So & So's is an obscure piano bar in Midtown Manhattan that is admittedly a bit tough to find. Once I enter, Dylan Mulvaney is in the middle of multiple things literally and figuratively. Standing on stage, illuminated by five rows of soft-yellow Edison bulbs and flanked by a piano and drum set, she's wearing a pair of light-wash denim jeans and a light-pink crop top that says Retired Twink in cursive letters because, as her fans know, she never misses an opportunity to wear pink. She's soon whisked away for an interview that lasts about 20 minutes, and when she returns to the main dining room, which her team has populated with half-drunk iced coffees and water bottles, she asks, "OK, what's next?" A quick interview for BroadwayWorld's social team, Mulvaney's publicist replies, eliciting an "OK, got it" from the budding stage actor as she takes a sip of water. With her usual ear-to-ear smile and natural charisma, Mulvaney turns on the charm for the interviewer, who asks her about her theater hot takes and then wonders if shes comfortable doing a TikTok set to audio of Cher playing all the parts in West Side Story. @broadwayworld Dylan Mulvaney shares her theatre hot take Watch her discuss her upcoming Off-Broadway show, The Least Problematic Woman in the World, and discuss why theatre has always been her "safe space" at the link in our bio. After that's done, she gets pulled to do a few videos with the marketing team from her upcoming off-Broadway show, The Least Problematic Woman in the World, which is set to begin performances this Saturday, September 27. The show, which is making its stateside debut at New York City's Lucille Lortel Theater, the original home of Oh, Mary!, first played at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe earlier this summer.Mulvaney wraps up her last video, but before she's ready to sit down, she decides to change. This time, she opts for a brown pleather jacket, a white spaghetti-strap tank top that has the show's title emblazoned across the chest, and a simple skirt. We both breathe a sigh of relief as she settles into the semicircular booth we're taking over. Just watching her bounce from one promotional opp to the next and throw on a smile that could be seen from the last row of the mezzanine has been exhausting.Life after Beergate Dylan Mulvaney in the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe run of 'The Least Problematic Woman in the World' Marc Brenner (provided) In the past year, Mulvaney has prioritized happiness not just her own, but also everyone's in her orbit. "After Beergate, I hadn't experienced pure joy," she tells me, slightly softening her bubbly tone. "It was so hard to go through that period of being so heavily criticized in the media, not knowing if I'd ever reach that level of happiness again." Creating The Least Problematic Woman in the World not only made her happy, it also ended up giving her a chance to process an avalanche of emotions. After the first show at the Fringe festival, she started sobbing at curtain call. "I felt it again," she says. "I thought to myself, 'OK, if I can make it through what I went through and get to a stage, I think I can always find that level of joy.'"The idea for the show came after she commemorated 365 days of girlhood which she documented on TikTok in her viral "Days of Girlhood" series with a celebration in New York in support of the Trevor Project. She knew she wanted to be on stage, and her original idea was a nationwide symphony tour of her performing songs from Golden Age musicals in ball gowns. But that idea ended up being scrapped when she realized how unsafe she felt traveling to and performing in places that may not be accepting of transgender people.Mulvaney sat on the idea of being on stage for a second and the thought of a one-woman show called Fag Hag came to her. That's when she started pitching the project to producers, who jumped on board despite the fact that she didn't have a script. ("That was a lot of blind faith from a lot of really important people," Mulvaney says.) She ended up starting the writing process for the show three weeks before rehearsals, but when she sat down to put her thoughts on paper, what came up was a lot more than she had expected.She started writing about growing up in the Catholic Church and experiencing gender dysphoria as a young person, subjects she had thought that she wanted to escape. "I thought the show was going to be a way to run away from [these things], especially my identity because it had been so 'Scarlet Lettered' by the media," Mulvaney explains. But instead of running away, she leaned in, because she knew she had a few things to get off her chest, especially in a story that is centered around her."I knew if people were watching it and they were seeing me have a good time, they would have a good time, and if they saw me get really vulnerable, they might be more willing to get vulnerable," she says, adding that her favorite works of entertainment, like PEN15 and Theater Camp, are "slightly self-indulgent" anyway. Dylan Mulvaney premiering her one-woman show in Edinburgh Marc Brenner (provided) Mulvaney says that one of the biggest themes of The Least Problematic Woman in the World is palatability especially trans palatability and trying to be interpreted as the most acceptable version of a trans person in 2025. When she showed it in Edinburgh, it was a bit less rough around the edges than it is now not in terms of quality, but in terms of messiness and the darkness of the humor. "It's actually a lot more problematic," the TikTok influencer says, explaining that that comes from her caring less about what people think about her. "I've realized that no matter what I do, for some people, it will still never be enough, whether that's my right to womanhood or my talents."Mulvaney describes her show as "the pink, dollar store version" of The Picture of Dorian Gray or Operation Mincemeat. Throughout it, she takes on 26 of the 40 roles while showcasing special video appearances from Heartstopper's Joe Locke, Queer Eye's Jonathan Van Ness, and The Traitors' Alan Cumming, who she's been fast friends with since they met at an event in Paris. "Her warmth and intelligence and humor and resilience completely floored me. I love her so much," Cumming tells Out in an emailed statement, adding that he jumped at the opportunity to take part. "Not long after we met, she was preparing for the Edinburgh run of her show and I was working in London, so she asked me if Id come by the rehearsal room and record the voiceover. I was delighted to," he says, explaining that he had no "compunction about saying yes" and would be involved in anything she does.Mulvaney's natural charm has brought her to millions of screens around the world and helped her collect admirers wherever she goes, especially in show business. It's also the reason she was able to get a few of her famous friends to help write original songs for the show. In the end, she convinced some of the biggest names in music to take part: Mark Sonnenblick, who had a hand in penning the song Golden for the Netflix phenomenon KPop Demon Hunters; the Tony-winning duo Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, cocreators of the Broadway hit Six; Ingrid Michaelson, who wrote the music and lyrics for the musical adaptation of The Notebook; and Abigail Barlow, the Grammy-winning songwriter who cowrote music for Disney's Moana 2.Putting the spotlight on the dollsWhile The Least Problematic Woman in the World shares a lot about the inner workings of her mind, Mulvaney says that she's taking a step back from sharing so much about her personal life and her transition. When you start to overshare online, it becomes an addiction, she says, explaining that she constantly grappled with trying to one-up herself by creating one viral moment after the other.Especially after Beergate when a collaboration with Bud Light led to her becoming a scapegoat for conservatives looking to spread anti-trans hate Mulvaney felt like she had to pull back from putting herself online so much. "I felt like I was forced to, because I knew that if I said something, it could actually hurt the trans community, and I wasn't willing to do that," she says.Her ultimate goal is to help create more space for the trans community in theater, because she knows how flawed the industry is and the work that needs to be done. She even has aspirations to build something like Reese Witherspoon's production company, Hello Sunshine, for the dolls that are excited to create something new. But for now, her focus is on making The Least Problematic Woman in the World the best it can be.When we finish talking about her dreams for the show and for the future, Mulvaney thanks me for the interview and gets whisked off to a day of rehearsals.The Least Problematic Woman in the World is playing at the Lucille Lortel Theater. Tickets are on sale now on the shows website.