Till a few days ago, Patti LuPone was a Broadway legend. But now, she has made the entire Broadway community her enemy.
Recently, LuPone made several controversial remarks about fellow theater veterans Kecia Lewis and Audra McDonald in a New Yorker interview. While denoted Lewis as a “bitch” and questioned her status as a Broadway veteran, she outright dismissed McDonald as “not a friend” and refused to comment on her performance in Gypsy, a role LuPone herself once played.
If she thought the two theater artists, or well, the rest of the community, would take the insults lying down, she was wrong.
These comments sparked widespread condemnation from the theater community. Over 500 Broadway artists – including Tony winners James Monroe Iglehart and Maleah Joi Moon – signed an open letter denouncing the Marvel actor as a “bully” and calling out her “degrading,” “misogynistic,” and “racially insensitive” remarks. The letter called for accountability for her “deeply inappropriate and unacceptable public comments about two of Broadway’s most respected and beloved artists,” since it exhibits “a blatant act of racialized disrespect.”
“It constitutes bullying. It constitutes harassment. It is emblematic of the microaggressions and abuse that people in this industry have endured for far too long, too often without consequence.”
The letter asserted that such insults have become a “pattern” for those who are powerful or popular, as there has been “a persistent failure” to hold such individuals “accountable for violent, disrespectful, or harmful behavior.”
LuPone’s comments were a wake-up call as the community has vowed to no longer tolerate “the normalization of harm in an industry that too often protects prestige over people.”
What is the community’s demand, and what has LuPone said in response?
The demand is simple – organizations like the American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League should bar LuPone from attending the upcoming Tony Awards unless the 76-year-old completes anti-bias or restorative justice programs.
In response to the letter, its demands, and the widespread backlash she continues to face, LuPone has issued a public apology, expressing deep regret for her comments and acknowledging that they were demeaning and disrespectful. Her solution? She is committed to making amends and plans to personally apologize to Lweis and McDonald.
But what the letter expects her to do to prove she is truly apologetic and ready to change is to go through “anti-bias or restorative justice programs,” wherein she will learn to recognize and correct her harmful bias and make amends, but in a meaningful way.
It remains to be seen whether it would be too much work for LuPone to fix her ways, especially since this is hardly the first time she has made biting remarks about fellow artists. The only difference is that this time she is being held accountable.
