500 Broadway Performers Sign Open Letter Urging Tony Awards to Disinvite Patti LuPone for ‘Degrading and Misogynistic’ Comments

Broadway performers and theater professionals are calling on the producers of the Tony Awards to disinvite Patti LuPone from the show after the theater legend made controversial remarks about Audra McDonald and “Hell’s Kitchen” star Kecia Lewis in an interview with the New Yorker.

via: Playbill

After individual Broadway artists, and even McDonald herself, responded, an open letter has now been circulating throughout the industry. The letter has received over 500 signatures, including from Tony winners James Monroe Iglehart, Maleah Joi Moon, and Wendell Pierce. Even Courtney Love has signed the letter, which can be read in full here (any artist who wishes to provide their name to the letter can click here).

The letter, which was provided to Playbill, addresses the Broadway League, the American Theatre Wing, and "the greater theatre community." It characterizes LuPone's comments about Lewis and McDonald as "degrading and misogynistic—it is 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 also says that LuPone's comments are part of a pattern in the theatre industry, which has "a persistent failure to hold people accountable for violent, disrespectful, or harmful behavior—especially when they are powerful or well-known."

It then calls for the League and the Wing to disinvite LuPone (and anyone else "who use[s] their platform to publicly demean, harass, or disparage fellow artists") from industry events, including the Tony Awards. And it also asks those disinvited individuals, if they want to continue to engage with the community, to complete "comprehensive anti-bias or restorative justice programs." The letter also asks for "clear, transparent policies for addressing harmful behavior."

The League and the Wing are the producers of the Tony Awards. While the League and the Wing have previously made clear that equity, diversity, and inclusion are part of their organizational values, they have shied away from establishing industry-wide rules or policy on the topic.

Playbill has reached out to the League and the Wing for a response and will update this article accordingly if statements are received.

This latest bit of theatre drama can be traced back to last year, when LuPone was on Broadway in The Roommate, a show that shared a wall with Hell's Kitchen, where Lewis was (and is) giving her Tony-winning performance in the Alicia Keys musical. There was a noise complaint, where the cast of The Roommate asked if the Hell's Kitchen sound design could be modified to minimize sound bleed. After a video of LuPone disparaging Hell's Kitchen for being loud made the rounds on social media, Lewis took to Instagram to ask for an apology from LuPone and said that calling a show with a majority Black cast loud was a "microaggression."

When asked about the incident in the New Yorker, LuPone took issue with Lewis calling herself a "veteran," saying, "Let’s find out how many Broadway shows Kecia Lewis has done, because she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about...She’s done seven. I’ve done 31. Don’t call yourself a vet, bitch.” (Lewis has actually done 10 shows and LuPone has done 28 shows, though Lewis is younger than LuPone, having made her debut in the '80s). LuPone then added about the noise issue: “This is not unusual on Broadway. This happens all the time when walls are shared.”

New Yorker writer Michael Schulman then brought up Audra McDonald, who had supported Lewis' video. And LuPone said: “And I thought, You should know better. That’s typical of Audra. She’s not a friend." She added that the two had a rift, which she declined to elaborate on.

Schulman then asked LuPone what she thought of McDonald's performance in Gypsy (a show that LuPone had also starred in on Broadway and won a Tony for), and the former Madame Rose declined to answer the question.

In a CBS interview, Gayle King asked McDonald to respond to LuPone's comments, to which the six-time Tony winner said: "If there is a rift between us, I don't know what it is. That's something you would have to ask Patti about. I haven't seen her in about 11 years just because we've been busy, just with life and stuff. So I don't know what rift she's talking about, but you'd have to ask her."

LuPone's comments have garnered passionate responses throughout the theatrical community, with everyone from Viola Davis to Donna Murphy weighing in—and the majority support Lewis and McDonald. 

Those two actors weren't the only entities that LuPone criticized in the 6,000-word New Yorker profile. She also said that the Kennedy Center under President Trump “should get blown up," called Glenn Close a "bitch" (making it clear she hadn't forgiven Close for starring in Sunset Boulevard on Broadway, a part that had been promised to LuPone), and that she was done with Broadway (which she has said many times before her most recent Broadway show). But it is now clear, based on industry responses, which of LuPone's comments cut the deepest.