Broadway star Patti LuPone has opened up about her on-off seven-year relationship with fellow actor Kevin Kline.
The 76-year-old described her time with the Oscar-winner, 77, as “painful.”
The pair met while at acting school. In 1968, LuPone was part of the first-ever class of drama students taught at the famed New York performing arts conservatory Juilliard. The course was overseen by the producer and acting teacher John Houseman.
In a wide-ranging interview with the New Yorker LuPone recalled that for the inaugural class, Houseman “found 36 of the craziest people he could find, to see whether he could strip down their personalities and create a ‘Juilliard actor.’”
In her third year, several more students joined the class. One was Kline, who LuPone says she “took an instant dislike to.”
She continued: “He looked like Pinocchio to me. He had skinny legs, and he was tall, and I didn't really see the handsomeness.”
Nevertheless, the pair soon sparked a romantic entanglement after “feeling each other up” during an art-appreciation course. They embarked on what the publication called a “turbulent on-and-off relationship” that would last for seven years.
LuPone said of their time together: “He was a Lothario. It was a painful relationship. I was his girlfriend when he wanted me to be his girlfriend. But if there was somebody else, he would break up with me and go out with that person. And I, for some reason, stuck it out — until I couldn't stick it out anymore.”
Reached for comment by the New Yorker, Kline agreed that their relationship dynamic had been “fraught,” and added: “We fought all the time. In the company, we were known as the Strindbergs.”
The pair appeared together in a 1975 production of the musical The Robber Bridegroom and again in David Mamet’s play All Men Are Whores in 1977.
Other comments by LuPone in the same interview have landed her in hot water with the Broadway community.
LuPone starred in The Roommate opposite Tony-nominated Mia Farrow earlier in the Broadway season when she took issue with the loudness of their neighboring show, the Alicia Keys jukebox musical, Hell’s Kitchen. The sound was reportedly bleeding through from theater-to-theater, causing an issue for LuPone.
After calling up Robert Wankel, the head of the Shubert Organization, the issue was addressed, and LuPone sent flowers to the musical’s crew to thank them.
But then a performer in Hell’s Kitchen, Tony winner Kecia Lewis, posted a video on Instagram about the issue. Lewis, speaking as one Broadway “veteran” to another, deemed LuPone’s actions “bullying,” “racially micro-aggressive,” and “rooted in privilege,” as she called “a Black show loud.”
LuPone lashed back in the New Yorker interview: “Here’s the problem. She calls herself a veteran? Let’s find out how many Broadway shows Kecia Lewis has done, because she doesn’t know what the f*** she’s talking about.”
LuPone was quickly called out on social media for her comments about Lewis.
“Patti does not come out of this looking good. What a hater,” someone wrote on X.
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