Andrew Levitt, a.k.a. drag queen Nina West from Season 11 of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” acknowledges that he has a tendency, at times, to “get in my own way” as a performer. In the new touring version of the musical “Hairspray,” Levitt plays big-bodied housewife Edna Turnblad — an anxious agoraphobic who discovers her inner magnificence thanks to teenage daughter Tracy. The pressures of the role felt particularly daunting, he says, because he’s stepping into the heels of drag pioneer Divine, who originated the part in the 1988 John Waters film, and Broadway icon Harvey Fierstein, who won a Tony Award for the 2002 Broadway debut of the musical adaptation. Twenty years after it first burst onto the scene, the show arrives at the Citizens Bank Opera House Oct. 18-30, presented by Broadway in Boston.

“There’s this litmus test, and people compare you. Harvey, Divine, and John Waters are such forces in the queer canon. They’re titans, and you’re being asked to rise to that level, and it can be overwhelming,” Levitt says in a recent conversation via Zoom.

“I remember in one rehearsal, [director] Jack O’Brien and [choreographer] Jerry Mitchell looked at me and said, ‘Just let it all go. Stop doing whatever you’re doing, and you will be your own Edna.’ They saw me overworking and overthinking and being overwrought. I had to hear them say, ‘Your version will be good enough and will be worthy of standing alongside these other people.’ ”

If there’s anything he learned from his time on “Drag Race” — in which he was crowned Miss Congeniality and earned praise from public figures like US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for his advocacy of LGBTQ rights — it’s that you mustn’t give in to your “inner saboteur,” as RuPaul often reminds the queens on the drag competition series.

“I had to strip it all away and just step forward as myself and be raw and authentic,” Levitt says. “It’s that adage, ‘You need to be yourself. Everyone else is taken.’ ”

Edna worries the world won’t allow plus-sized women like her and Tracy to shine, and that her daughter will be rejected by a cruel world. Levitt admits to feeling something similar when he was offered the role. Am I good enough? It forced him to be “very raw and real and look at what it is about me that connects with Edna.” He found that he identified with her “fear and insecurity about being loved, being good enough, and my own weight issues, how I see myself and carry myself in the world.”

Set in 1962 Baltimore, the musical features a pop and R&B-flavored score rife with earworms like “Good Morning Baltimore,” “Welcome to the ‘60s,” and “You Can’t Stop the Beat.” It tells the story of perky dynamo Tracy Turnblad, whose irrepressible personality is matched by the size of her gravity-defying hair. She dreams of dancing with other teenagers on “The Corny Collins Show,” and she’ll do anything, including rebelling against her mother, to make it happen. After winning a spot on the show and becoming an overnight celebrity, she bands together with talented dancer Seaweed, his mother Motormouth Maybelle, and a group of Black teenagers to fight for the show’s integration.

As for Edna, Levitt calls her a “caterpillar.” “She’s a physical incarnation of the change that’s happening in society in the ‘60s,” he says. “She doesn’t take care of herself. She’s a shut-in. She sacrificed her dreams. But she goes through this chrysalis and falls back in love with herself again and recognizes that every sacrifice she made was for something that was worthy.”

While the character of Edna has always been played by a man in drag, Waters explains that this subversive wink, a hallmark of his films, is “a secret” shared between “the actors and the audience.” “The characters do not think Edna is a man. Tracy Turnblad does not think her mother is a man,” he says. “ ‘Hairspray’ isn’t making fun of these characters.”

In playing the part, Levitt insists he isn’t channeling his Nina West persona, even if he’s well-versed at doing his own makeup and walking in heels in a 6-foot-3-inch frame. “People will ask, ‘Well, where is Nina in Edna?’ This is not Nina. My job is to make the audience believe that I’m Edna, that I’m a woman, a mother, a wife.”

On “Drag Race,” Levitt shared the experience of being harassed and targeted with death threats at his small Ohio college for being openly gay after he ran for student government. His story went viral. “There’s such a vital importance to talk about those things because we’re just in such a dangerous time right now,” he says.

“Hairspray” landed in Levitt’s lap thanks to “Drag Race,” where his spot-on impressions of Fierstein (and Jo Anne Worley) in the show’s “Snatch Game” (a parody of the game show “Match Game”) caught the eye of Mitchell. In it, contestants must impersonate a celebrity and banter with RuPaul. It’s the show’s most beloved — and famously difficult — challenge. The day after the episode aired, Fierstein posted kudos to Levitt on social media.

Shortly after, Mitchell rang up Levitt and said that he and O’Brien, who helmed the original production, were mounting a new tour of the show and wanted him to play the part of Edna. “When we hung up, I started crying and was like, ‘Oh my God, this is a dream that I never thought would happen.’ ”

Indeed, it was a full-circle moment. Levitt’s first brush with “Hairspray” came when his sister brought home a cassette of the 1988 film soundtrack when he was 11. In college, he discovered Waters’s films, including “Female Trouble,” “Pink Flamingos,” and “Polyester.” As a young adult in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, he’d save up money to travel to see shows on Broadway. He remembers catching “Hairspray” in previews a few days before it opened and watching the show’s composer, Marc Shaiman, pacing in front of the Neil Simon Theatre at intermission, practically “pulling his hair out.”

Levitt and Marissa Jaret Winokur, who originated the role of Tracy, became friends after meeting at DragCon a few years ago, and when he was preparing for “Hairspray,” she helped him run lines. “It’s bananas,” he says. “It’s like, what is my life?”

Those pinch-me moments keep coming — as do words of wisdom and encouragement from Fierstein. “Harvey and I have developed an incredible friendship. He checks in with me to make sure I’m okay,” Levitt says. “He’s been cheeky at times. He’s been brutal at times with harsh honesty. And there’s only care and love in that. I really do feel him grabbing my hand tightly and guiding me there with grace as the next generation to play this part.”

Christopher Wallenberg can be reached at chriswallenberg@gmail.com.

Presented by Broadway in Boston. At Citizens Bank Opera House, Oct. 18-30. Tickets from $49.50. www.BroadwayInBoston.com

Work at Boston Globe Media