Full disclosure: I am a musical theater baby. My mother laughingly recalls taking a single-digit me to my first musical — and my inconsolable weeping when the production ended, because I didn’t “want it to be over.” That nascent love of musical theater would follow me through childhood, into a college major, and well into adulthood, so I consider myself a fairly reliable source when it comes to discussing the hits, misses, and megatalents of Broadway. For many, the “Great White Way” is the world’s pinnacle of theatrical success; a singular firmament few will ever reach (including me).

Undeniably, Patti LuPone is on the Mount Rushmore of Broadway’s firmament, alongside fellow luminaries like Audra McDonald, Christine Ebersole, André DeShields, Bernadette Peters, Brian Stokes Mitchell, and more. That said, there is inevitably always a fault in our stars, and LuPone recently reminded us of her longstanding faults. For true Broadway lovers, the 76-year-old diva’s loaded remarks in a recent and much-buzzed-about New Yorker profile, in which she proclaimed fellow Broadway legend McDonald “not a friend,” are telling, but not altogether surprising. 

“To this day, if I express myself in a way that somebody doesn’t like, they will say, ‘Oh, that’s Patti,’” LuPone told the New Yorker. “What the f–k are you talking about? What do you know about me that you can say, ‘Well, that’s Patti’?”

Well, what we know for sure is that LuPone pulls zero punches about expressing her disdain for whatever, whenever within her immediate environs, with the New Yorker describing her as an “apex predator” in New York City. She’s even gone viral, perhaps most memorably in regard to former New Yorker Donald Trump, whom she declared unworthy of a private performance, even while in the White House. 

“Because I hate the motherf–ker, how’s that?” she said on the 2017 Tony Awards red carpet.

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Okay, so, like many of us, LuPone has unapologetic disdain for one of the world’s biggest bullies,  but that doesn’t preclude her from also being one. As the New Yorker notes, the veteran performer raised eyebrows last year while sharing walls with Alicia Keys’ jukebox musical “Hell’s Kitchen,” complaining the production was “too loud.” The complaints, which included flowers to the production crew after they accommodated LuPone’s request to turn down the volume, were significant enough to elicit a response from one of the show’s stars, Kecia Lewis. After winning a 2024 Tony (in addition to a Grammy for the show’s soundtrack), Lewis, a Broadway veteran herself, called out the grand dame of theater in an online open letter.

“I wanted to address this because, Ms. LuPone, these actions, in my opinion, are bullying,” Lewis continued. “They’re offensive, they are racially microaggressive, they’re rude, they’re rooted in privilege. And these actions also lack a sense of community and leadership for someone as yourself, who has been in the business as long as you have.”

It was a potentially teachable moment, but LuPone was not ready to be schooled. Instead, she went on the defensive while addressing the rift with the New Yorker. “[Lewis] calls herself a veteran? Let’s find out how many Broadway shows Kecia Lewis has done, because she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about,” said LuPone when asked about the incident. “She’s done seven. I’ve done 31. Don’t call yourself a vet, b—h.” 

For the record, the New Yorker clarifies that Lewis has performed in 10 Broadway productions to LuPone’s 28. Nevertheless, Petty LuPone: Who you callin’ a b—h?

While far from disproving any accusations of diva-level difficulty, LuPone is an undisputed theatrical legend. She earned her first Tony for the titular role of the 1979 Broadway blockbuster “Evita,” based on the controversial life of late Argentinian first lady Eva Perón. So, it’s safe to say she’s familiar with industry etiquette, at this point. It’s also safe to say she simply doesn’t give a s–t.

Case in point: While reflecting on Madonna’s interpretation of Eva Perón in the 1996 film rendition of Evita, Lupone caustically remarked to Watch What Happens host Andy Cohen:

“Madonna is a movie-killer. She’s dead behind the eyes. She cannot act her way out of a paper bag. She should not be in film or onstage. She’s a wonderful performer for what she does, but she is not an actress.”

With that in mind, LuPone may be an equal opportunity hater, but even as a notorious diva, her interactions with Black contemporaries belie a stunning lack of social awareness that she seems to have zero desire to reconcile. When the New Yorker dared ask about a potential rift with McDonald, the most Tony-nominated — and winning — actress in theatrical history, who subtly supported Lewis’ comments last fall (via emojis), LuPone zeroed in on a clearly presumed allegiance.

“I thought, ‘You should know better.’ That’s typical of Audra. She’s not a friend,” LuPone asserted, throwing not-so-subtle shade on McDonald’s groundbreaking interpretation of Mama Rose in “Gypsy,” a role which garnered LuPone a 2008 Tony. Note that McDonald’s performance has earned her a record-breaking 11th Tony nomination this year, after already winning six Tonys to LuPone’s three. Oh — and she was recently christened our “Greatest Living Actor” by Time magazine.

Wins aside, the condescending tone of LuPone’s “You should know better” reeks of the irrationally entitled musing of a privilege-steeped, yet arguably outranked talent. Coupled with her casually referring to Lewis as a “bitch,” let’s just say that a white-identified Broadway icon taking an authoritative tone with other fully grown, highly accomplished women in her field — and specifically, Black women —has not been LuPone’s best role to date.

Is LuPone a racist? Well, second disclosure: I’m married to a Black actor, who made his Broadway debut as theaters reopened in 2021. Coincidentally, LuPone not only saw his extremely Blackety-Black production (I believe the actors casually said “N-gga” no less than two dozen times in the opening scene), but she sent flowers to him and his two co-stars, so I won’t go that far. But I will posit that fame, and especially early fame, is a slippery slope when you’re still desperately trying to hold onto relevance decades later. LuPone herself alludes to this in her profile, albeit in an embarrassingly tone-deaf way.

“What am I learning in this life that I’m atoning for from the last one?” she asks the New Yorker. “What is it that forces me to fight? Seriously. Why wasn’t it easier?”

Black women have been asking themselves this question for centuries, with no substantive or sustaining response. It is only entitlement that makes LuPone — or any other hardscrabble success story —believe they are entitled to a level of respect their marginalized contemporaries have yet to gain. It is the well-worn, but equally well-known story of a diva who thinks her benevolence — or intolerance — of people of color entering her designated realm should grant her a level of respect she doesn’t feel obligated to extend in return.

Ultimately, this is a tale as old as time, and one of white liberalism gone wrong. Think: “I support you until you challenge my status.” Or, “I consider you a friend, until you rightfully challenge my behavior.” So, to rephrase LuPone’s words, she is “not a friend,” at least not when it doesn’t immediately serve her.

As for McDonald, she’s since given us her own masterclass on how to handle a probable narcissist. “If there’s a rift between us, I don’t know what it is,” McDonald told Gayle King in response to the controversy, putting necessary distance between herself and LuPone’s self-generated drama. “You know, I haven’t seen her in about 11 years just because we’ve been busy just with life,” McDonald added. “So I don’t know what rift she’s talking about, but you’d have to ask her.”

Maiysha Kai is a lifestyle journalist and fashion industry veteran specializing in Black culture. In addition to founding the lifestyle verticals of The Root and theGrio, her commentary has been cited by the New York Times, Vanity Fair, The Guardian and CNN; she has also appeared on ABC’s Nightline and CBS This Morning. Maiysha has contributed to several published works, including writing the foreword to Ntozake Shange’s first posthumous volume of poetry and authoring Body: Words of Change, a young adult compilation published by Penguin Random House. 

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