Juliette Burton is Going Rogue, hopefully

Written by: Si Hawkins
Published: Monday 12th August 2024

After over a decade of refreshingly revealing productions, Juliette Burton has built a pretty loyal fanbase at the Edinburgh Fringe. But how many of those followers know of her colourful double life; that away from the comedy stage she's an untouchable mutant? And an animated anti-hero? And an intrepid turtle-adjacent reporter? Well, they will soon.

Appropriately, given the double life, Burton is doing two shows at this year's Fringe: Hopepunk, a manifesto for hopeful thinking in troubled times, like Obama did, and Going Rogue, which largely concerns her love of dressing as Rogue from the X-Men, which Obama didn't (as far as we know). And it's a good time for an X-related show, with the animated series X-Men 97 blowing up this year, and now Deadpool And Wolverine bringing that super team back to the big screen, Marvel's only movie this year.

Juliette joins us via the small screen, over Zoom, in front of a bookcase brimming with graphic novels. Lots of inspiration there.

So what drew you to superhero cosplay - and doing a show about it?

This one has just come from a very, very deep place of joy. I love comic books, I was obsessed with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when I was a kid, and Rogue from the X-Men, the whole X-Men team. Complete nerd. And [then] I repressed it all, I shoved it all down. Other things got in the way.

When I was a kid, I loved playing dress up. That was my favourite thing to do. I grew up in a very isolated place with no other neighbours, no other kids to play with, and as I got older I realised, sometimes some of us do not see ourselves reflected in the people around us. So I tried to find myself through the dressing up box, putting costumes on.

How did you get back into it?

Post pandemic, post yet another breakup, I was looking at my clothes - anyone who's seen my other shows has probably picked up that I love a costume change - and there were a couple of things in there that just really spoke to me, and I realised it was because they reminded me of my favourite characters when I was a kid, and I needed to find those aspects of myself again.

So I started to become the characters that I loved, just for a day, and I realised that actually, I had a lot more to learn from those characters than I ever realised before. So I thought, 'I'm gonna put all of it in the show'. For me, the best cosplay, the best experiences come when you pick a character, not that you necessarily look like, but that you've learned something from, or that you were drawn to because there's something about them that you need to explore within yourself.

The X-Men in particular was so interesting, using the mutant issue to talk about real-life ones.

The X-Men have really brought out, especially, the LGBT trope. I didn't realise when I was a child that I was queer. I now realise that I am, thanks partly to my revisiting and falling back in love with the comic books of my childhood. It was the different characters that represented this othering. And I felt very 'other' when I was a kid.

I now look back and realise, when I was falling in love with these characters, it was because they showed me something of myself that I didn't understand.

And Rogue in particular?

They're all absolutely amazing, but Rogue was funny. Rogue was sexy; powerful in her sexiness, and you couldn't touch her. And growing up in a very misogynistic, sexist world, to be able to have that immense power, 'if you come anywhere near me, I will kill you.'

I desperately wanted to be her. I wanted to have that. And as I've grown up, I felt that kinship with that character, because she does that push/pull thing; she's terrified she's going to hurt people she loves, she keeps pushing them away. 'Don't get too close to me', and that's something I definitely - without wanting to - continue to do with people.

Which makes comedy the perfect platform for me, because we get to spend one glorious hour together, and then we get to all disperse.

This show does sound a labour of love - and you cover other characters?

One that I fell in love with was April from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I love her because of her sense of justice, and the sense that she doesn't care what you look like if you're just a good person, a good turtle, good mutant. She really just wants to stand up for the little guy and is curious, tenacious. You know, all of the turtles had training and actual proper weapons, but she just had her tenacity, her sense of justice, and a lot of jumpsuits.

So yeah, I ended up getting a journalism degree, and I thought it was because of my sense of communication. But no, I think it was probably down to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The other characters that I currently include, there's Nebula, from Marvel's What If series; Peggy Carter, from the Agent Carter series, and there's also Harley Quinn. Oh and Rey from Star Wars as well.

A whole section in the show is about gatekeeping, which is not necessarily just something that happens in the fandom world. I think there's many gatekeepers in our lives, in our society, and sometimes we gatekeep ourselves from ourselves.

I remember Rogue - because of her touch-me-and-I-take-your-powers thing - really craved intimacy, which a lot of us awkward adolescents probably related to, back then.

I fell in love with her probably between the ages of seven and 10, which is when I first started experiencing mental health problems. I think I still felt that yearning for connection, it wasn't a yearning to be close to boys, it was a yearning for being understood. I grew up in a farming family, very different politics, very different outlooks, very different belief systems. I just didn't feel like I belonged, but I was searching for something through those comic books, through the fantasy.

I think that's what I've realised as I'm older, having reimmersed myself in these things that I repressed. Back then I thought, 'well, actually I should try to be more like the people that I want to connect to', so the people I saw around me. So I repressed who I really was, my sexuality, my ADHD and autism, my nerdiness and my love of comic books, and I tried to be who they wanted. And it's impossible.

And very unhealthy.

You can't fight nature. And thanks to the Edinburgh Fringe, actually, I found a lot of my tribe, 'this is who I'm meant to be'. And every year, going back up, there is like a little beacon within my heart, my soul, calling out to other people who you want to gravitate towards, whatever it is you're creating.

But then in the last few years, I've also immersed myself in the comic cons; the comic book lovers, the cosplay community. And again, it's this beautiful space for queer, neurodiverse, artistic people who have this language. We need stories, whether it be in comic books, whether it be a comedian on stage telling a story. We need stories to help us understand ourselves and each other.

You might attract a whole different audience to stand-up with this one - although possibly some X-Men-loving kids too.

