For more than four decades, The Golden Girls has remained a pop culture phenomenon, introducing audiences to four unforgettable women whose friendship, humor, independence, and willingness to talk openly about everything from sex to aging made the series unlike anything else on television. Now, the beloved characters are back onstage in The Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue, an all-male drag production that imagines what Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia might be up to in 2026. The show is touring across the country through January, with a stop at Georgia’s Sandy Springs Performing Arts Center on October 22.
The talented cast is made up of Christopher Davis (Dorothy), Adam Graber (Rose), Christopher Kamm (Sophia), Tommy Favorite (Stanley and Burt), and Vince Kelley. Vince takes on the role of Blanche Devereaux, the character famously brought to life by Rue McClanahan. Set in the present day, the show puts a contemporary spin on the classic sitcom while maintaining the humor, heart, and friendship that made the original so beloved. For Vince, playing Blanche has also become an opportunity to explore the qualities he admires most about her, from her confidence and unapologetic sexuality to her willingness to laugh at herself and remain vulnerable with the people she loves.
As The Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue tours the country, Vince and his fellow cast members have also discovered just how deeply the series continues to connect with audiences, particularly LGBTQ+ fans who have embraced its themes of chosen family, individuality, and unconditional friendship. In our conversation, Vince talks about discovering theater at age seven, fighting to play Blanche, honoring McClanahan’s legacy while making the role his own, the show’s enduring appeal, and why every performance feels a little like attending a Golden Girls convention.
What is your background in theater? How did you get bitten by “the bug”?
I was seven years old, and my uncle’s girlfriend at the time was in high school – which he was as well, so nothing weird there. They were doing The Sound of Music at the high school and they needed a couple kids to be the von Trapp children. And she asked my mom, “Do you think Vince would want to do the show and I’ll take him to the rehearsals?” And my mom was like, “Free babysitting?” and said, “Yes, take him.”
After the show was done, and again, I was seven years old, they were like “it’s done now” and I was like, “What do you mean the show’s done?” and I was like, “Okay, it looks like we’re going to have to find another one.” I just kept doing it all through junior high and high school, fostered by some wonderful teachers that I had and my mom driving me everywhere, of course. And then I went to school in New York for college for musical theater and I just never stopped.
How did you arrive at The Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue?
I had been working with the producers before COVID on another show. And then, during the lockdown, everyone was like, “What should we do? When this is done, do you guys want to continue with that show? Do you want to try to do something different?” And I was very fortunate enough to be in those conversations, and when Golden Girls was mentioned I was a huge fan of the show, so I was like, “I am resonating with this. Let’s look into this.” And then we just kept going, and now four years later we’re still doing it, still having a good time.
You stepped into that role that Rue McClanahan made iconic. What was going through your mind when you learned you’d first be playing her?
It was more like I said that I would be playing her. They were like, “we want you to be Rose” and I was like, “And I love that for you, but I want to be Blanche.” I’ve always loved that character. I love the superficial things, like the clothes and the fashion…I love all of that about her. But more than that, I love her confidence. I love her willingness to love. I’ve learned so much about not only Blanche, but Rue McClanahan, and the woman that she was and her resilience, and I’ve tried to adopt some of those qualities on stage and off over these last few years. It’s been a real honor.
How do you approach making the role of Blanche your own while still honoring what Rue created?
Our show is super fun. It’s 2026 in our show. It’s a lost episode. It’s not from the TV show, so right off the bat, you get to have a little bit of inventiveness. We have a lot of improv in our show. We have a lot of opportunities to make the audience, not necessarily participate, but, we, the actors in the show, spend a lot of time and energy learning about where we’re going.
For instance, we’re going to The Villages, which is iconic in itself – and we’ve had jokes about The Villages in the show since day one, before we even dreamed that we would be going there. It is such an absolute treasure. We’re doing our research. We’re learning about what you guys have going on and how we can handcraft a performance that is just for that audience tonight, which every piece of theater is, of course, but we want people in The Villages to be like, “Oh my God, this is about us. They’ve really taken the time to include us in the show.” That’s another great way to put my own little stamp on it – by giving the audience something a little more unexpected and also giving your fellow actors a little something unexpected. We really try to honor Carol Burnett and Harvey Korman by making every opportunity to make the audience laugh – and it’s also an opportunity to make each other laugh, which is something that keeps us going after all this time and keeps the show super fun and fresh and keeps us wanting to get back up on stage.
What do you think is at the heart of the appeal of Blanche? What keeps audiences coming back to her?
Like I said, she doesn’t take herself too seriously for the most part. She obviously sees herself as this, like, tragic Southern heroine, Tennessee Williams type of character. But at the end of the day, she will be the first person to laugh at herself and not get offended, and I think that’s a great one archetype you have to have. Without Blanche there wouldn’t be Samantha Jones. There wouldn’t be that breaking a woman up into four parts and presenting every one of them on television, which is something that The Golden Girls did first. Those writers really did that, and then, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so then you have Designing Women, you have Girlfriends, you have Sex and the City, you kind of have all that all that great character building. I think that Blanche is up there on the Mount Rushmore of TV women to show that you can own your sexuality, you can own who you are, you can still be vulnerable and have a heart for your friends – and I love that about her.
