Broadway, TV, and film star Patti LuPone has built a following around her unfiltered—and some might say bellicose—candor. But it appears that lack of restraint might also be her undoing. Following a profile in the New Yorker in which LuPone spoke critically of fellow theater stars Audra McDonald and Kecia Lewis, over 500 artists from the theater community and beyond signed an open letter urging the organizers of the Tony Awards to ban LuPone from the event.
Patti LuPone has never been known for mincing her words. A list of all her incendiary interviews would have you still on this page two days from now, but a greatest hits compilation might include a 2017 What What Happens Live appearance in which she characterized fellow icon to certain subsets Madonna as “dead behind the eyes. She cannot act her way out of a paper bag. She should not be in film or onstage.”
Then there’s the 2015 admission that she snatched a cell phone from the hands of a texting theater-goer (understandable, but still an arguable assault!). In 2023, it was Kim Kardashian who bore the brunt of LuPone’s WWHL wrath, saying “What are you doing with your life? Don’t get on the stage.” Her departure from the Actor’s Equity union that same year left behind even more scorched earth, with LuPone calling it the “worst union” and saying, “they don’t know who I am basically.”
Given LuPone’s decades-long propensity for sideswipes—a habit that, to be fair, has helped make her a household name as much (if not more) than her Agatha All Along role did—it’s perhaps understandable that LuPone felt free to cast shade when she spoke with the New Yorker‘s Michael Schulman. But this time, the shade wasn’t greeted as gleefully as LuPone’s anti-phone aggression.
The quotes in question were rooted in a conflict between 2024’s LuPone-starring production of The Roommate, which was next door to Alicia Keys’ musical Hell’s Kitchen. After complaints from LuPone over a sound bleed between the productions’ shared wall, the show’s Tony-winning star Kecia Lewis took to Instagram to request an apology from LuPone, saying “These actions, in my opinion, are bullying; they’re offensive; they’re racially microaggressive; they
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