This story originally appeared on Them.
The camp appeal of Jawbreaker, an iconic entry in the 1990s queer canon, has given it a permanent home among LGBTQ+ cinephiles. But a recent addition to its musical adaptation has made the film’s queer subtext even more visible.
Fern Mayo/ Vylette, who was played by Judy Greer in the original film, will be transgender in the upcoming stage adaptation, according to Deadline, and will be played by nonbinary actor AJ Paramo. Following the announcement, writer Darren Stein shared the story of how he came to change his vision for Mayo.
In a Thursday post on Instagram, Stein wrote that he was first alerted to the trans subtext of his own character when trans actress Eve Lindley DMed him to say that “Fern Mayo’s story has always felt so parallel to the trans story.”
“‘Starting out so different, conforming, being exposed...it was always really, really powerful.’ Not being trans myself but always feeling on the gender spectrum, her message was an instant revelation for how to update Fern’s character in the musical,” Stein wrote. “So thank you Eve, for inspiring such a meaningful update to this story.”
The original film follows a popular clique, the Flawless Four, who must cover up the accidental death of their friend when she is killed by a jawbreaker candy during a prank. Fern Mayo witnesses the crime and agrees to help cover up the crime when the girls offer to make her over into the popular Vylette.
“I’ve definitely felt a connection to the character of Fern and how she sort of became the greatest version of herself,” said choreographer Jay Jackson, who is better known as RuPaul’s Drag Race’s Laganja Estranja, told Deadline. “So, it’s so cool to see a narrative that I think so many of us trans people identified with actually become what we saw it as.”
Paramo said that the journey to getting cast began with a DM from Stein.
“For him to take time to send me that DM and express the feeling and the subtext that lived within Fern Mayo with Judy Greer’s version and how many trans people in the queer community identified with Fern, it kind of gave me that subtext and I realized that’s why he made it text. It made me fall in love with the piece even more,” Paramo told Deadline.
“I’m from Chicago, and so to be able to come to California, have my debut, and this be the circumstance, to be able to give the trans community a light and a story that isn’t one of the Angels [from Rent] or the La Cienegas [from Bring It On: The Musical], but is its own youth story of a trans girl trying to find her confidence in a space like high school, I think it’s commendable,” they added.
Stein previously spoke to Them about the horror movie beginnings of Jawbreaker, which eventually became an acerbic dark comedy. It was based on a real prank, but he invented the character of Fern Mayo as a mirror to the main Flawless Four.
“I wanted Fern to represent all the underdogs of high school, all the outsiders, everybody who couldn’t be part of that group and wanted to fantasize,” Stein said while observing the film’s 25th anniversary in 2024. “I wanted to think of the most extreme outsider possible. So she’s in that wig, which is a very literal wig. I wanted her to look really awful and ‘sad, sack’-y. When she becomes Vylette, they dye her hair platinum blonde immediately, so it’s already extreme. But by the end, she’s wearing hot pink and she's like Liberace coming to school. You know, they are two kinds of monsters in a way.”
Jawbreaker: The Musical opens Friday, September 4, at Hudson Backstage Theater in Los Angeles and runs through September 20.
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