Compounding Rainbow’s struggles was the relationship with his father, which was poisonous, his mother said. The father, Jerry, was a drummer and a singer, and had a magnificent voice, but as soon as his son became a teenager, he became jealous of the boy’s talents. “This competitiveness, Randy felt it, and eventually I had to explain it,” Gwen Rainbow said. “When your father doesn’t like you, you don’t understand why.”
His parents fought constantly, and humor became his coping mechanism. “I learned this from my grandmother, my mother, that the way to answer everything — adversity, depression — was to make a joke about it,” he said.
The idea is at the crux of all his work, from his early “Randy Rainbow Is Dating Mel Gibson” series (which also shows off Rainbow’s strong intuitive acting chops) to his most recent skewering of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in “GAY!” which got nearly three million views in the first 11 days after its release. Rainbow’s gift is taking the absolutely appalling and tragic and worst of human behavior “and making people feel better about it, because that’s how I made myself feel better,” he said.
These days, Rainbow is feeling pretty good, and with good reason. While he became a household name by taking on the darkness of Trump’s presidency, he has found plenty of headlines to lampoon, as his latest videos of DeSantis and Marjorie Taylor Green (“Gurl You’re a Karen”) can attest. His book tour began this week, but he’s already thinking about what he’ll write next.
“I’m thinking my next book will be like, full ‘Sex in The City.’ A dating book,” he said. “I think maybe that will force me to get out there if I tell myself, ‘Oh, it’s research for a book …’ and that will lead me to finding the love of my life.”
Any particular type?
“Jake Tapper,” he says, without hesitation.
“Daddy, serious, responsible, will take care of me, has the answers,” he said, “because I haven’t got them. That’s who I need. America’s boyfriend, Jake Tapper. If he decides he’s ready, I might be taking myself off Bumble.”
