Speaker 1: The phrase Broadway legend is no hyperbole when it comes to Patti LuPone. She's been a force on the stage for more than half a century, yet her career seems somehow to be picking up steam even now. Listing LuPone's accomplishments is an almost absurd and daunting task so I'm going to pass that off to my colleague, staff writer Michael Schulman, who covers entertainment for the New Yorker.

Michael Shulman: Patti LuPone has been everywhere recently. I grew up watching her on Life Goes On as the mom. But of course, there's much more to discover with her. She's a great Broadway singer and actor, and I have since seen her, gosh, at least a dozen times on stage in things like Gypsy, her Tony Award-winning performance, Sweeney Todd, where she played misses Lovett, had accompanied herself on the tuba.

Patti LuPone: A customer. Oh, wait. What's your rush, what's your hurry. You gave me such a fright. I thought you was a ghost of a minute. Can't you sit? Sit you down. Sit. All I meant is that I haven't seen a customer for weeks. Did you come here for a pie, sir? Do forgive me if me head's a little vague. What is that? But you think we had the plague from the way that people--

Michael Shulman: And this month, she is back in two different things. She's starring opposite Mia Farrow in the Broadway play The Roomate and also she has unexpectedly, I think, joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She's going to be on the new show Agatha All Along, a kind of spinoff of WandaVision, which premieres this month. And I was very eager to talk to her about all of these things when I went over to her apartment in New York City recently. Patty, I have heard you saying over the past year or two, "I'm done with Broadway. Broadway's become a theme park. It's Las Vegas. I'm never going back. I want to do a little play on East 4th street," and yet here you are. What happened?

Patti LuPone: I don't know. They haven't called me on East 4th street, but they've called me on Broadway. No, I mean, I'm dying to work downtown. I would rather work downtown, but I've always said I want to work downtown with a Broadway salary, which, they're quite different, the salaries but yes, Broadway is-- actually, what's really disappointing is what they've done to Times Square.

I mean, it's so crowded now. I mean, I said this years ago when they were going to make the Broadway area pedestrian. I said, how am I supposed to get to work? What? Are you going to fly me in and land me on a rooftop? And I find it incredibly difficult to get to work.

Michael Shulman: But when you were in Evita in 1979, I imagine that Times Square as also treacherous in a totally different way. That was the era of the XXX movie theaters and muggers and the midnight cowboy kind of Taxi Driver era.

Patti LuPone: You could just drive down Broadway. Back then it was treacherous but I would dress like a slob so it didn't look like I had money.

Michael Shulman: What was it about this play, the roommate that got you to overcome your aversion to going to the theater district and meeting the play?

Patti LuPone: Yes, really. I still have that aversion. Mia, who's been a friend in Connecticut for over 30 years.

Michael Shulman: I know you both have places in Connecticut. Do you just hang out there? How do you know each other?

Patti LuPone: I don't remember when we met, but we met through Steve Sondheim and it was just a series of social events. I had a New Year's Eve party, Mia had full moon parties. Mia's kids and my kid went to the same school. It was country life, a small community, and country living.

Michael Shulman: What is the roommate about, this play?

Patti LuPone: It's about two women that have been-- they're redundant, basically. Isolated, alone in their own worlds, which are worlds apart from each other. I come to Iowa and we discover each other and ourselves. When was the last time you were on a date?

Mia: When I got married and we all saw how well that turned out.

Patti LuPone: Okay. We have to remedy this.

Mia: No, we don't. Nope.

Patti LuPone: Sharon, you have to stop thinking about yourself as basically dead. You are actually younger than most US Presidents.

[applause]

Patti LuPone: You're young enough that if you were a President, you would be a young president, okay? So just stop mummifying yourself.

Michael Shulman: What's your history with roommates? Have you--

Patti LuPone: Kevin Kline was a roommate. He was my lover, but I guess you could call him a roommate. Yes, pretty much I've lived alone in New York I'm thinking.

Michael Shulman: Well, isn't this the apartment we're in where Aubrey Plaza crashed?

Patti LuPone: Oh, Aubrey, yes.

Michael Shulman: I mean, I couldn't believe this story. Last year, Aubrey Plaza, who is your castmate on Agatha all Along, was making her stage debut downtown. How did she wind up here?

Patti LuPone: Well, we were shooting Agatha and we were sitting around as actors do, and she said, "I've been offered a play in New York." And I went, oh, that's great. Oops. Because she'd never been on stage. And I know from years of experience how it can shock you what is required of you to be a stage actor? And so I was concerned for her. I said, why don't you just stay with me and let me walk you through this as you come home like a deer caught in headlights. And, in fact, she would come home. She wouldn't understand certain things.

