There are demanding theater roles, and then there is stepping into Blanche Devereaux’s heels. Audiences already know the walk, the voice and the look that says she has spotted a man worth getting into trouble over. For Vince Kelley, who plays the Southern belle in Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue, the challenge begins with affection for both the character and the woman who made her unforgettable, Rue McClanahan.

“I love her, and I also love Rue McClanahan,” Kelley says. “The rehearsal process was like just the biggest playground I’ve ever got to be in.”

That affection has also had an unexpected effect offstage. After four years playing Blanche, Kelley says some of her confidence has rubbed off on him. Few television characters could absorb a razor sharp retort and turn it into a compliment quite so effortlessly. He has tried to carry that same refusal to be diminished into his own life.

“Playing Blanche for four years has really—it sounds so incredibly cheesy—but has really made me more confident about myself,” he says. Getting her movements right proved easier than he anticipated. A pair of Blanche’s signature mule heels helped him find the walk, with her shoulders leading the way. The voice though, required more work. Kelley wanted the sound to be familiar enough that an audience member could close their eyes and recognize the character, while keeping it comfortable enough to sustain through eight performances a week.

“I had to kind of find a version of her voice that was still recognizable that I could still work with,” he explains.

His inspiration also came from a source closer to home. Before joining the touring production, Kelley worked on costumes for a Golden Girls parody in his hometown of Detroit. His friend Richard Payton played Blanche, offering an exuberant interpretation that audiences loved. Some of that performance found its way into Kelley’s own portrayal.

“I’m actually just doing an impression of my friend Richard doing an impression of Blanche Devereaux,” he says with a laugh.

The observation prompts a shared appreciation for Victor/Victoria, the beloved film whose layers of gender performance still resonate with him. “I love that movie. I love that show,” Kelley says. “That unlocked everything for me.”

For all the familiar mannerisms, Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue gives its characters new territory to explore. Kelley is quick to express admiration for the many performers keeping these women alive through other stage productions. What distinguishes this one, he says, is an original script that brings the women into the present day.

“The girls are interacting with the world of today,” he says. “Even if you’re a diehard Golden Girls fan, you’ve seen every episode, this is like a lost episode, a continuation. You haven’t seen this episode yet.”

His own favorite episode, “Journey to the Center of Attention,” offers a lesson in how much fun these characters can have when expectations are upended. Dorothy, usually the target of jokes about her romantic prospects, becomes the center of attention, while Blanche struggles to reclaim the spotlight. For Kelley, the pleasure comes from watching McClanahan throw herself into physical comedy. “She’s going up there, she’s doing all this physical comedy,” he says. “She’s falling off the piano.”

It is a side of Blanche he loves bringing to the stage: the woman whose certainty about her own appeal makes it all the funnier when things refuse to go her way. Kelley tries to make room for that physical humor in his performance, drawing on an actress who could get a laugh from a movement as readily as a line.

Ask why gay men remain so devoted to The Golden Girls, and Kelley has an answer that reaches beyond the punch lines. He points to the series’ willingness to approach queer lives with warmth, from the gay character Coco in the pilot to Blanche’s brother and the episode in which Rose faces the possibility of HIV infection. Humor could open the door to conversations viewers might otherwise have avoided.

Then there is the relationship at the center of the series: four women building a home and a life together, becoming the people each can count on. “The show in itself is about chosen family,” Kelley says.

That sense of belonging helps explain why playing Blanche means so much to him. But our conversation turned especially tender when he is asked what he would want McClanahan to say if she could watch his performance and meet him backstage.

“No one has ever asked me that question,” he says.

A fan once gave Kelley a piece of paper that, he says, McClanahan had completed for an interview in the early 1990s. Asked what she hoped to be remembered for, she wrote: “Learning to give and accept love.”

That answer has stayed with him. If McClanahan could see that the show had helped him love his fellow performers, his audiences and himself—and accept that affection in return—he would consider the work a success.

After years spent learning the walk, finding the voice and chasing the laugh, that is the approval Kelley would treasure most. The heels help him become Blanche. The love is what he hopes honors Rue.

Golden Girls: The Laughs Continue comes to South Florida on Oct. 25. Tickets are available here.