Interview: Darcy the Mail Girl delivers stories behind The Last Drive-In
By Carla Davis
Darcy the Mail Girl is partly responsible for Joe Bob’s return to the airwaves. Now, we get to hear her stories behind The Last Drive-In.
If you have ever watched Joe Bob’s Drive In Theater or MonsterVision, you know that there have been many Mail Girls during his career. But, Diana Prince (AKA Darcy the Mail Girl), currently featured on The Last Drive-In, is different somehow. Fans respond to her as more than just another beautiful woman, they see her as a fellow fan (or “Mutant”).
I had the chance to catch up with Diana Prince/Darcy, who turned out to be just as sweet and approachable as she seems to be on The Last Drive-In and at fan conventions. She gave me the dish on how she ended up as a Mail Girl, those awesome costumes and the surprising story behind that emotional Red Christmas exchange.
1428 Elm: Full disclosure: as a fan of The Last Drive-In, I belong to a social media group called The Drive-In Mutant Collective. Although I know you have talked in the past about how you met Joe Bob and encouraged him to step back into the spotlight, that seems to be the main story super-fans want to know about. Can you tell the story one more time for the uninitiated?
Darcy the Mail Girl: Sure! And thanks so much for watching the show! Long story short(ish), JB was making the rounds promoting a book about literal rocket science called Eccentric Orbits as his alter-ego John Bloom. I found out one of those signings was gonna be close(ish) to me (San Francisco…I’m in LA) and had always dreamed of meeting him and telling him how awesome he is.
I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass, so I hopped on a plane and flew to San Francisco for the signing. I dressed up as a Mail Girl, and documented the process of going to meet him on Snapchat and IG because I was hella nervous, and knew I’d chicken out of talking to him unless my online friends were holding me accountable. When I got there, I was apparently the only one there for Joe Bob, not John Bloom…something I was NOT expecting. It seemed like everyone but me was a super smart scientist or something, and there for the actual book he was promoting.
I felt like I stood out like a busted thumb in my goofy Mail Girl ensemble and wanted to run away immediately, but stayed for the lecture part because I’d come that far, so what the heck? I did actually try to sneak out immediately after his talk was over, but some kind folks there could tell I was clearly a big fan and basically forced me to stay and go meet him and get a pic with him, and I’m so very glad they did! He was so sweet to me, making me feel less dumb for showing up in low-key cosplay, and we became friends right then and there.
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We talked a lot from then on, and I kept telling him that there are a HUGE number of Mutants out there like me who missed the s*** out of him and wanted him back in the worst way. He didn’t believe me and thought his method of hosting was irrelevant in the internet age because “people can just Google what I’d tell them, so there’s no point now”. I told him every single day for a couple of years that there was much more to Joe Bob than just his movie knowledge, and that he gave us information in an entertaining/interesting way that a Google search can’t match. I posted about him in various places online and showed him the loving responses I got back, proving I wasn’t the only one out there longing for Joe Bob’s return.
At the same time, Austin Jennings and Matt Manjourides (now our director and producer) were also trying to convince him to come back, but they took it a step further and found a place for him to do the show again (Shudder, of corpse). When it turned out that JB really was FINALLY coming back for (what we thought was) the proper goodbye he never got during the TNT days, he asked me to be part of it as the Mail Girl. He said I’d made him feel like there might actually be a point to all this, plus I’d work for free, so it was a no-brainer!