Obituaries

Leslie Jordan Dies at 67 Following Car Crash

The stage and screen actor died in Hollywood Monday morning after crashing his BMW.

| Los Angeles |

October 24, 2022

In 2010, Leslie Jordan attended the 55th Annual Drama Desk Awards held at the LaGuardia Concert Hall at Lincoln Center.
(© Tristan Fuge)

Actor and social media personality Leslie Jordan has died at the age of 67. According to TMZ, which broke the story, he was driving his BMW in Hollywood when he crashed into the side of a building at Cahuenga Boulevard. It is suspected that he suffered a medical emergency which caused him to lose control of the car.

Jordan was an iconic fixture of American television. The pint-sized, sassy, Southern actor appeared on Boston Public, American Horror Story, and Will & Grace, in which he played the closeted gay millionaire (and arch-frenemy of Karen Walker) Beverley Leslie. Jordan won a Primetime Emmy for his performance in 2006.

Jordan also made regular stage appearances in plays written by Del Shores like Sordid Lives and Southern Baptist Sissies, which brought a queer Southern perspective to the stage and were often inspired by Jordan's own barstool fabulism.

His first solo play was Hysterical Blindness and Other Southern Tragedies That Have Plagued My Life Thus Far, which ran for several months in 1994 at the Soho Playhouse. In 2010, he appeared off-Broadway in his autobiographical solo show, My Trip Down the Pink Carpet. The following year, he appeared in the short-lived Will Beckham musical Lucky Guy as a character named "Big Al Wright." More recently, he performed his solo show, Say Cheese! My Life in Front of the Camera, at cabaret venues around the country.

Ironically, Jordan's widest impact may have been through the smallest screen: He became an Instagram sensation during the 2020 lockdowns for his off-the-cuff messages to "fellow hunkerdowners." Even during the darkest days of the pandemic, Jordan maintained his affable sense of humor and gift for gab.

Speaking to TheaterMania in a 2013 interview about Southern Baptist Sissies, Jordan said, "I'm an enthusiastic agnostic who would love nothing better than to be proven wrong. If he is up there, however, he's got some 'splainin' to do."