Michael Shulman: The way Aubrey Plaza told this story, she was like, Patti told me, you gotta toughen up. It was like you were her drill sergeant or something.

Patti LuPone: Well, yes, because she didn't know what to expect. I mean, she'd come home, and I'm like, you got to toughen up. You got to-- I did.

Michael Shulman: Was it like, drop and give me 20?

Patti LuPone: Well, it was sort of theater boot camp.

Michael Shulman: Oh, my goodness.

Patti LuPone: And I did do her laundry, and I did make her soup. Absolutely, because she wasn't eating necessarily and I would put food down and go eat it. Just because the mind does other things. You're thinking of a million-- and you're scared to death. I've been what? I'm in my 51st year on Broadway I still get stage fright. I'm still nervous. I'm still-- and so for somebody that's never done it and isn't used to that strain, it's frightening.

Michael Shulman: Yes, and the physical stamina.

Patti LuPone: Physical stamina, absolutely. That's the thing that nobody that hasn't done it understands. It's eight shows a week.

Michael Shulman: Yes. You and Aubrey had shot Agatha All Along. I had never expected Patti LuPone to join the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I'm so curious about what that entails. Being part of this huge machine, this entertainment franchise that's gigantic. Is it different than just being in a big movie?

Patti LuPone: No. I mean, I don't know because I'm not in that world, really. It felt like a regular film. I met a couple of people from Marvel. My character, and I can't even tell you that much about it because I got yelled at by a security guy when we were shooting because I opened up my mouth. I didn't know. My character, Kristen Lopez showed me a picture of my character. She's hot. She's really hot, and she is a witch in the Marvel world. I had no idea.

Michael Shulman: Oh, you saw the comic book version?

Patti LuPone: Yes. She's gorgeous with a banging body.

[laughter]

Michael Shulman: What was your costume like?

Patti LuPone: Well, this is when this character was young, and my character is-- Am I allowed to say this? I don't know. My character is a traditional sicilian peasant uniform.

Michael Shulman: Oh, that's like your ancestry.

Patti LuPone: Yes.

Michael Shulman: I always hear you say, I'm from Sicilian peasant stock.

Patti LuPone: Well, yes. Michael, it followed a pattern because when you go into the Ryan Murphy world, you have no idea what you're doing because your character keeps changing. I started out as this bathhouse singer and ended up reading tarot cards. Then I got the call, and I was all of a sudden a witch and that was new-- That wasn't new because in the John Logan world, I was a witch in Penny Dreadful.

[scene]

Now put your hand over the cards like so. Just your fingers. Now let them move. Believe.

Patti LuPone: It followed a pattern from the Brian Murphy world into the marvel world of something that I do, something-- I can't tell you anything. I went, well, this is destined. All of it is following a pattern. I don't know whether we'll continue. I don't know whether the witches of Agatha All Along world will continue. Jack does not write sequels. She didn't write a sequel to Wandavision.

She actually came into my trailer to tell me that I was going to die and went, I wanted a second season. She said, "I don't write second seasons." It would be cool to be part of the Marvel Universe. I don't know how I would do-- I mean, how that would happen, but I'm putting it out there Kevin Feige and all you other executives in the Disney Marvel world. [laughs]

Michael Shulman: I would like to see you go, you know, mano a mano with Thor or someone. Who's still around? I can't-- Well, doctor Doom is coming.

Patti LuPone: Well, he's coming to Broadway. Maybe I should talk to Doctor Doom on Broadway.

Michael Shulman: Oh, that's right. Robert Downy Jr. is on Broadway this season as well.

Patti LuPone: Oh, my God. They're all coming. Why are they all coming to Broadway? Don't they know what they're getting into? I remember sending Bruce Springsteen flowers for his opening, and I went, welcome to Broadway. You'll be sorry. I never heard from him.

Michael Shulman: He needs to go through the boot camp as well. You could put Robert Downey Jr. through the boot camp, too.

Patti LuPone: I could put them all through the boot camp. George Clooney. Poor guy. It's a drag. It used to be supportive of actors. It's not anymore, really isn't. I don't know what it is. It's so disappointing. I've always said that there-- I've said for years that there needs to be term limits on members of Congress, federal and supreme court judges, and Broadway musicals.

Absolutely. Open up the theaters. That's what I think. Here's to the ladies who lunch. Everybody laugh. Lounging in their caftans and planning a brunch on their own behalf. Off to the gym than to a fitting claiming they're fat.

