Is this the newest celebrity feud? Patti LuPone wasn’t afraid to speak her mind on Tuesday’s Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, especially when it came to Madonna’s acting skills.
Comments regarding pop diva Madonna, were just the tip of the iceberg as the actress also addressed other celebrities and movie productions without hesitation.
Who is Patti LuPone again?
The 68 years old Broadway legend has starred in pretty much every big production ever. She’s known for starring in productions such as Les Miserables, Sunset Boulevard, and Gypsy. And that’s just on Broadway.
She’s also starred on TV show such as American Horror Story: Coven, Girls, and Penny Dreadful.
So, she’s a heavyweight when it comes to acting, and singing. LuPone won a Tony Award for Best Actress in Musical for her role as Eva Peron in Evita. She’s the original Eva that went later on to a film adaptation in 1996, in which Madonna played the Argentinian First Lady.
Recently she slammed Madonna’s acting skills. The actress said, “Well, I was on the treadmill when MTV used to have videos, and I saw, I believe it was Buenos Aires and I thought it was a piece of s**t.”
For the actress, the pop queen is pretty much the worst. “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 on stage. She’s a wonderful performer for what she does, but she is not an actress. Bang.”
Not such a First Lady-ish behavior
This is not the first time LuPone talks about Madonna’s role as Eva. The actress said the New York Daily News that, “It looks like a boring piece of [expletive]. It’s very disappointing. If it had been as electrifying as I know it was on stage, then I’d run to go see it.”
Is this a feud? We’re not sure, but LuPone is definitely not a fan of the pop diva. Apparently, the two divas have only met once, and LuPone doesn’t really have the fondest memories of the encounter.
“I did meet her after her opening night party, and the only thing that Madonna has ever said to me was, ‘I’m taller than you.’ Bada bing,” she quipped.
Both the Broadway legend and the pop diva played Argentinian First Lady Eva Perón in Evita, one at Broadway and the other in a film adaptation.
Also, they both won awards for their representations of the role. LuPone won a Tony Award for her role in the original 1979 Broadway production, while Madonna won a Golden Globe for the 1996 film adaptation.
Turns out LuPone has plenty to say
Later on the show host, Cohen asked the Broadway actress’ thoughts on the movie musical Les Miserables. Let’s point out that, just like in Evita, LuPone originated the role of Fantine in the London production of the show.
And the actress went full honest on her thoughts. “I only saw a little bit of it, but I’m going, to be honest: The only person that knows how to do musicals on camera is Rachel Bloom in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. She is the only one who understands how to go from dialogue to song so that it makes sense, and her camera department knows how to shoot these rather large production numbers. I didn’t see Les Miz [onstage] after I left it. I’m too involved.”
She continued, “But what I did see [of the film], I wondered why the hell they were doing close-ups of these people so that you were seeing the snot, you were seeing down their throat—you were not seeing the scene that perpetuated this emotion in this song.”
Finally, she said, “I don’t know why people can assume they can do musicals or make movie musicals without ever having been involved in the process of making a musical. So what I see on camera, that’s the NBC ones, too, I can’t believe that it looks like this.”
The actress is currently in the Broadway production of War Paint. In which she plays cosmetics pioneer Helena Rubinstein.The play follows female entrepreneurs, Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, as they define beauty standards for the first half of the 20th Century.
Recently, she revealed she thinks of former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton as inspiration whenever she reenacts Helena Rubinstein.
“What I said to her was that every night when I sing a lyric ‘A woman scales the wall climbs high above them all/I know what gates of hell they put her through’. I always think of Hillary, and I told her that. I said I sing this about you every single night.”
War Paint comes to Broadway starring Tony Award-winners Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole. The production is directed by Michael Greif and features a score by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie.
LuPone got her second Tony nomination for her role as Helena Rubinstein in War Paint.
Source: News