Playing a character who is all of those things, have you discovered anything about yourself that might have surprised you as you’ve been playing her?
Oh, 100%. I’m an actor. I’m narcissistic, that is just part of it. I realize that. But Blanche, Sophia calls her a slut and she says, “Thank you.” It’s water off a duck’s back, and she is ready and she’s confident. There are episodes that explore her vulnerability and the other side of that confidence and what that can mean and those are the things that I’ve tried to hold onto. I’ll read a review or a Facebook comment, which I’m known to do sometimes in this little business, and it’ll be like, “Everyone was so good except that Blanche. The accent was terrible, and the wig was ugly, and blah, blah, blah.” And I just say, “Thank you.” You can’t let it get you down. I think that’s a great lesson that Blanche has brought to me.
I had alluded to it before, but The Golden Girls has extraordinary staying power. What do you think is the appeal? How do you think it keeps generating new fans as the years go on?
There’s been scientific research into this, especially during COVID. Hulu released the numbers, and they had said that 30 million minutes of The Golden Girls had been consumed during that time period. I literally read a scientific journal study that said that The Golden Girls has this very particular formula and nostalgia and it makes you calm down, and it’s like a little antidepressant because of so many factors, like the colors that they use in the show and the tone of the women’s voices and the way that they resolve their problems. So, I think that literally, scientifically and medically, The Golden Girls can make you feel better.
There’s also that nostalgia factor you get if you’re having a bad day or something like that and maybe you want to spend a few minutes with your mom but your mom lives in another state, but you guys used to watch The Golden Girls together, you can put it on and it’s like your mom’s sitting next to you, and it’s that little hug. Or maybe a loved one isn’t with us anymore, but The Golden Girls was a tie that you had with them, and it’s just a really great way to experience that person all over again. I think that’s a big part of it, the nostalgia factor. Now that they’ve been on the air for 41 years or something you can pass the show down generationally like a recipe or something.
The show was groundbreaking in the way it centered older women as funny and complicated, sexual and independent, pre-Sex and the City, like you said. Do you think audiences today appreciate those elements differently than they did when the show originally aired?
Every four years we get to ask ourselves that question again. But there are things that were said on that show in 1987 that would still get a rise out of people, and I think that’s sad but also shows how smart and groundbreaking the show was in its original airing. So yeah, unfortunately, yeah, I do think that. Some of those topics that they discussed are still things that we’re dealing with today.
What do you think that the show says about friendship that you think is still relevant today?
One, it’s such a great message of the show and something that is super important to us offstage. We live together for months at a time, and we were all friends before this show and we’re still really good friends. We spend all of our time together. It’s never like a clock in, clock out. It’s like we wake up, we’re like, “Where do you guys want to get breakfast? Where do you guys want to get lunch?” We are super close, so we try to bring that closeness onstage as well. And I think the show really was a pioneering example of chosen family, which is a term that has been adopted by many marginalized groups. But I don’t think you have to be marginalized to want to choose some friends to spend your life with. I think that is a great message and a very great message to display in Florida where they are living The Golden Girls lifestyle every day at The Villages. It’s so cool that we get to bring the show to the people that are actually living it. I think that that’s such a fun opportunity.
The Golden Girls has a very large LGBTQ following. Besides the chosen family element why does it resonate so deeply with LGBTQ audiences?
Oh. I could talk about this for a two-hour interview. Gay people love their divas, and you have four iconic women on stage just being absolutely hilarious, at the top of their game. We love older women. We love our grandmothers. We love Patti LuPone and Meryl Streep and all that stuff. Right out the gate we’re on board.
In its time, the show dealt with [LGBTQ] issues with such a loving hand and a loving touch. They talked about the AIDS crisis and talked about Sophia’s son, who was a cross-dresser and Blanche’s brother, who was gay. And, in the DNA of the show, there was a character in the pilot, Coco, who was the gay houseboy. It was always something that was there.
And then, most lovingly, you have those four women. Bea Arthur left her entire estate to the Ali Forney Center in New York City, helping LGBTQ youth. Estelle Getty got her start working with Harvey Fierstein in Torch Song Trilogy. That’s how she landed this role, and she dedicated her entire life to helping victims with AIDS and going to AIDS benefits and fundraisers before Elizabeth Taylor got on board, for Pete’s sake. Right out the gate she was like, “These are my people.” Rue and Betty also have a great history of supporting that community, so how are we not going to love and respect them?
As far as the show goes for audiences who know and love the original series what can they expect to see in The Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue?
We want to make sure everyone’s having a good time. If you are a diehard super fan who has seen every single episode, we’ve got Easter eggs for you. We’ve got the exclamation point on the door. We’ve got the lobster mold in the kitchen. We’re doing deep cuts from season six, episode five.
