While Tina Romero's feature debut, Queens of the Dead, certainly acknowledges the legacy of her father, George A. Romero, the movie is very much its own thing. It's an entertaining queer horror comedy with plenty of glam, a fighting spirit, and a dash of gore. It showcases beautiful drag queens battling the undead, and somehow, the zombies even look fabulous. The film was inspired, in part, by the writer/director’s experience DJing at LGBTQ clubs in New York City. Queens of the Dead also doesn't shy away from issues facing the queer community, including addiction, token corporate sponsorship, among other challenges.
Prior to the film's release. we spoke with Tina Romero, as well as cast members Katy O'Brian (Dre), Riki Lindhome (Lizzy), Tomás Matos (Nico/Scrumptious), and Nina West (Ginsey), about the film's comedic elements, drag performances, queer representation, and the Romero legacy.
This interview was edited slightly for clarity.
1428 Elm: What was it like to work on the set with all of these drag artists?
Tomás Matos: It’s a privilege to have a full cast of queer actors. It’s a privilege that I hope I get to experience more of. I've been fortunate enough to have experienced that with other films I’ve worked on and other projects. I’ve also done the opposite in which I’m one of one. It’s always better with community around me. Going into this, it felt like a treat. I could go on and on about this cast.
Nina West: It was really cool to walk on set and be around people I have loved for many years, like Margaret Cho, and to also meet people that I’ve only recently fallen in love with over the last couple of years, like Tomás. It was a queer powerhouse film of remarkable artists. These are people who have done a variety of things to help make our incredible tapestry so rich and fabulous.
Katy O’Brian: One thing I really liked was the dynamic between Nina’s character and Jacquel’s [Spivey] character because Jacquel is not comfortable in drag. That was a very real anxiety, becoming someone else. There was a mentorship there in reality, and that translates to screen. That’s one of the moments I cried while watching it because it’s so beautiful.
Riki Lindhome: It makes me crave more stories like this. I want to see Tomás in everything. [Laughs].
Tina Romero: It was a complete dream come true. There were so many queens on this set, but no divas. Everyone was down to get dirty. We shot in the historic heat wave of 2024 in Paterson, New Jersey. We didn’t have AC on set. We were dripping. We had crew members pass out, but we had Nina West in full drag. They were just all so down. Everybody could not have been cooler, sweeter, and down to play. We didn’t have trailers or private dressing rooms. We were all in it together. There’s something about the comradery that was so magical.
I think, on some level, they all understood this was for the queers. We wanted to cast this movie as authentically queer as possible. We wanted real queer people in front of the camera, and we had a 99 percent queer crew.
1428 Elm: Tina, it's my understanding that Queens of the Dead was inspired, at least in part, by your experiences DJing at LGBTQ clubs in New York City. Can you talk about how that aspect of your career inspired this film?
Tina Romero: Queer night life is about so much more than a great party, at least for me, and for many of my friends. It’s a world where I found family. It’s where I found my chosen family. During my most formative years in New York, when I was a hot mess trying to be an adult, it taught me about so many things, like resilience.
The party specifically that inspired this movie is a party called Hot Rabbit. The promoter of this party, Emily Smith, is so dedicated to giving people a stage, specifically drag queens, whether or not you have experience. She would book queens who were highly professional and have been around the world, and she would book queens who have never been on stage before. There’s something so special about that.
I wanted to make a film about the scrappy nightlife people who make it work. It was always very important for Emily to keep her overhead low, so she could keep her ticket prices low. She didn’t want it to be elitist or super expensive. She wanted it to be accessible and for everybody to feel welcome.
These things about Hot Rabbit inspired me. I loved watching the scene shift from something that was divided, from gay boys over here to lesbians over there, to everyone coming together at these Hot Rabbit parties. It was so cool. It was expansive on an identity level, but not without dama and tension. Sometimes, queers don’t know how to get along in the same room.
I wanted to take all of these things and see what happens when you put characters through a crazy night, like a zombie apocalypse. I just felt like it would be a rich tapestry of characters and drama. Of course, at the heart of it all, it’s about chosen family and the fighting spirit of the gays. I think there’s no fighting spirit like the fighting spirt of the gays.
1428 Elm: The zombies in Queens of the Dead don’t look like your average zombie. They don’t have rotting flesh. In fact, they look glamorous. Tina, why did you feel it was important to do something so different with the look of the zombies?
Tina Romero: I’m just a little bit bored of seeing hyper-realistic zombies with super rotting flesh and ripped up flannels and jeans. I wanted them to be fabulous. If I was going to tell a story about queer nightlife in Bushwick on a Saturday night, these people who are freshly dead are going to be in their going out looks. From the beginning, I knew I wanted to glam the zombie.
