Jonny Beauchamp


Jonny Beauchamp is an American actor, singer, and dancer from New York City known for his work on Showtime's series Penny Dreadful, Roland Emmerich's film, Stonewall, and as Jorge/Ginger on The CW's musical dramedy Katy Keene.

Early life and education

Jonny Beauchamp was born in March 1989 in New York City, and grew up in Upstate New York, and The Bronx. His mother landed in the city "fresh off the boat" from Puerto Rico, and took care of her mother and Jonny. She put herself through school while working a full-time job, then went to night school to get better opportunities. The family was poor but he never knew that until he was older. They moved for a ten-year stretch to nearby Rockland County so he could attend a good public school as his mother is adamant about education, and they could not afford private school. From there they next moved to Montebello, New York, next to Dater Mountain Nature Park which taught him to be more confident in different settings. Beauchamp's moving a lot when he was growing up meant he had difficulty making friends and fitting in. He decided that being shy did not help so he vowed to change that about himself.
People told his mother to put him in commercials as he was a natural actor but she was adamant against it wanting him to do something more stable like being a doctor. Around eleven years old, when he was in the fifth grade at Viola Elementary School, he forged her signature on a permission slip so he could audition for the school's production of the musical Annie. He got the lead of Rooster, and over his mother's concerns excelled; she saw his passion and agreed he could pursue musical theater from then, afterwards he "did all the school plays and theater groups".
"When I was a kid, I was really into musical theater, and I thought that was really the dream in my lane,... I thought I was a little too different. So I had tried to do all the kind of dancing/singing training that I could.... music theater, dance, jazz, ballet, of course, for technique." For his twelfth birthday he compelled his mother to have the celebration at the Circle in the Square Theatre for The Rocky Horror Show. "The lights went up, 'Michael Rennie was ill the day the Earth stood still,' and I lost my mind." In 2020, almost twenty years later, she would play his mother in Katy Keene.
Seeing the musical Cabaret for the first time changed the way he "saw theater, acting, and the whole industry". He did get to see a lot of theater in the city via student tickets, including Shakespeare in the Park productions each summer. When he was fourteen he saw the film Fame about the High School of Performing Arts, and it instilled that he needed to move back to Manhattan and go to a performing arts school. Around this time he realized he needed to get serious about acting as a career and get an agent. His mother agreed, they sold their house to move into a small Manhattan studio so he could go to school. He's been auditioning professionally since he was seventeen years old. He attended Professional Performing Arts School in Hell' Kitchen which has a junior high and high school. PPAS is in the middle of the Theater District, and the only high school with a theater major. Beauchamp's classmates include Connor Paolo, Paul Iacono, and Kia LaBeija.
He attended Marymount Manhattan College and graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theater Performance with a minor in Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Career

Beauchamp has been acting since 2010. Post-college he was 22 and living in Washington Heights with his best girlfriend who was a singer-songwriter while he was trying to be an actor. He started out in musical theater. Loving theater work, he auditioned for every Broadway production he could, usually getting to be a finalist before being cut. "I've gotten cast a lot as a drag queen since I was a kid actually,... All my theater credits actually in New York off off off Broadway have always been adjacent or drag related." He also "was very involved in the ballroom culture of the village" being on good terms with many of the houses, which also influenced his acting choices. He grew up knowing some of the women of Pose and attended many of the house balls and kikis. The ballroom culture is built around houses of formerly homeless Latinx and Black LGBTQ youth creating families for themselves, and socializing in competitive ball dance events.
Frustrated not getting any major theater roles, he tried studio acting. His first break came in 2015 playing the prostitute Angelique in Showtime's Victorian era horror drama Penny Dreadful, playing a trans woman who catches the eye of Dorian Gray. For the filming he moved to Dublin, Ireland for six months. The show was cancelled after three seasons. His credits include as a fiery drag queen in Thirsty, Nerve, and the indie Black Wake. He also had a cameo in 2016 on Chicago P.D.
He then was in 2015's drama film Stonewall, he played the gender-fluid gay hustler Ray/Ramona Garcia inspired by the trans activist Sylvia Rivera, and activist Raymond Castro. Although the film was not well received commercially or by the LGBTQ community, his performance was, and it is one of his favorite roles to date. He noted the film did prompt more awareness of trans activists of color Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson; and hoped that it would also highlight the endemic problems of the estimated 40% of homeless youth who are LGBTQ.
In 2015 he was also in the horror thriller indie film Fog City with Dave Franco. In February 2017 he was set to star in the Los Angeles-set film Tranzloco with Rosie Perez, and Alex Meraz.
But things dried up, "I lost my agent, my manager, my team, everything. I was penniless and more or less homeless. I was sleeping on my mom's couch and kind of figuring out what I was doing." He worked at the Cornelia Street Cafe for two years until it closed in January 2018, and it was there he got the first message for Katy Keene."
On Katy Keene, a spin-off "bright and perky musical dramedy" series from the dark teen supernatural drama Riverdale—debuting February 2020–Beauchamp plays Jorge Lopez, an aspiring gay and Latinx Broadway theatre performer, as well as alter ego drag queen—The CW's first—Ginger. Katy Keene is set five years after Riverdale so rather than high school students, the show is centered on twenty-something's aspiring in creative industries including Keene, a fashion designer. Beauchamp immediately identified with both facets of the character and was happy to use his feminine strengths which he had been previously warned against. "I thought that I was, much like my character, a little too femme, a little too short, a little too gay, a little too Latin", but then luckily landed the part that also meshed with his theater background. " no hang-ups about their gender identity,... who they are as a person and is supported not only by their community but their friends and their family."
In 2020 he also acted in the short film See You Soon, shot with college friends, James Cusati-Moyer, and writer/director Tyler Rabinowitz. During the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine he studied opera which is a passion.

Personal life

LGBTQ icons he looks to for inspiration is Boy George, especially from the musical Taboo, David Bowie and Prince.
He identifies as gay, queer, and gender-queer.

Awards and honors

In 2015 Beauchamp was named to the Out100.
The Stonewall Organization named Beauchamp an ambassador for 2020.