After directing the left-field Broadway smash Oh, Mary! (which earned him a Tony for best direction of a play in 2025), Sam Pinkleton is turning his attention to the only play weirder, gayer and more musically madcap than Cole Escola’s take on Mary Todd Lincoln — The Rocky Horror Show.

“Like 10 seconds before I got on this interview, Rocky was being born from an amniotic sac in Frank’s lab in the other room,” Pinkleton, rocking a Brontez Purnell T-shirt and skater cap, tells Billboard with a grin. “Every day in rehearsal, I’m like, ‘Can you guys believe we’re doing this?’”

Depending on your familiarity with queer counterculture, Pinkleton’s words are either a complete enigma or loaded with deliciously demented imagery. For the latter crowd (a remarkably devoted bunch of earnest oddballs), it’s time for a toast. On March 26 at Manhattan’s Studio 54, Brad, Janet, Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Riff Raff and the rest return to the stage in a new version of Richard O’Brien’s musical, as directed by Pinkleton. The eclectic cast is a fever dream befitting the freaky, funny, iconoclastic material: Rachel Dratch, Andrew Durand, Luke Evans, Amber Gray, Harvey Guillén, Stephanie Hsu, Juliette Lewis, Josh Rivera and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez.

Originally a West End production in 1973, The Rocky Horror Show eked out a brief Broadway stint in 1975, the same year the incalculably influential cult film The Rocky Horror Picture Show came out. A quarter century later, the play time warped back to the Great White Way for a 16-month run starting in 2000. Now, more than a half century after it first emerged from the velvet darkness of the blackest night, The Rocky Horror Show is ready for a Frankenstein face-lift. But what does that even look like in 2026? How do you freshen up a familiar, beloved text without losing what made it work in the first place?

While still in rehearsals, Pinkleton took a breather from Transsexual Transylvania to answer Billboard’s questions about reimagining The Rocky Horror Show, how this production’s unusual cast came together and his “romantic game of telephone” with Rocky Horror creator/O.G. Riff Raff Richard O’Brien.

What was your first exposure to Rocky Horror? How deep does it run for you?

It was always in my consciousness, just as a weird kid. I was an arty teenager in a small town. I knew the imagery of it before I had actually seen it. I don’t think I saw it actually until college, and it kind of freaked me out.

It didn’t become capital-I Important to me until, I’m gonna say, about seven or eight years ago, when I started talking to my friend Pam MacKinnon. This is actually how the conversation started: She runs A.C.T. [American Conservatory Theater] in San Francisco and we were like, “What is the most fun thing you could do in San Francisco in a 1,200-seat theater?” And I said, “I think there’s only one answer, and it’s Rocky Horror. Let me make sure.” I went back and I watched the movie, and when I watched the movie, I was like, “Wait, what have I been missing?”

This is a tale as old as time: I wish someone had shown me this when I was 14, because it would have saved me a lot of struggle. Then when I started thinking about making a show, I started talking to people who have both spent time making Rocky Horror, but more than that, people who have basically had their lives saved by Rocky Horror, which is quite a population.

I interviewed Richard Hartley, who did the score for the original London stage production and the film, for the movie’s 50th anniversary.

Such a good interview.

Thank you! He also talked about meeting so many people liberated by Rocky Horror. For you, did you first see it on TV or in a theater?

The first time I saw it was definitely on a TV at home but very soon thereafter I went to the shadow cast in New York, back when they were still doing them on 23rd Street. I think now they’re at Village East. It was one of the most moving experiences of my entire life. I was completely unprepared for how much it meant, how militant everyone was. I had no idea. They sell out (the theater). As a theater maker, I feel like you’re constantly asking, “How do we get everybody in one room to care about the same thing?” And I feel like the Rocky shadow cast culture is like, “Um, we figured that out a long time ago. Way better than theater usually does.”

The cast that you’re working with for this Studio 54 production — put together by Carrie Gardner and Stephen Kopel — is phenomenal. It’s stacked, it’s inventive. How involved were you in the casting process?

I don’t think it would be possible for me to be more involved than I was. I would say that the casting of The Rocky Horror Show has been the main activity of my life for the last year. When we started working on it at Studio 54, the very first thing I said to our casting directors was, “I want to look at the stage and be like, ‘How did this group of people end up together?’” Because to me, that is the essence of Rocky Horror, period. It’s what the movie feels like. That energy was really important to me.

There’s this unique opportunity doing it on Broadway, of all places — because Rocky Horror is a musical, and it was a Broadway musical, but it’s not like a “Broadway” musical. And it doesn’t want to be muscled into becoming a splashy Broadway musical. A gift of doing it in a 1,000-seat theater is that it is a guarantee that the audience will come in with radically different experiences of Rocky Horror, ranging from “It is my religion” to “I wish they weren’t doing this. I wish they were doing a pleasant play instead.” The fun of making it is about creating as many different access points as possible for as many different audience experiences.

And so many of these actors come from different acting and performance backgrounds.

