The Laganja Estranja 4/20 Extravaganza!
Smoking up with Our Lady of the Leaf and all-around weed witch queen, Laganja Estranja
It’s not every day that Pipe Dreams gets a celebrity interview, but a little green fairy magic came through for our favorite high holiday! Also, make sure to peep the latest Consumption Lounge for all your Weed Witch-approved 4/20 picks.
On the show today: Our lady of the leaf, the iconic Laganja Effing Estranja graced us all with a 4/20 blessing (just as she casually whisks off to Thailand, too. So sad it’s not me going!). Read more about the history of 4/20.
Best known for competing on season 6 of RuPaul’s Drag Race (where she served one of the show’s most sickening entrances), Laganja Estranja is the drag persona of Jay Jackson. But beyond being a world-renowned drag artist, she also has an incredibly impressive and lengthy list of achievements as a TV personality, choreographer, music artist, cannabis advocate, and all-around LGBTQ+ icon. And if she has her way, she’ll be adding Broadway to that list in 2025.
Before all the lights and cameras, Jackson was a U.S. Presidential Scholar in The Arts who earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in dance and choreography from the California Institute of the Arts. Growing up in Texas within a culture where cannabis was stigmatized as the Devil’s Lettuce, it was only after she moved to California where she recognized the plant as medicine and learned about the essential role that the LGBTQ+ community played in legalization.
Realizing that creating visibility and space as a cannabis diva could be an accessible platform for activism, she’s become an outspoken advocate. Capturing international attention, she’s been able to help educate the masses on many issues surrounding the plant and is now never without a kind bud.
“In the beginning of this when I decided to be Laganja Estranja, I didn’t realize the magnitude that would come with it. I never thought people would one day be waiting in a meet-and-greet to meet me with joints. It’s a beautiful thing that happened that I’m so grateful for, but my activism with cannabis is sort of a happy mistake,” she says. “When I moved to California, I learned that the reason we had medical cannabis was because of the LGBTQ+ community and their fight to get our brothers and sisters that were suffering from AIDS a different type of medicine. And so I felt this calling and like there was this homage I had to pay to my ancestors by becoming Laganja Estranja.”
Cannabis is obviously not just part of her persona, but also has a major presence in her life. In addition to her successful line of cannabis-inspired apparel, accessories and home decor, she recently collaborated with fellow “Drag Race” star Trixie Mattel on the ExtravaGANJA makeup collection as well as created a signature water pipe with Empire GlassWorks.
“I never thought people would one day be waiting in a meet-and-greet to meet me with joints.”
Since catapulting her career on “Drag Race,” she’s made cameos on everything from “So You Think You Can Dance,” “Germany's Next Top Model,” and “Bong Appetit” to being the covergirl of New York Magazine’s June 2019 The Most Powerful Drag Queens in America issue.
In addition to dancing and designing, the girl can sing! And rap, too! She credits Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott among her top inspirations and says if she had to dance for her life, she’d choose “Work It.”
“Love her for so many reasons. She’s not only an icon in the hip hop community, but she was also really the first person in my opinion to take hip hop to that next level and make music that was, yes, for pop culture, but also infuse a message,” she says. “That’s something that really inspires me as a musical artist.”
On the latest Pipe Dreams podcast, Laganja talks terps and discusses how she built her multi-hyphenate career, her plans to bring back Laganja’s Dance School, a look at the debut of her musical Miss Step, the cultural shift from overconsumption to educated dosing, how her relationship with the plant changed as she transitioned, and why she’ll never fly with weed ever again.
Listen, like and share the episode. Follow her on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and TikTok. And make sure to follow The Weed Witch for all of the latest and greatest. Have someone in mind that you think should be on the show? Drop a line at itstheweedwitch@gmail.com.
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