I wanted to figure out a way to do glam gore. Before I even had a piece of dialogue, I had a lookbook that was giving glam gore. It was very important to me because I also wanted to infuse these two worlds. I wanted to invite people into the zombie genre who aren’t horror heads, who maybe don’t like blood. What if we put glitter in the blood? Just like the Hot Rabbit parties, I want everyone to feel welcome in this movie.
It’s also my own taste and aesthetics. I like it a little glam and fabulous. [Laughs].
1428 Elm: Katy and Riki, the relationship between Dre and Lizzy, I think, gives a real human element and emotional hook to the film. Can you talk about their relationship and its importance within Queens of the Dead?
Riki Lindhome: I think it does anchor it, and it’s also a three-way relationship, too, because of the brother. There’s a whole family element to it. It’s sort of a group love story in a way, which I think is interesting.
Katy O’Brian: Because I spent the entire movie with Jaquel [Spivey] as my main conflict, it was actually like our love story, at least how I viewed Dre’s arc. Everyone had their own little side quest love story. I’m saying real names with character names. I’m blending reality. [Laughs].
Riki Lindhome: It’s a found family love story.
1428 Elm: Tina, you’ve acknowledged in other interviews that you see yourself as more of an optimist than your father was. I also think this movie is more optimistic than your father’s zombie movies and really emphasizes community. Can you talk about why you felt it was important to strike that more optimistic tone?
Tina Romero: My co-writer [Erin Judge] and I knew from the beginning that we didn’t want this to be a final girl situation. We almost feel like the community is the final girl. We wanted them to stick together and most of them to get out alive. That was important to us. The world is so scary, but we can’t give up. We can’t give up hope. We can’t stop fighting. We have to keep fighting to find meaning.
For me, personally, I love a film where I walk out feeling a little excited, with a pep in my step with a really great credit song. That’s what I wanted to go for at the end of this, something that gave people a little boost and a little energy.
1428 Elm: Queens of the Dead certainly stresses the idea of community. For instance, Tomás, your character Nico, also known as Scrumptious, wants to be accepted by the larger community as a drag artist. Can you talk about the importance of community within this film?
Tomás Matos: I knew how Scrumptious felt within the film, so it was easy for me to portray that as someone, when first starting out, felt very green. I knew that Scrumptious felt the exact same way. There are also the intergenerational relationships with people like Ginsey and Dominique’s [Jackson] character Yasmine. There is that yearning to be accepted, to be seen, and to be a part of the family. That is ultimately one of the arcs that Scrumptious goes through. By the end, you’re witnessing, hopefully, an acceptance by the community that they’re trying to build.
Nina West: I’m very new to film work. I’ve done theater my entire life, but film work is really new to me. I was very like Nico in a sense because I felt like I needed approval on set and clarity, but I could also really relate to my character. That allowed me the opportunity to sit back a little bit and rest in the knowledge of the experiences I’ve had to understand who the character was.
I feel like it’s a great metaphor of how life and art are, that we’re never really done learning. Scrumptious’ relationship with Ginsey and, conversely, Ginsey’s relationship with Scrumptious, has so much interplay and learning going on for both of them at any given point. They’re such a great reflection of one another.
Katy O’Brian: The community showed up just to make this movie happen. We had this divide and queer parties cannibalizing each other and separating the community in a way. Tina wanted to have that displayed in here with corporate sponsors and the token gay icon. They don’t really appreciate it. It’s all fake and a façade. The real links are the ones you had at the beginning, that supported you from the beginning.
At the same time, Tina doesn’t shy away from certain problems within the community. We have the drug abuse and addiction issue. She touched upon a lot of stuff, especially what she saw in New York.
Riki Lindhome: I did like how problems were woven in, but not as the main story. The main story was about friends and family fighting zombies. There were undercurrents of other issues. There’s a side story about trans people and health care. Tina has it as part of the movie, but not the main part. I appreciated that.
1428 Elm: Tina, I love the nods to your dad's legacy, including the cameo by Tom Savini, the zombie in the Steelers coat, and I think I even heard the synths from the Day of the Dead soundtrack. Why was it important for you to reference your dad's legacy, even as you created your own distinct film?
Tina Romero: Being my dad’s kid, I’s no secret that I’m taking the torch and playing in his sandbox and using the monster he created. I’m not going to pretend that I’m not doing that. I want to do his legacy justice, and I also want to introduce myself as my own filmmaker.
He told zombie stories over so many years. He made these films over decades. I feel responsibility as a Romero to keep his monster alive and to keep telling stories in the universe he created from a Romero perspective in 2025. It feels really cool and important for me to acknowledge that this is part of his universe but slightly different. It’s a little queerer with a female perspective and a little more dancey and optimistic. Yet, it uses the monster he created and plays by his rules. I hope that people feel his spirit in here, but I also hope they don’t feel like I’m trying to be him. I’m just trying to keep telling the story of his monster.
Queens of the Dead releases in theaters on October 24. It will stream on Shudder at a later date.