I'll definitely do disclaimers that it's an adult show. But the joy, one of the things I hadn't anticipated was having those two audiences, the comedy fans who don't know anything about comic books and the comic books fans who aren't there for the comedy necessarily. I wrote so many niche jokes that the comic book fans would get, but then on the other hand I don't want to exclude the people who haven't got that deep, deep knowledge.

So to be able to find that balancing act I've really enjoyed, and it's been useful to sort of go, 'okay, these are the two tribes that this might appeal to.' I performed a work in progress at comic-con, which I knew was more likely to be uber nerds like myself. And I say nerd, by the way, it's the highest honour to be a nerd.

I remember giving up comic books a couple of times, trying to become a non-nerdy adult. Never achieved it.

No, certainly the people that I grew up around, there was a kind of 'right, childhood is over and now it's adulthood.' I did try to shove it all away, but I did it in a way that meant that I developed mental illnesses rather than 'I'm going to shut it off and childhood is over', and a part of the healing is to embrace some of those beautiful aspects of childhood.

How did the Rogue cosplaying begin?

I saw this brown leather jacket in a charity shop, and I went, 'Oh my God, I know who that reminds me of.' And now, every time you might see me cosplaying as Rogue, it's that jacket. And I wear that jacket just in real life anyway.

Because we're all cosplaying. Businessmen, they're cosplaying as adults. They're not really adults. A bride at a wedding, she's cosplaying as a virgin. We're all pretending, except it's not pretence. It's trying to bring out an aspect of ourselves. Right now I'm wearing running trousers. I'm not going running today. I'm cosplaying as somebody who's fit.

How are your costume-making powers?

The last cosplay I did on the Saturday at comic-con in May was my first time making a dress, and it looks great. All the photos looked amazing. What you can't see is the amount of glue, safety pins and the fact that in every photo, the person I was with, I was like, 'could you put your hand here just to cover that up?'

It's one of my favourite things about cosplay, it doesn't matter, even if it's a little bit wonky, a little bit Blue Peter-esque, it's absolutely fine. It's the love of it, and it's the passion and trying to celebrate something about that character that appeals to you, and that you bring out in yourself. I love that.

Rogue has had a big year, with X-Men 97 going so well - which is probably a relief for Marvel, as they seem to have lost the plot recently.

I completely agree that Marvel has oversaturated it, but that's why X-Men 97 was so beautifully done; just some of the most beautiful writing. Beau DeMayo, the showrunner, made everybody go home at the end of the day with comic books to read in preparation for the following writing session and the following voiceover session. As a voiceover artist as well, I'm a massive fan of Lenore Zann, who voices Rogue back in the early original animated series, but also in this series.

It's stunning in terms of the art, in terms of the comedy, every episode seems to draw upon three different major comic-book stories. And I think they did it justice, each one of them. The love that's shown, every single character, every single line having layer upon layer of meaning. I think it's the most beautiful piece of writing that Marvel's had in years.

I'm hoping Deadpool And Wolverine will too, because I'm a bit of a Deadpool fan.

I clearly need to binge X-Men 97.

I rewatched every episode, many, many times. But for the finale, my primary partner and I, we watched from episode one again, and I had done a cook-along thing. I created a tasting menu where we ate what they ate in every episode - that took some planning and preparation, but it was one of my favourite things I think I've ever done creatively. I think that might have been my pinnacle...

You should pitch a special edition of The Great British Sewing Bee and The Great British Bake Off, a combo cosplay special.

I would love that, especially since I'm terrible at sewing the cosplay; I'm 100% behind this concept. Let's make it happen. But I would probably want it to be more like, 'how well do you hide the mistakes?' Rather than 'how well do you actually sew it?'

I think it should be how much love and passion have gone in. And it doesn't matter if you've glued it together. It's just got to be that inventiveness.

I suppose with cosplay, you might only wear it for that one day, so you can really go for it.

I have done makeup, for Nebula, I have gone completely blue, that took about four hours of all-over blue body paint. And what I thought was absolutely sensational, and I wasn't expecting - my previous shows, I've been very open about my experiences of being hospitalised for different mental health conditions, experiencing hallucinations and lifelong problems with eating disorders, which I now realise are linked to my neurodivergence.

Body image has always been a struggle for me, but being painted blue for a day, it wasn't a cure, but it was a respite from the body image struggles that I've had. Being visibly so different for a day was a revelation. And I'm not saying that I should be a blue alien every day, but for that one day, it was awesome to be able to just say, 'I know this looks crazy, but I feel crazy anyway, every single day. So this feels much more normal to me than anything else.'

You're doing two shows this year - that's quite an undertaking.

Going Rogue felt like it just fell out of me, it poured out. With Hopepunk, it's been more of a challenge, and I think that might even be artistically quite telling. I used to be very optimistic, almost to the point of saccharin on stage. And over the years that's shifted and changed. This show about hope, I think, is me wrestling with that. And whenever I've been performing it so far, it's very much that the audience is wrestling with that too, that balance: how can we be a realist and still be hopeful?

It's a good question these days.

Hopepunk is more of a character that's inside of me. It's the relentless optimist, and I need it. I don't want to give up on that optimism. I can make space for more diverse voices within myself: that cynic, the despair, the pessimist, the realist. But I can't discount that voice that some people might say is saccharin; without it, I wouldn't want to keep going.

It's a great name for a comic character as well, Hopepunk.

I did have the idea of it being a superhero in and of itself. It's my inner superhero, the relentless optimist who always finds the silver lining, can be incredibly annoying, but, yeah, ultimately you need her. She does come to rescue the day sometimes.

Juliette supports the charity Change Mental Health