Dylan Mulvaney Sets Off-Broadway Debut in ‘The Least Problematic Woman in the World’ ArticlePure

Dylan Mulvaney is ready to show a new side of herself, one she typically keeps out of the spotlight.

Those familiar with the 28-year-old actress-influencer through social media are well aware she has a sense of humor. What they don’t know, she tells PEOPLE, is just how “much darker” her humor is when she’s not sharing it on-camera. It’s a very real part of Mulvaney, and one that will soon take center stage — literally — as she makes her Off-Broadway debut in The Least Problematic Woman in the World, PEOPLE can exclusively reveal.

Online, the star is, as a recent TikTok comment phrased it, “wonderfully positive.” If she appears on screen, her smile will almost certainly follow. So when she gets a bit risqué (see: her deadpan delivery of the word “queefinator”) or even, on the rare occasion, shady, people notice.

But moments like these are just the tip of the iceberg, an iceberg that Mulvaney is hauling to New York City’s Lucille Lortel Theater this fall.

Following a limited run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland last year, Least Problematic is coming to the Big Apple. Formerly titled Faghag, the California native’s one-woman show, which she also wrote, will begin performances on Sept. 20, with a subsequent limited run from Oct. 7 to Nov. 30.

Mulvaney can’t wait.

“I’m really excited to see how the humor plays, because I found the U.K. audiences to be a bit drier and a bit more drawn to the dark comedy. That’s actually what I think will be a little shocking for some of my followers,” she tells PEOPLE. “I have a much darker sense of humor than some people know, ’cause I don’t really share that side on social media.”

“It’s definitely more adult than my content,” she adds of the Tim Jackson-directed show. “There’s a raunchy edginess to it that maybe some people wouldn’t expect from me.”

Though she’s pumped the brakes a bit in recent months, Mulvaney has long shared her personal life on social media. Since 2022, to be exact: that’s the year she kicked off her “Days of Girlhood” TikTok series, the springboard for her current stardom. She opened up further still in her memoir Paper Doll: Notes from a Late Bloomer, which hit shelves earlier this year. But Least Problematic is different, she explains, not only because of its dark humor, but because of the dark era that inspired her to write it.

The play was, in a way, born from “Beergate,” Mulvaney’s own coinage for the conservative backlash to her 2023 sponsored video for Bud Light. (Upset that the brand partnered with a transgender woman, critics called for a boycott of the brand and filmed themselves lighting beer boxes on fire.) At the time, the star recalls, “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to get back on stage, and it’s really hard to get cast as a trans person right now in theater.’ So I was like, ‘I need to write something.’ ” 

“I originally wanted the show to be something kind of unrelated to my transition, but as I started writing it, I realized that a one-person show needs to be based on a story only I can tell,” Mulvaney says. For her, she soon realized, “that is a wacko experience transitioning and becoming a public figure at the exact same time.”

Writing the show, she says, “was kind of like therapy for me” — and taking it to N.Y.C. is the final step. “Now that I’ve done some healing privately when it comes to the traumas of what I experienced the last few years, I feel like I’m in a place to share that,” she says, “and to help other people laugh with me and not at me.”

While Paper Doll is admittedly “very vulnerable and raw,” Least Problematic is a “fever dream” that toes a satirical line, yet remains firmly rooted in Mulvaney’s lived experiences. Plus, the star teases, “there are plenty of things that people don’t know yet and that I haven’t shared in those other spaces that I think [audiences] will be really excited about.”

“Hopefully,” the performer says, Least Problematic will “show them a holistic version of who I am” — a task made difficult by social media users’ affinity for pigeonholing creators. “I think often when you go viral for one specific thing, which happened to be my transition, people then forget that you can do other things,” she says.

In the show, Mulvaney buries labels once assigned to her — including quite literally, at one point, in a “twink funeral” — and steps boldly into the shoes of those who continually thrust them upon her. 

“There’s moments,” the star teases, “where you almost realize who I’m talking about or who I’m poking fun at, but I’m the one taking on that character. And that has felt really powerful, especially with people who have been quite, you know, critical of me in really negative ways — maybe we call ’em the haters — to be able to almost take back some of my power over them and to embody them. It’s just so fun.”

And while she doesn’t anticipate the real-life inspiration behind any of these “hater” characters showing their faces at Lucille Lortel, Mulvaney says she would welcome it.

“I don’t imagine conservative news anchors or country rock stars appearing, but you know, if they did, I’d be really grateful to have them there,” the star tells PEOPLE. “Because I think for me, what I so often find in certain rooms when we’re talking about issues related to gender or sexuality or race, it’s often people in little chasms of humans that think the same way they do.”

“I have a feeling that a lot of the audience will be followers of mine and supporters of the trans community, and that’s who I’m so excited to share this with,” she continues. “But I also want to make sure that if there are people who maybe are on the fence or don’t know a trans person yet, I would love to be a friendly face that they can connect with, so that they don’t see us as these one-dimensional depictions of what the media is trying to make us out to be.”

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Regardless of the project she’s working on, Mulvaney adds, “I always say that my version of transness is probably the most privileged, specific version of it. And if someone is to come see the show, I also hope that they will find other beautiful trans folks to follow and to go see their art. Hopefully doing this show in New York will make people want to go see a lot of other trans theater — and hopefully I’ll get to play some iconic Broadway leading ladies one day.”

“But really,” she says, “it’s an opportunity in a time that feels so dark for our country to have a f—— laugh about the trauma.”