Speaker A: The actor and singer Patti LuPone, speaking with Michael Schulman, will continue in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

Michael Shulman: This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm Michael Shulman, a staff writer here at the New Yorker, and I have been talking with Patti LuPone. She's best known for her roles in many, many stage musicals, from Les Miserables to Anything Goes to Gypsy. And she has this incredible voice that absolutely stunned Broadway in 1979 when she played the title role in Andrew Lloyd Weber's Evita.

Patti LuPone: [sings] There is only one man who can lead any worker's regime. He lives by your problems. He shares your ideals and your dream. He supports you but he loves you, understands you is one of you. If not, how could he love me.

Michael Shulman: Patti LuPone has been everywhere recently in dramatic plays and movies, on television. She's been a longtime collaborator of David Mamet and more recently, Ryan Murphy. And now, well into her 70s, she is debuting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. We'll continue our conversation now. People, of course, associate you with these huge Broadway musicals that you've done over the decades, but I know that much of your stomping grounds was really David Mamet plays.

Patti LuPone: Yes. I was in the first class of the drama division of the Juilliard School and it was classical training and at that point, I knew I would end up on the Broadway musical stage because I knew my voice. But I fell out of love with musicals and in love with classical theater. In our fourth year as the acting company, John Houseman. [clears throat] Excuse me, I have to smoke in the play, and it's already affecting my voice. Commissioned David, who was not David Mamet yet, to write a play for the company.

That began my association in 1976, '77, my association with David and David I mean, I've said this, and it's true that my two greatest teachers have been David Mamet and Stephen Sondheim. And I'm lucky that I had them. David in understanding acting and Stephen understanding singing. Singing a score, not singing-- That's Joan Lader who saved my voice and my career.

Michael Shulman: Joan Lader is the vocal coach, right?

Patti LuPone: Vocal teacher. I would do anything for David. Anything. And I hope that he continues to write plays and I hope he continues to use me. There's so much to learn.

Michael Shulman: I'm just thinking about the breadth of your career and everything you've done. I feel like in the past 10 years, you've been everywhere. You're popping up in Girls and BoJack Horseman, American Horror Story, the MCU. I feel like you've got this cool factor in the past decade or so. Does it feel that way?

Patti LuPone: Thanks for saying that.

Michael Shulman: Oh, and of course, A24 movie, Beau Is Afraid.

Patti LuPone: Yes, and the thing about my career, Michael, that has taken such a long time to take hold is the varied parts of my career. Training as an actor, being on the road, meeting artistic directors from regional theaters, who then when they came to Broadway, thought of me as an actor first and then having the musical ability and the Hal Princes and the Cameron McIntoshes, putting me in musicals.

Then also the other thing that I think that I spearheaded was going from musical to play to film to musical to film to play. That started in '85, or it started before '85, but definitely in '85 when I finished Les Mis and I was in London when I got a telephone call from the producer for LBJ, who said, we'd like you to come out and test for Lady Bird Johnson. We'll have to dye your hair. I said, why? She said, "Well, we need a brunette." I said, I am a brunette. "No, you're a blonde." No, I'm not a blonde. She's thinking of Evita.

Michael Shulman: Oh, of course.

Patti LuPone: After LBJ, I went straight into Anything Goes and straight in-- it was Witness, Driving Ms. Daisy, Anything Goes, LBJ. All of that was working-- I would go back and forth.

Michael Shulman: Then Life Goes On, right? [crosstalk]?

Patti LuPone: Life goes on. I would go back and forth and back and forth between film and stage, and film and stage.

Michael Shulman: But you never became an la Person, I'm assuming, right? Or did you when you did, Life Goes On?

Patti LuPone: Well, I was living in LA during Life Goes On, but I didn't appreciate it until the pandemic. I don't see any city that I work in, which is such a drag. I don't know London, and I've worked there since the '70s. My husband knows London, my kid knows London, but I go from the house to the theater, maybe out to dinner to a restaurant to the house. It's the same of every city that I'm working in because I don't want to-- I can't explore. I'm working until pandemic when my son and I because he lives in LA.

I said, I'm coming out to-- What am I doing? I'm doing nothing so I'll come out to LA with you. We isolated in LA and then Josh and I would schedule COVID tests all over Los Angeles just to explore.

Michael Shulman: You got the COVID test tour?

Patti LuPone: Yes. We'd go all over LA just to explore the area. We had a blast and I realized how beautiful LA is. It's really beautiful. The first time I went out there was with the acting company and I remember three of us were in a convertible cruising down Sunset Boulevard in 1976, going, wow. We were trained to stay in New York. We trained to stage actors. We didn't think about going west.

Michael Shulman: Right, because it was like selling out or--

Patti LuPone: Or we weren't film actors. We were legitimate stage actors and I regret now not going out to California sooner.

