Patti LuPone has rekindled her feud with Andrew Lloyd Webber, 30 years after he fired her from his Sunset Boulevard musical.
Although Patti starred in the show’s original London run and was hired to reprise the role in New York, she was replaced on Broadway by Glenn Close.
Outraged, Patti took Andrew to court and won $1 million, which she used to install what she called the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool at her country house.
Six years ago, he declared a “detente” with the composer and agreed to participate in a tribute to him at the Grammy Awards.
Now, however, she has pointed it in the hollywood reporterdismissing him as a “narcissistic, insecure man” and Sunset Boulevard as a “sexy and heavy” spectacle.
Patti LuPone has rekindled her feud with Andrew Lloyd Webber, 30 years after he fired her from his Sunset Boulevard musical; she appears in a 1993 photo shoot for the show.
Andrew and Patti appear in 1978 rehearsing their 1979 musical Evita, in which she gave a Tony-winning performance as Argentinian Eva Perón.
The topic came up when Patti was asked if she ever received an “explanation” for why she was fired from the music scene in 1994.
“Andrew Lloyd Webber is a narcissistic and insecure man,” he responded. —So, there will be no explanation for that except that he didn’t get what he wanted in London and he thought he would get it in New York. He’s still fucking musical.
Sunset Boulevard has just been revived in London with Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger in a production now heading to Broadway.
“I know he has a new life with Nicole Scherzinger,” Patti said. ‘We’ll see what happens. But it’s not a good musical. It’s a heavy musical.
Patti became a Broadway star and won her first Tony Award for her role as Eva Peron in Andrew and Tim Rice’s 1979 show Evita.
Her reign on A-list musical theater continued through the 1980s, during which she played Fantine in the original London production of Les Miserables.
However, he found himself at the center of an explosive Broadway scandal in the early 1990s when he became involved with Sunset Boulevard.
The musical was based on the classic 1950 Billy Wilder film, starring Gloria Swanson as the faded and increasingly unhinged silent film star Norma Desmond.
Patti has taken aim at Andrew in the Hollywood Reporter, dismissing him as a “narcissistic, insecure man” and Sunset Boulevard as a “sexy” and “heavy” spectacle; both photographed last year
Patti appears on stage in the original Broadway production of Evita, which catapulted her to the A-list of musical theater, where she remains to this day.
In the 1990s, Andrew adapted it into a stage musical, acting as composer and producer and hiring Don Black and Christopher Hampton for the book and lyrics.
The show first premiered in London with Patti as Norma Desmond, but by the time it moved to Broadway, Glenn Close had replaced her.
Before Patti was fired, Glenn played Norma in Los Angeles to critical acclaim while Patti was still performing on Sunset Boulevard in London.
In her memoir, Patti was acidic about Glenn’s career in Los Angeles, writing: ‘Glenn Close got rave reviews, but of course, she didn’t have to sing the same high notes as me. Andrew left the keys for Glenn.
After months of rumors that her job was at risk, Patti found out she had been fired from Liz Smith’s gossip column and responded by trashing her London dressing room.
“I practiced batting in my clubhouse with a floor lamp,” he wrote in his memoirs. “I hit everything in sight: mirrors, coat racks, makeup, closet, furniture, everything. Then I threw the lamp out the second-story window.
Patti had to continue playing in London after finding out about her replacement. “Paradoxically, I think I was a better Norma after I was fired,” she later commented.
The Philadelphia Inquirer had said he wasn’t crazy enough. You should have seen me during that last month,’ he joked.
Sunset Boulevard first opened in London with Patti as Norma Desmond (pictured), but by the time it moved to Broadway, she had been replaced by Glenn Close.
Glenn, pictured with Alan Campbell in the Broadway run of Sunset Boulevard, was praised for her Broadway performance and won a Tony.
Sunset Boulevard has just been revived in London by Pussycat Dolls singer Nicole Scherzinger in a production that is now heading to Broadway
Glenn was praised for her Broadway performance and won a Tony, but the show was so expensive to put on that it lost money even after running for more than two years.
Patti fought Andrew in court and spent her $1 million payment to install what she called the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool at her country home.
However, in 2018 he agreed to sing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina by Evita as part of a tribute to Andrew and Leonard Bernstein at the Grammy Awards.
“This is détente, ladies and gentlemen,” he said at a rehearsal for the concert, and then hugged Andrew, according to Michael Riedel. New York Post gossip column.
A year earlier, Glenn had returned to Broadway as Norma in a limited series of Sunset Boulevard from February to June 2017.