Soft Animal: A New Show from Pedro Leandro comes to The Edinburgh Fringe

In Soft Animal, Pedro Leandro blends comedy and vulnerability to explore queerness, ambition, and the lifelong pull of validation. Drawing on The Velvet Rage, childhood memories, and an eye for the absurd, he crafts an hour that’s equal parts thoughtful, funny, and emotionally open. Cultural Dose caught up with Pedro to talk about writing from truth, learning to laugh at yearning, and what he hopes queer audiences take from the show.

Soft Animal draws on ideas from The Velvet Rage - what did that book unlock for you personally or creatively?

Personally, it was huge.The fact that this man across the world was describing my experience so accurately was crazy to me and made me feel connected to other gay men in a way that I hadn’t felt before.

It also allowed me to have more empathy for child me. I was able to see myself at 13 or whatever and think oh you were just terrified that no one was going to love you when they found out you were gay so you thought if only you could memorise the speech from the Incredibles where the dad gets fired that might make you more lovable!

Creatively, it wasn’t really until I started working on Soft Animal that I started thinking about the Velvet Rage as a source of material. What it provided was a frame for the show, a central sort of thesis: that my need for achievement and success might stem at least in part from the fact that I’m gay. The show isn’t as linear as that makes it sound though. It is in large part about that and I mention the Velvet Rage quite a bit but I also spend 7min talking about Hamilton and I mention Orson Welles more than once.

You share a lot about your childhood - how does it feel revisiting this on stage?

It’s just a good source of stories, and it feels like a never-ending one. In that respect, therapy feels like cheating because it makes me think about my childhood loads and sometimes I’ll be very seriously talking about something that happened and in the back of my mind I’ll be like “that’s a bit that’s so clearly a bit” and then I have to make a mental note like “remember this because it’s a great way to close this bit of the show” whilst at the same time nodding thoughtfully to my therapist.

What I have been preoccupied with in stories from my childhood or ones that involve my family has been trying my best to tell the truth or at least not mischaracterize myself or the other people in it. There’s a section of the show where I talk about my dad a lot and me and my director Evan Lordan worked really hard to make the bit something that still had teeth but that is, at its core, true and playful and cheeky rather than rude or mean. And my dad came to see the show and really liked it I think. So, success!

You’ve worked across theatre, screen, and stand-up - does one medium let you be most “yourself”?

Well, the goal that I’ve set myself with stand-up is: can I do a whole funny show but be funny fully as myself? I remember doing a course at the Soho Theatre a couple years ago and we all had to perform 5min of material for each other and people afterwards said to me “I love how much of an asshole your character is” and I was like that’s not a character, that’s actually me. So maybe I should work on that.

But trying to be fully myself as an actor has been something of a holy grail for me ever since I was at drama school. I remember watching Andrew Scott’s Hamlet and Timothee Chalamet in Call Me By Your Name and being like wait, you don’t need a character, the more instinctive and simple you are, the more thrilling it is to watch. And I’m trying to apply that to all the media that I work across. So I guess the answer is ideally I’ll be fully myself in every medium! Is that wanky? Sorry.

Your story touches on the hunger for external validation that starts young and lingers. Do you think that desire ever fully goes away - or do we just learn to live with it differently?

I don’t know that it ever will go away fully. Partly because, in a way, I’ve become quite grateful for it sometimes, like a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. I don’t think I’d be doing this show if I didn’t have that desire for example! If I achieved a nirvana of no yearning how would I ever get a BAFTA?

But I think what’s changed is I’m getting better at accepting that it’s not a desire that’ll ever be fulfilled. Like I’m never going to be like yum yum no more validation for me thanks, I’m full. So then it becomes a more abstract desire that I know I need to indulge in with moderation. Unless this show makes me really famous that would be cool too and then there will be no moderation ever again.

The show deals with big ideas - shame, queerness, ambition - but it’s also deeply funny. How do you decide what to laugh at, and what to hold sacred?

Thank you, it IS deeply funny! It’s an old cliché but I don’t think anything is sacred or safe from being funny. It’s completely absurd that we’re alive. It’s completely absurd that we somehow came online and started experiencing our own existence on this bizarre rock (that has volcanoes on it??) and we’re walking around as it floats in a forever expanse of cold empty space and we’re like “Dave and Sandra are co-dependent” or “jorts are back in” like everything we do is so funny. Even those big ideas, like ambition like it’s funny that I’m thinking god wouldn’t it be great if I was in a Channel 4 show produced by Sharon Horgan cool Pedro the only reason you’re alive is because you’re at the right distance from a big ball of fire FOR NOW like what are we all talking about all the time. …… Does that make sense?

How do you want Soft Animal to make people feel - especially queer audiences?

I’d like them to feel overwhelmed with gratitude and sexual desire I think.

Other than that, the show is meant as an introduction to me, really. It’s a statement of my aesthetic, the type of comedy that I love and my performance style. So I mainly hope that they come away with a sense of who I am as an artist. And that they like that sense! 

As for queer audiences, I hope they enjoy it and see themselves reflected a little bit. Part of my philosophy is that if a queer person makes good work then, even if its subject isn’t necessarily liberation or revolution, it can still be liberating and even revolutionary. I think the world is getting worse for queer people at the moment so I’d like to offer some respite, some beauty, and a bit of communion. I know that’s not a big offering. But hopefully having an hour where we are happy together in a room helps a little bit.

If people feel any of the above, I’ll be very happy. But gratitude and sexual desire are top of the list.