Mean Girls Movie Musical Star Jaquel Spivey on Playing Damian & Being a ‘Bad B*tch’

Name: Jaquel Spivey

Hometown: Raleigh, North Carolina

Current role: Damian Hubbard in Mean Girls

Teen Vogue: If you could be the main character in any TV show or movie that’s not your own, who would you be and why?

Jaquel Spivey: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt because it’s my favorite TV show, and it’s also from the mind of Tina Fey. I love that show so much. I was praying in high school when it was on, like let’s give Titus [Andromedon] a nephew or a brother. Just ‘cause I think Tituss [Burgess] is so perfect for that role, I can’t step into it. Nobody can.

Jaquel Spivey is counting his blessings. The 25-year-old actor has already led the Tony-winning company of A Strange Loop, was himself nominated for Best Actor in a Musical, and is now the latest performer taking up the mantle of everyone’s favorite almost-too-gay-to-function high schooler, Damian Hubbard, in the reimagined Mean Girls movie musical.

Damian Hubbard has — in his infinite slay — gifted Spivey a rewrite of sorts, a way to tap back into his experience of high school and give himself a better ending. Damian is, according to Spivey, what you get when you take a character who sashays around, and then throw in some musical numbers and sprinkle a little glitter.

Related: Internet Mean Girls Came After Avantika. She Continues to Laugh.

“It’s nice to step into a character who’s Black, plus-size, queer, and he takes no sh*t from anybody,” Spivey tells Teen Vogue. “Damian is truly just that b*tch and he’s minding his business. If it’s drama, it’s drama around him, it doesn’t involve him. There’s nobody coming for his size. There’s nobody coming for his queerness. He’s not getting slammed in lockers and slushied like an episode of Glee. He has power in this space.”

Spivey adds, “Damian knows he’s a star. He knows he’s that kid at school, so he doesn’t seek permission from anybody to be himself.” Spivey knows that past depictions of fat queer people were “not loud, and not too proud about much.” Damian, bold and unabashed, challenges that: “He’s just like, this is Damian Hubbard … these are the intersections of my life.”

Of course, stories about the difficulty of existing at those intersections do have their necessary place. “That’s cute,” Spivey says, “but it’s not always a sob story. Maybe I’m a bad b*tch because I’m queer. Maybe I’m a bad b*tch because I’m plus-size, I got some hips, I got some curves. Maybe those are the things that make me a star — to me.”

Jojo Whilden/Paramount © 2023 Paramount Pictures.