Michael Shulman: I'm always fascinated when people like you who have had long sustained careers that last many decades and have very different phases how you experience that. As I said, I feel like in the past 10, 15 years, I don't know, maybe since you did Gypsy, that you have been popping up in really unexpected, fun places and you must be getting really interesting offers that maybe, I don't know if you were getting 20 years ago, but then, of course, to go back to the '70s and you were in Evita, the toast of the town.

How do you experience that? The ups and downs and the different phases and how people view you differently over the course of--

Patti LuPone: I never get the roles that I want. This is true probably of every actor. Our profession is 99% rejection. How do you absorb that rejection and continue? How does it not affect you personally for the rest of your life? Just rejection, rejection, rejection. At some point, you stop crying and stop pitying yourself and in my particular case, I went, I'm not going to go after any roles anymore. I'm going to trust that what comes into my life, what floats into my universe, is what I'm supposed to play.

What has happened has been so interesting. I mean, Steven's Universe. People are fans of mine because of Steven's Universe, the cartoon.

Michael Shulman: I thought you meant Steven Sondheim's universe. That's my MCU.

Patti LuPone: No, Steven's Universe. It's a cartoon. It's a cult cartoon, and I play Yellow Diamond in that. She approached me because she's a musical theater fan. She wanted to know if I would do it, and I went, yes.

[Scene]

You think you can get away, Rose? You stood your ground on that little speck called Earth, but you're on our world now.

Patti LuPone: And I don't say no to stuff like that. I just don't. I think it's also the way I was trained at Juilliard. They tried to throw me out of school, so they threw every possible role in my direction in order for me to fail as an actor and what they did is they trained one person in versatility, and the rest of them fit into Angenue, soubrette, leading lady, character woman and I would bounce back and forth. It trained my mind to go, it's all interesting. I am not one commodity and therefore, the weirder, the happier I am.

Michael Shulman: One aspect of your longevity that is very particular to you and to musical theater performers, of course, is your voice and so many people have observed that your incredible vocal skills have outlasted a lot of your contemporaries. What goes into that? I just was listening to your double album from this summer, A Life in Notes, and you're still belting Don't Cry for me Argentina.

Patti LuPone: I couldn't tell you what it is. I don't know what it is. Unless I made a pact with the devil and I wasn't aware of it. I don't know. I was just born with cords of steel. How do I say this? I don't take care of my voice the way a lot of people take care of their voices. I don't vocalize every day. I shout and scream. I'm an Italian. I had a vocal cord operation because I was bursting a blood vessel in one of my cords and then I rehabilitated with Joan Lader, who gave me a technique which I did not have.

I'm singing lighter than I've ever sung before. I'm using more head voice in vocalese to make sure that the note is there, and then somehow I power up to it but why my voice is still there, I have no idea.

Michael Shulman: I noticed that listening to this double album you released in July, A Life in Notes, that some of your singing is breathier than people might associate with you. It's not all belting and that does affect your interpretations of certain things. I mean, people who've heard you sing Don't Cry for me Argentina a million times, this version starts out a little softer with an acoustic guitar. Do you find that the way that your voice changes, affects your artistic interpretation of songs like that?

Patti LuPone: No, it's the artistic that changes the voice. It doesn't need to be belted. Trust that I still have a pianissimo. Trust that I still have lyric and it's there.

[music - Patti LuPone: Dont Cry For Me Argentina]

Michael Shulman: One of the ones that I really love that you do on this double album is a Janice Ian song called Stars. It's just gorgeous.

Patti LuPone: Thank you.

Michael Shulman: I'm curious how you discovered that song, what drew you to it? Why did you decide to sing it?

Patti LuPone: I knew that song from when she first came out with it. Like I said, I knew I would end up on the Broadway musical stage but I'm a closet rocker or a closet groupie.

[laughter]

Patti LuPone: We all have that music that we grew up with that we remember. Even five years old, you remember songs that just speak to a moment in your life and that's what I wanted to do.

[music - Patti LuPone: Stars]

Michael Shulman: Patti, I could talk to you about your groupie days and '70s New York City for another three hours, but I think we've got to let you go.

Patti LuPone: Well, we ended on a nice note, right? The '70s New York. It was wild. It was great. It was creative. It was phenomenally creative. It was bankrupt, but it wasn't morally bankrupt. It wasn't a corporate environment. It was artistically incredibly creative as one is when one has no money. You figure it out and the city figured it out.

Speaker 1: That's Patti LuPone speaking with the New Yorker's Michael Schulman. LuPone stars alongside Mia Farrow in The Roommate, a play by Jen Silverman.

 

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