Of course there’s familiarity with some of these people, but also there’s just this pretty bananas range of physicalities and looks and experience, literal experiences. Rocky Horror is the unique container that can hold everything. A thing that matters to me a lot about the show is that it weirdly has a giant heart. It’s a bunch of tender weirdos, and it was important to me that the show be made by tender weirdos. That’s exactly what this group of people is.

Rocky Horror has an edge, but the message of “don’t dream it, be it” is very heart-on-sleeve.

Ask anyone who is devoted to (Rocky Horror): It’s serious stuff, it’s life-saving stuff. It’s also ridiculous and hilarious and trashy and sparkly and all of that. The stakes of it are really big. “Don’t dream it, be it” is audacious.

And it’s audacious to bring it to Broadway in 2026. There are Rocky Horror fans who will show up to the theater ready to hate this production.

Guaranteed. I actually think there’s something incredibly liberating about the fact that it can’t be all things to all people. One of the things I love about Rocky Horror is that everyone has really strong feelings about it — and everyone is right. The piece itself actively holds contradictions, which is so unpopular in 2026: the idea of two things being true at once, the idea of nuance, the idea of contradiction. Our brains can’t handle it. We just need to be told one thing, and Rocky refuses that, and Richard O’Brien refuses that.

When I think of Frank-N-Furter, Magenta, Columbia — not only are they iconic roles, but even the timbre of their voice is locked into people’s minds. When you’re working with your cast, how do you approach that? Do you pay homage to the past, do you subvert it?

I’m learning it in the moment. I think often with Broadway revivals, there’s this kind of understood logic of “We’re going to approach it as if it’s never been done before.” But in fact, the fun of Rocky Horror is that it has been done before, and that’s in the room with us now. We get to decide what we do with that. We can’t do a recreation of Tim Curry and Patricia Quinn and Nell Campbell: It wouldn’t be good, because they are singular.

I’m gonna get really woo-woo — and pardon me, but it’s a woo-woo thing, this show. There are spiritual guideposts in how it was originally conceived that we can’t ignore. There are things about Sue Blaine’s original costume design that are just undeniably iconic. There’s something violent. If Columbia and Magenta are in purple spandex bodysuits, I better have a really good reason for doing that, because I’m taking people’s Columbia and Magenta from them. Like Richard O’Brien says [in the 2025 documentary Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror] —which I love very much —”Rocky Horror doesn’t belong to me anymore, it belongs to everyone.”

I think that’s true for this. We are obviously making our version, and we’re coming in with a very strong point of view. Also, these characters belong to everyone. This has been part of the design process, and this has been part of the rehearsal process with the actors. We’ve had fun knowing what it’s been, knowing what it is, and then making a choice about when and how we’re leaning into that or leaning away from it. It’s all in the room with us. There’s a forensic element to it that I love. We have the material, as well as 52 years of stuff.

A lot of people in this cast are making their Broadway debuts.

We have nine Broadway debuts overall, including Juliette Lewis, Michaela Jaé Rodriguez, Josh Rivera, Luke Evans.

Wow. You’re obviously pretty experienced on Broadway. I mean, you have a Tony. Do you find yourself giving different notes, or a different kind of encouragement, to actors who primarily come from the world of film and television?

A thing that is really special about this company — and this sounds like something that I would say in an interview, but in fact, it’s the truth — I have a pretty fierce “no a–holes” policy. I don’t know if I’m any good at directing, but I’m pretty good at feeling out the vibes of putting a company together. No one person was cast in isolation on this: A company was put together. There’s real experience-sharing.

So sure, Juliette Lewis has never been in a Broadway musical before, but she’s been in a play in the West End. Amber Gray has been in a million Broadway musicals. People know Stephanie Hsu from movies, but she came from theater. Also we have Paul Soileau as one of the Phantoms, who is known to many as CHRISTEENE, who has this incredible alt-queer performance background — which is as useful as Broadway musical experience. I see the Broadway people talking to Paul Soileau and Boy Radio, who are Brooklyn queer icons, and I see the Hollywood people talking to the Broadway people. So there’s this very beautiful cross-pollination happening.

I don’t wish that people had the experiences they didn’t have. There’s a really delicious chaos. I think the unruliness of that is part of what makes it fun, and it feels very Rocky Horror to me. Also, frankly, everybody came in with the contract of having a real affection for the material and a real sense of adventure. That is the thing that is driving the process. And maybe this is easy for me to say, because I have worked a lot on Broadway, but I don’t find that thing of [adopts deep, faux-authoritative voice] “Well, this is Broadway” to be helpful at all.

That makes sense. Particularly with Rocky Horror, because it is unruly and chaotic. It contains so many tonal shifts.

It can’t be smoothed out. It’s the surest way to kill it.

Even though Rocky Horror has so many reference points to the ‘50s, there’s something timeless about it. The story of sheltered squares being exposed to the wider world and liberated is just as relevant now as 50 years ago. It probably always will be. You come from a smallish town, right? This has to feel pretty relatable.

