(NEW YORK) — In the new movie Stage Mother, Australian actress Jacki Weaver plays a conservative Texas choir director who finds herself the owner of a San Francisco drag club following the death of her estranged son.

Her character, Maybelline Metcalf, must learn to embrace the LGBTQ community her son was a part of and reconcile the fact that she didn’t accept him while he was alive.

The Oscar-nominated Weaver is quite the opposite of her character, having embraced the gay community all her life. She tells ABC Audio she was less like a stage mother on set and more like everyone’s “wicked girlfriend.”

“I’ve moved in gay circles and in drag circles all my life since I was 15, because Sydney’s a very gay city,” she says. “You know, nothing about that world has ever shocked me.”

After attending her first drag show at 15, Weaver says she became fascinated with the art form. She later went on to star in the Australian stage version of quintessential drag musical Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

“My husband, even now, we love to go to a drag show,” she says. “We think it’s great fun.”

Stage Mother, also starring Adrian Grenier, Lucy Liu, Jackie Beat and Mya Taylor, comes out August 21.

By Andrea Tuccillo
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