, AKA Scrumptious, the baby queen on the scene. Within the \u201cQueens of the Dead\u201d world, they are the new face on the block.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey really want the other people in the nightlife community, specifically the ones in the club, to take them seriously and see them for who they are, even during a zombie apocalypse,\u201d Matos said. \u201cThey are unapologetically, authentically themselves. I think they experience a bunch of different turmoil within their own intersexual identity and all of that is happening to them during a zombie apocalypse.\u201d<\/p>\n
West joked that the loaded cast is like the queer Avengers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanos, this time, is a group of zombie Brooklynites,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s so fierce.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Matos noticed that actress Dominique Jackson was attached to the project, they knew they had to be involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think seeing her be part of this was what made me realize I needed to be part of this,\u201d Matos said. \u201cNot only am I a huge fan of who she is as a person and the work she has already done in her career, but to share space with her as an icon in the queer community, an icon in the ballroom community and the way she has blazed trails for other trans people is so important. I was really excited just to be in her orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like West, Matos was also psyched to be part of a Tina Romero film.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe has queered the canon, so to speak, within the Romero legacy,\u201d the actor said.<\/p>\n
On set, Matos said Romero created a sandbox and allowed the cast to play. As a director, Romero was everything they could have asked for.<\/p>\n
\u201cUltimately as an actor, the thing I appreciated the most is someone who allows me to be me, as exuberant as I am, and allows me to bring a lot of myself into the role while also keeping me in the confines of this sandbox she has created,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n
West concurred, admiring the director\u2019s grace and willingness to interact with her cast.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe led with such grace and was interested in what you brought to the table,\u201d West said. \u201cShe had ideas and offered them, but also provided so much space for each of us to also have insight and bring what we wanted to the camera and characters and dynamic. This is an ensemble piece. It\u2019s about the Scooby gang; these core queer zombie fighters.\u201d<\/p>\n
Although West and Matos didn\u2019t meet until they were both on set, they were already mutual fans. West had previously seen Matos in \u201cDiana: The Musical\u201d on Broadway and in 2022\u2019s\u201cFire Island.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think [Matos] is such a fierce talent,\u201d she said. \u201cI knew we\u2019d hit it off and we did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matos called West a \u201cstaple\u201d within the \u201cRuPaul\u2019s Drag Race\u201d community.<\/p>\n
\u201cNina was who I thought she\u2019d be \u2013 this wholeheartedly authentic, beautiful individual,\u2019 they said.<\/p>\n
West said she believes it\u2019s important to have a queer-filled cast in a mainstream project, especially at this moment in time.<\/p>\n
\u201c[It celebrates] queer joy, resistance, resilience, identity \u2013 and chosen family,\u201d\u00a0 she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(L-R) Jaquel Spivey, Tomas Matos, and Nina West in \u201cQueens of the Dead.\u201d (Photo provided by IFC\/Shudder) It…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9995,9996,5921,10197,5923,9998,9,24,5232,63,122,124,123,5229,5233,10202],"class_list":["post-14442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-cheyenne-jackson","tag-dominique-jackson","tag-george-a-romero","tag-jaquel-spivey","tag-katy-obrian","tag-margaret-cho","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nina-west","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-queens-of-the-dead","tag-tina-romero","tag-tomas-matos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14442","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}