And then, if you’ve never seen an episode of The Golden Girls, we want you to come and have a good time. It is an incredibly broad, and I use that word in every sense, comedy that is just laden with jokes. We want everyone across the board to come in and have a great time. If you’re a fan who’s seen every episode, this is the lost episode. We’ve taken those ingredients, the formula that they crafted over all that time, and we just presented them in a different way. It’s still got that formula and the flow and you feel like you’re watching an episode. But they’re talking about dating apps and that kind of stuff, so it takes you a second to get into it, to be like, “Blanche is holding a laptop. How is this possible?” But they get on board very quickly.
Since the show’s set in 2026 what do you think Blanche would make of the world we live in now?
Oh my God, she’d be all about it. She doesn’t have to go to the Rusty Anchor to find a date. She can just pull up her phone and be like, “Beep boop. I’m good to go.” I feel like she would love that. She would love the liberation that has been brought forward. I think she’d be all about it. She would always say that she was 20, 30 years younger than she was on the show, so the show’s finally catching up to how old she really is.
You’re taking the characters all across the country. What has surprised you the most about life on a national tour?
I did it before, when I first graduated college I did some national tours and it was a job. I would be on stage with these people but we were not really a family – and that’s okay. It was a job and these were actors who had come from everywhere and New York and they just wanted to do the show and then go to bed. But we are having so much fun. Every day off is like an absolute adventure for us. We plan things for the whole week and we want to immerse ourselves in the city and state that we’re in. It’s just so much fun and it’s so much fun getting to see fans from all across the country and what they love about the show, and it’s a really great way to spend your time. And I think it is because it’s The Golden Girls. If this was The Book of Mormon or something like that, I’m sure we would have different encounters with our fans. But the show is so much love and so much friendship and community that’s reflected in the people that we get to perform for.
Does the audience reaction change from city to city, or is there kind of a universal Golden Girls language that seems to transcend geography?
A little bit of both. We do the show in Canada a lot actually and they’re huge fans and they love it. But learning the things that don’t translate across the border was a hilarious learning curve for us. Like, we have jokes about The Villages, and in Canada they’re like, “We don’t know what you’re talking about.” So, we learned like ways to pivot and figure out what they had going on and tailor the jokes to their sensibilities.
We have been doing the show for a few months, and we started moving around a lot and we learned that it is different. The whole country is incredibly different. Everybody has different things going on in their state and even their town, so that’s when we kind of started to make it personal. We have to personalize the show. We have green lights as we call them, little lines that we know we will adapt because they just work in the show to make them regional and make them kind of fun. It’s just been really fun getting to learn about the places before we even get there.
After spending so much time with Blanche, do you find yourself accidentally staying in character offstage ever?
I think my husband would be very upset if I did that too much. We are just archetypes of our characters, and that goes for all of us. I wish I had the other boys here with me, but Christopher, who plays Sophia, is just a crotchety, old, lovely woman who says the first thing that’s on his mind and can’t stay out of the kitchen. And Adam, who plays Rose, is just the most naive human being that I’ve ever met, and he really does love animals like Betty White, and asks the dumbest questions that make me want to hit him in the head with a newspaper, but I love him more than anything. And Christopher Davis, who plays Dorothy, was an actual substitute teacher before he joined us, and is so sharp. It is such a short walk from ourselves to these characters, and that’s just called good casting. So, yes, we really are these people offstage. I just don’t sleep with every man that I see.
What do you hope audiences take away from seeing the show?
Oh my God, just a good time. I love reading comments on social media, which I know I shouldn’t do. But and they’re just like, “My stomach hurts.” Or “It’s been like a day and a half, and my sides are sore from the amount of laughter that we have enjoyed.” I just want people to come in and not think about anything else that’s going on in the outside world.
But, without getting too preachy, if I’m having a bad day or I get in a fight with my sister or something stupid, I know that from 7:00 to 10:30, that is not part of my life. I’m in that building and I’m fully dedicated on stage. It’s such an escape for me, and I love being able to provide that to audiences.
And I also think it’s cool. Name another television show or really any piece of known media that you can go and sit with 1,000 people who are sharing that interest with you. It’s just such a unique experience, that you get to come to the theater and you’re basically at a Golden Girls convention every night.
It’s so cheesy, but it is such a unique experience for you get to experience the community. There’s online chat groups and Facebook groups of Golden Girls fans, and all the time they’ll be like, “The show’s coming to our town. We have to go.” They get together as a group, and they come and see the show. Or, we’ll have the meet and greet and ladies will come up and they’re like, “We call ourselves the Golden Girls. I’m the Rose. I’m the Blanche.” And it’s so cool to get to give these people a living, breathing event that they can come to.
Get tickets for the Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue tour here. Follow the show on Instagram, YouTube and at GoldenGirlsTour.com. Follow Vince on Instagram.
