Sam Pinkleton

I knew the iconography of Rocky Horror just from being a human being.

Like, I knew what it looked like, I knew fishnets, I knew Tim Curry, I knew.

But I don't think I saw it until college.

And the thing I remember is feeling rage, deep rage, that I had not seen it sooner.

I grew up in a small town in Virginia.

And it just was a thing that I think would have been a liberating force for me if I had encountered it when I was 13.

And I felt like I was denied something.

In a way, the gift of getting to do this now on Broadway, I've been working on...

a version of The Rocky Horror Show for like eight years.

And so, so much of that work has been just talking to people whose lives have been affected by The Rocky Horror Show.

And so many people have that story.

Oh, I saw it when I was 15 and I realized that something else was possible for me.

So I think I have a little bit of bitterness that I don't get to have that story.

And people feel...

many things about it.

And often those things are in contradiction to each other, which is one of the things that I find to be the most delicious, the most impossible, the most worthwhile about Rocky Horror, is like, I agree to the dominating narrative

for people who have been transformed by Rocky Horror, who have a great affection for Rocky Horror, is some version of, I felt seen, I felt embraced, I found my people, I found a way that I could expand.

And there's so much nuance within that conversation.

And I know nuance is so unpopular in 2026.

Like, oh my God, like we can't do complexity.