Producer Scott Rudin, Once Banished, Now Contrite, Plans A Big Broadway Comeback

Broadway and film producer Scott Rudin, whose aggressive and bullying behavior to some of his staff led to public condemnation and his withdrawal from the producing four years ago, is making a comeback, which Rudin announces today in an interview with The New York Times.

In the article, Rudin says he has more than a dozen shows in development, including both musicals and plays. At least three of the latter, according to the Times, will star Laurie Metcalf and be directed by Joe Mantello. (Neither of them responded to Times’ requests for comment.)

This fall, he will produce Little Bear Ridge Road, a play by Samuel D. Hunter staged last year by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater Company. The New York production, like the one in Chicago, will star Metcalf and will be directed by Mantello. In the spring Rudin will produce Montauk, a new play by David Hare, also starring Metcalf and directed by Mantello. The following season will bring a revival of Death of a Salesman with Metcalf and Nathan Lane, directed by Mantello.

“I think Laurie is the greatest actress in America,” Rudin tells The Times. “I do. I also believe in Laurie as a partner. Laurie is an amazing person to be in a room with, because the way she takes ownership of a text is remarkable to see, but it ignites a quality of work around her.”

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Another fall production Rudin says he’ll produce is a Broadway staging of Cottonfield, a new play by Bruce Norris, directed by Robert O’Hara. After that, Rudin says he’ll stage an Off Broadway production of a new play by Wallace Shawn called What We Did Before Our Moth Days, which will be directed by André Gregory, Shawn’s co-star in My Dinner With André.

In the interview with The Times’ Michael Paulson, Rudin reports that after leaving Broadway he had moved to East Hampton, got “a decent amount of therapy” and apologized to many people. As The Times writes, “He is at peace, he said, with the reality that not everyone is likely to welcome him back.”

“I was just too rough on people,” he said, acknowledging that his behavior with subordinates was “bone-headed” and “narcissistic.” Paulson writes, “He acknowledged that he had long yelled at his assistants (“Yes, of course”) and that he had on occasion thrown things at people (“Very, very rarely”).”

Rudin told The Times, “I have a lot more self-control than I had four years ago. I learned I don’t matter that much, and I think that’s very healthy. I don’t want to let anybody down. Not just myself. My husband, my family and collaborators.”

Asked if he also plans a return to film producing, the 66-year-old Rudin said he wanted to do Broadway first. “I want, frankly, to make sure I’m still good at it, and I want to make sure that I’m not going to be killed by a sniper’s bullet on 45th Street.”

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