Yeah. I basically come from Denton [the fictional town where the movie takes place]. I think the notion of “what’s on the other side of the castle wall” is something that is timeless. We all want to know, and we all want to be scared a little bit and titillated a little bit. There’s not anything like it. It’s so crazy how singular it is.

I want to talk about the music, which I know Kris Kukul is working on. Similar to the acting, the music is another thing where fans will come in with expectations. How are you approaching that?

For me, a real north star with Rocky Horror is to not treat it like it’s broken. People can pick at it any way they want, and I invite that, but ultimately, there’s a reason it’s stuck around for 52 years, and these tunes are a big part of that. To me, Rocky Horror is the Big Daddy/Grandfather who’s still cooler than everyone in musicals. Everything pours from Rocky Horror and Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar, right?

Yes. Though I’d say Rocky Horror is a little bit cooler than the other two.

I never know what cool is. Cool stresses me out. But I think part of why it’s cool is because it’s not trying to be cool. Musically I-slash-Kris are working from a baseline of “it’s not broken, it doesn’t need us.” The first conversation I had when I started working on Rocky Horror, like eight years ago, the first conversation I had was with Richard Hartley, who I know you’ve talked to. To me, that guy is just a beacon of sense when it comes to the show. There’s a simplicity to these tunes: they’re real ‘70s rock n’ roll tunes, it’s a five-piece band and we want to embrace that. We don’t want to Broadway it up, we don’t want to make it sound like 2026. It’s just kick-ass rock songs. Richard O’Brien always says, “Just make sure we can hear the lyrics.”

The band will very much be a part of the experience of watching the show. Sometimes you go to Broadway musicals and you’re like, “Is this live? Where is this music coming from?” And that feels like a bummer to me. A big part of how we’ve conceived the production is to feel the music get made in the room. It’s a throwback. I don’t know, maybe that’s going to be disappointing to people. But we want to do these tunes as conceived really well for these super specific voices.

You mentioned Richard O’Brien. Have you spoken with him at all about this production?

Richard and I are in the longest, most romantic game of telephone, via the great Howard Panter, who is kind of the Rocky Horror worldwide impresario. Richard and I pass notes back and forth almost constantly via Howard. I just can’t believe that we get to be alive at the same time as Richard O’Brien. He’s every bit as pure and beautiful and radical and so not bulls–tty. There’s never been bulls–t, and there still isn’t bulls–t. I feel the weight and the responsibility and the great honor of getting to do this. I’m really grateful to him for it.

I have a few specific music questions. “Once in a While” is a Brad song in the original stage production that got cut from the movie. Are you including it?

It’s making the cut! Yes. Let’s hear from Brad.

In the original stage version, “Science Fiction/Double Feature” is peppy, energetic; in the film it’s slower, grander, a ballad. How are you approaching it?

Well, we’re going in a way that you’re seated at a Broadway musical, and the next thing you know, Juliette Lewis is center stage singing to you about some science fiction movies. So I would say it is neither version. I would say it is a version that is driven by Juliette, and the lyric of that song and the total obsession with sci-fi. It sounds like I’m trying to squirrel out of the question, but I just feel like it’s a much more lyrically driven thing than a musically driven thing.

The queer community has so much love, affection and obsession for Rocky Horror. Throughout this process, I imagine you’ve been inundated with hyper-specific questions (like mine) and suggestions from people.  

A gift of Rocky Horror is that everyone has thoughts, and if I spent all of my time synthesizing the thoughts, I would forget to direct the play. The best thing that I can offer is my best swing at a version of Rocky Horror that loves Rocky Horror as much as it loves every person who comes and sees it. That’s what I’m trying to do. For every person that said, “I hate you, you’re gonna destroy this,” 10 people said, “I’m really excited,” and that’s great. I feel the responsibility of it. I don’t want to say pressure, but I feel the responsibility of it. I don’t know everything. From the cast to the designers to the associates to the technicians, I’ve tried to assemble a group to look at it from different points of view.

To me, that’s the fun of making theater. If everybody was just looking at it with my eyes, who cares? I think that’s especially important on Rocky Horror. I have people in the room and in the cast who know it back and forth and have been in shadow casts. I have people who approach it with great caution, who have thoughts about the bad it can do as much as the good. And to all of that I say, “Great, bring it on.” I don’t feel naive about all of the feelings. I feel like it’s worth taking a big, muscular, heartfelt swing. And I also could give a f–k about what people are saying on the internet in the comments.

For what it’s worth, when I saw your name attached to this, I was excited. I’ve seen Oh, Mary! and Ta-Da!, both of which are phenomenal, and I thought, “Okay, we will actually get a fresh perspective here.”

I can say with total, total confidence: There is nothing I would rather be doing right now. I’m so happy to be doing it and to be visiting it and to be staring at this puzzle that means so much to so many people. So many of whom will be in the room, and so many of whom will never be able to be in the room. I take that s–t so seriously. And also, I don’t want to take it too seriously, because that’s how I will destroy it.