PATTI LUPONE DEBACLE (WITH NEW VIDEO!)

Okay, my mouth is literally watering to weigh-in on this one!  Having actually known and spent time with the diva herself back in the day, (and just published a new video which I can reveal now is, indeed, about Patti, even though I don’t name her in the tale, and which you can watch here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1DWrs5Om_U,) I have many thoughts on both ends of this recent argument.

Yes, Patti LuPone is basically a bi-atch, but an uber-talented one. I’m pretty sure that she never cares about being Miss Congeniality—she is just very confident, correctly, that her extreme talent speaks for itself.

But here’s what’s going on with her now, which is happening right before the all-important Tony Awards, to boot:

It all started when Patti was recently starring in a play on Broadway with Mia Farrow, and their theatre shared a wall with the building that houses the Alicia Keys musical, Hell’s Kitchen. And that show’s sound cues were coming through the wall. So, following the advice from her stage manager, Patti asked a higher-up in that other theatre’s producers group to help them resolve the issue, (a move with which I totally agree, by the way.) Any normal person would be upset with that situation, but especially a serious actress.

Patti is one hundred percent correct about noise from a loud musical bleeding onto her stage! It has annoyed me as simply an audience member, so I can’t imagine how disruptive it is to people who are trying to act! As a matter of fact, I experienced a similar situation when I was reviewing a play just a few years ago, and this is what I wrote in my critique: “But the douchebag restaurant next door, Tar and Roses, feels that it’s necessary to blast music at night, no matter how much that affects the goings-on in the theatre. So that muffled pounding noise goes on during the entire second act! Those creeps couldn’t wait an hour to do that?! Like they’re going to lose any business because of it. (And their food sucks, too.)” So anyone from that show’s audience can certainly understand Patti’s plight.

During that recent run of her Broadway play, Patti said the musical next door was “too loud,” referencing her own artistic experience with how it affected the production she was in at the time. And when the issue was fixed, she sent flowers to the Hell’s Kitchen’s sound and stage management team to thank them for their help, which was very classy of her. That should have been the end of the conflict. It should have been my favorite saying—dot, dash, end of story.

But one of the stars of Hell’s Kitchen, Kecia Lewis, kicked-up a fuss on social media, deeming LuPone’s asking for that sound adjustment and calling the musical “too loud” to be “bullying,” “offensive,” “racially microaggressive,” “rude,” and “rooted in privilege.” Wow.

So, before I continue, I have to explain my own personal experience with Patti LuPone, so you see from whence my perspective in coming. She and Mr. X worked closely together on a TV series back in the day, and adored each other. (So at least she has excellent taste.) I even appeared on an episode of that show with her once. Because of those connections, we were at several parties together over the years. And while I have always totally admired her talent, I never really liked her, the feeling of which I’m sure was mutual.

BUT…nothing she said about that loud music situation has anything to do with race or privilege!!! It was all about work. Period. It’s obnoxious of Kecia Lewis to try to spin Patti’s words like that! And I promise you, my sticking-up for Ms. LuPone like this is really saying something. Personal feelings aside, I believe in truth, honesty, and fairness, so I have to call it like I see it. And in this case, Kecia Lewis definitely outmatched Patti LuPone in bitchiness. If there was any racism involved, it was on the part of Kecia towards Patti to try to accuse her of it!!!

And knowing Patti so well, Mr. X and I had hearty laughs when we read that in a recent interview with The New Yorker, she said that Lewis “doesn’t know what the f— she’s talking about,” and then added, (in reference to how few Broadway productions Lewis has been in,) “Don’t call yourself a vet, bitch!” We, of course, know that you really cannot say stuff like that in public, but we laughed because it’s sooo Patti.

Now this is where the entire nasty episode blew-up: Subsequent to the Lewis post, Patti’s Broadway frienemesis, (a word I coined years ago for my sixth grade best friend and nemesis, Mindy Fain,) Audra McDonald, “liked” the mean-about-Patti post, causing Patti to point-out in her interview with the New Yorker that Audra is “not a friend,” due to a rift a long time ago. On a morning TV show shortly after that story came-out, Audra confirmed that they haven’t seen each other in almost a dozen years. So, to my mind, it’s no harm, no foul. Right?

However, here’s another big BUT: Audra is up for a Tony this weekend for playing Mama Rose in the revival of Gypsy, a role for which Patti deservedly won a Tony in 2008. So there’s that tantalizing tidbit. And in that same New Yorker interview, Patti appeared to be rooting for Nicole Scherzinger, who is also nominated in the same category, for one of Patti’s own former roles, as the star of Sunset Blvd. It’s all very dramatic. And very old-black-and-white-movie-esque of Broadway! [Note: I hate repeating people’s names so many times, but it makes the stories clearer than just saying “she” and “her” over and over!]

The penultimate kicker to all of this is that over five hundred people in the Broadway community have signed an open letter to Patti, criticizing her for her comments in the New Yorker article. That’s just creepy of them all. Jealous much?

So, to try to get this fiasco behind her, Patti issued a public apology, saying in part, “I made a mistake, I take full responsibility for it, and I am committed to making this right. Our entire theatre community deserves better.” You just know that someone behind the scenes forced her into doing that. I actually feel bad for her over it—I know she was choking on the statement. She was just speaking her mind to begin with, which she obviously should not have, but even I feel that what she said was more amusing than mean. But oh well. Let’s hope the sad incident is all over, and not her career! That would really be a shame.

To wrap it all up, I believe that this whole debacle will propel Audra to yet another Tony win this Sunday, which will infuriate Patti. Even though she’s not nominated for anything this year, she already has three Tonys to Audra’s astonishing six, so this would be the latter’s seventh, which Patti would take as a personal loss. And she loathes losing.

And I should know. Because I actually beat her at something. It wasn’t an acting award, but I consider it to be my Tony! Here’s the link again to my latest YouTube video about that fun tale: www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1DWrs5Om_U. I doubt you’ll be surprised by any of it.