Miss Coco Peru

Leupp is a native of City Island, New York. He is a 1983 graduate of Cardinal Spellman High School and studied theatre at Adelphi University. Calling himself "a gay guy who was never going to be passing for straight", he said that he had just started college when homophobic slurs were directed at him. "Here we go again, I thought; I was so used to it, in high school. But by the end of those four years, I had become very popular, by just being myself, and being relatable." Leupp calls Robin Williams, Whoopi Goldberg and Bette Midler some of his early idols. In a 2012 interview he said, "When I was younger, I looked up to people who were like Bette Midler and Lily Tomlin, people who created characters and got discovered that way. I always knew early on that I was gay and I wanted to be an openly gay performer. Back when I started, that was pretty rare. I was trained in the theater and I went to college for theater, and I decided to do drag as a way to express myself both in theater and as an activist. I always find that people who are able to do all of that an inspiration. I feel like Lily Tomlin and Bette Midler, early on, did that. ... [Midler] started in the bathhouses and gay men wrote her material. Of course she had the performance style to pull it off, but she also had gay men writing for her. That's why her voice had that gay sensibility." He decided "it was probably best for me to be openly gay on stage, and create my own character. I did a one-person show early on as myself ... All my friends came, and loved it; I was always considered funny. But I knew it wasn't going to be enough." Leupp recalled thinking, "How do I change people's minds, those who might not have a clear picture of who gay people were?" He said, "Coco came about at a time in my life when I didn't have much direction ... I realized I had to do something that made me unique ... I read a book about Native Americans 'two spirits,' which were men who dressed as women or partially as women who were often seen as the shaman or the storytellers in their communities." "Wouldn't it be great if I did something in drag, I decided, where people perceive you as a drag queen in a way, but as I tell the story — my story — they would forget I'm a drag queen and just relate to the story. This is what I had in mind when I started writing my first drag show." "So I put all those things together: I'm a drag queen/two spirit/gay activist/entertainer. And everything fell into place. It was really a magical time in my life," Leupp said. To find Coco's signature hairdo, he tried blonde and black wigs but thought they looked terrible; when he tried red, Leupp said "that's the color." "My first hairdo was very Tina Louise/Gilligan's Island — very big. It evolved into the straight with flip going under, then I tried it with the flip going out — and I said, 'That's Coco.' Other drag queens have chided me for not changing my hairdo, but I just feel it is so much part of the persona and so recognizable, I don't want to change it." Leupp said his parents were very supportive, "But when I did do drag for the first time I had already done a one-person show about being gay. When I did that they were terrified — they thought I was going to have things thrown at me. But when I got applause, they realized there's a big world out there that they didn't know about. So when I decided to do drag, they were nervous, but hid it. And I think they were happy that I was received with such love when they expected me to be greeted with tomatoes." Leupp later "realized the potential of drag as full-blown theater" through the work of playwright and drag performer Charles Busch. Leupp's first one-person show was Miss Coco Peru in My Goddamn Cabaret in 1992. Several more Coco Peru shows followed, as well as a 1994 guest role on New York Undercover and appearances in both Wigstock: The Movie and To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar in 1995. Peru next had a role in the 1997 romantic comedy Nick and Jane. Her follow-up was the 1999 independent film Trick. According to Peru, Trick director Jim Fall was a friend and fan, and five years before the film was shot she helped him audition actors by reading the role which ultimately went to Tori Spelling. Peru's role in the film was added specifically for her: "They wrote me a part, which I rewrote using my own experiences. I wrote that line 'It burns.' Most of the part was written by me, which is why I played it so well." Peru later starred in Richard Day's Girls Will Be Girls (2003) and was one of six performers featured in the Logo original stand-up comedy series Wisecrack (2005). She has appeared in a number of other supporting and guest-starring roles in television and film, including Will & Grace in 2001 and again in 2018 and 2019, Arrested Development in 2005 and Twins in 2006; the Bravo reality series Boy Meets Boy (2003) and Welcome to the Parker (2007); the police procedural drama series Detroit 1-8-7 in 2011; the 2004 comedy film Straight-Jacket; and a 2007–2008 web series follow-up to Girls Will Be Girls. Peru performed the voice of "Mama Hippo" in the 2006 Disney animated feature The Wild, and later was the voice of Mother Morally Superior in a 2008 episode of the Logo stop motion animated series Rick & Steve: The Happiest Gay Couple in All the World. In 2004 Peru appeared in an Orbitz TV commercial that was later nominated for a GLAAD Media Award. In 2008 Leupp said, "I'm not impersonating a woman. It's just an extension of me. I'm telling autobiographical stories, and Coco gives me the freedom to be a little more outrageous and say things I wouldn't say in everyday life ... Drag allows me to embrace a lot of the things I hated about myself growing up ... Having been called a girl-boy and all that, drag is a way of saying, I'm going to embrace everything that anybody said about me, and put it out there on stage. People have said I shouldn't call myself a drag queen, that I do a disservice to myself. My reaction is I'm proud to be what I am. When I see video footage of Stonewall, I am proud to be a part of that history. I'm not saying that I am historical, but just being out there doing the drag, on television, in movies ... I have young nephews ... who know Coco, and who think it's great that I dress up as a girl. In this way, I am changing the world."