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[0:00] Michael Riedel: Here, and welcome to my podcast, Singular Sensation, the triumph of Broadway, based on my book that pulls the curtain up on all the great and juicy gossip from Broadway in the 1990s. We had some fun with Patti LuPone talking about her saga, Sunset Boulevard, but you are not going to believe what she has to tell you about Glenn Close and Faye Dunaway, and that will be next.

[0:43] Michael Riedel: One of the pleasures of writing a book such as Singular Sensation is you get to go back and talk to people about a time in their lives that was very painful, very painful for Andrew and very painful for Patti, but they're candid and honest with you, and I'm always struck by how dramatic, how intense, how painful the story behind the show can be.

[1:12] Michael Riedel: One of the things you find out about Patti LuPone is how shrewd she is about show business, and when she found out that Andrew Lloyd Webber had hired Glenn Close to play Norma Desmond in the Los Angeles version of Sunset Boulevard, and this was before Patti was contracted to go to New York, she immediately understood something, that a rivalry was going to be set up between her and Glenn Close, and she felt, and she was right, that was a battle that she could not win.

[2:34] Patti LuPone: I was slimed by his neurosis, and it had nothing to do with theater, and it affected the entire family. Well, my husband, the kid was too young, but, oh no, my kid, I couldn't get away from it. My kid came home from, he was about four years old, and all he would do is go around the house going dun-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, and then fire, because he heard fired, fired, fired so much. So I didn't get away with it.

[3:00] Patti LuPone: Did you hear that Bea Arthur was doing something at the Met? There's a narrator for something, and before the show started, she announced it, before the opera started, she said, to the opera audience, Glenn Close will be playing Norma Desmond in New York.

[3:14] Michael Riedel: She did?

[3:15] Patti LuPone: She was doing something there. Like Peter and the Wolf or something. Something that has a narrator in it. Oh God.

[3:19] Michael Riedel: Before it started.

[3:20] Patti LuPone: It must be Arthur's. Oh God. So your husband, if he sees Andrew to this day, he would floor him?

[3:29] Patti LuPone: Well, he's a nice guy, but back then he wouldn't. Do you ever run into Andrew anywhere?

[3:35] Patti LuPone: Ah, we did see him at the opening of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They had a staring contest.

[3:40] Michael Riedel: But I'm sure Andrew didn't know who he was.

[3:44] Patti LuPone: Well, Amy Powers, the original lyricist who was fired by Andrew, she went to the opening night of the revival of Sunset Boulevard, and she said, you know what? She went to the opening night of the revival of Sunset Boulevard, and Andrew walked right by her, she looked and smiled up at him, and he had no recollection in his eyes of who she was.

[4:03] Michael Riedel: Yeah.

[4:04] Patti LuPone: No memory.

[4:05] Michael Riedel: What revival?

[4:07] Patti LuPone: What revival? The one that Glenn just did.

[4:10] Michael Riedel: Oh.

[4:11] Patti LuPone: You didn't go to that one.

[4:13] Patti LuPone: Like I said, I did it. I don't have to relive it.

[4:17] Patti LuPone: Two days before, or the day I'm leaving, I think it was the day I'm leaving, they announced Glenn's loss. It is nine months down the line. They're announcing the L.A., Ava, whatever her name was, Norma, I haven't even started rehearsals.

[4:34] Patti LuPone: Rehearsals. They are, my ego was so bruised that when the driver came, I handed him my tweeting, I said, take this back to Relios when I'm feasting it on the plane. That this is not, it was so bad.

[4:47] Patti LuPone: It's just, but then of course when I'm there and I'm in rehearsal with Trevor, I was in rehearsal for a musical with Trevor Nunn who I'd worked with before with a wonderful ensemble, with Kevin Anderson. It was normal. Until it wasn't.

[5:06] Patti LuPone: Until he came in. How many days did you stay in New York after you were supposed to be on the plane?

[5:11] Patti LuPone: I think three. If they really tried to get me on the plane, I would, I can't, I can't figure this one out. I really can't figure this one out.

[5:19] Patti LuPone: And then I did it, and I don't know why. I know why I did, because five trunks were already in London and I thought I'll never get them back. That's why I did it. But I, you know, with kids' toys and kids' clothes.

[5:30] Michael Riedel: Sure.

[5:31] Patti LuPone: You know, we were there for a year.

[5:32] Michael Riedel: Yeah, I remember.

[5:33] Patti LuPone: So five trunks went over. I won't get them back to you. So that's why you decided not to get on the plane.

[5:40] Michael Riedel: We'll be back with more Sunset Boulevard after this break.

[5:44] Michael Riedel: We're back with more of the juicy story behind the scenes of Sunset Boulevard. Did you ever hear from Glenn?

[5:49] Patti LuPone: No.

[5:51] Michael Riedel: Never?

[5:53] Patti LuPone: Really? No.

[5:56] Michael Riedel: Do you know her now?

[5:57] Patti LuPone: I've known her for years. Of course, she was in all the musicals back in the far end. She was in the plays, yeah. And we lived two houses away from each other down in Chelsea. I've known her for years, so it was quite shocking. So I always thought she was complicit in it.

[6:11] Patti LuPone: I mean, you reach out. Yeah. You know, you have empathy for somebody that's been put in that position. You're not silent, but no, never did.

[6:19] Michael Riedel: Did you ever see her on Broadway?

[6:21] Patti LuPone: No. You know what? I don't think Glenn is a singer. She's a fine actress, but I do not think she is. You know, Meryl can sing, Glenn can sing, everybody can sing. Emma Stone sang, but it isn't, do you know what I mean? It's not a singer singing.

[6:35] Patti LuPone: Right. It's an actress singing. And there are different dynamics when a singer sings and when an actor sings.

[6:43] Michael Riedel: Yeah.

[6:44] Patti LuPone: And Glenn is an actor who sings.

[6:45] Michael Riedel: Yes.

[6:46] Patti LuPone: I didn't need to go see it, and why would I go see it? Why would I go see it when it traumatized my family and my life? Why would I bother? I know what that show is. I played it.

[7:02] Patti LuPone: I know that I had to, you know, I remember getting a review that said I clumped up the steps. Yeah, I clumped up the steps because Andrew would not cut or add one piece of music, and this is the way they designed the staircase, and that was the amount of time I had to get off the stage before the next scene.

[7:18] Patti LuPone: I should have been smarter and walked off regally and go, I can't get off in that amount of time. But I didn't. I tried to be a good soldier and do what I was asked to do, get off in that amount of time. So I ended up running. I'm sure every, I keep calling her Ava, every Norma ran to get off stage because he wouldn't add or take away music.

[7:39] Patti LuPone: What it was is the brilliance it was. Literally. Not tailoring to any of your needs at all.

[7:46] Patti LuPone: Not my needs. The director's needs. The set's needs. I had to exit, and I had to exit, as the director told me, up the staircase. I couldn't get off if I walked up regally. I had to run, and then I got a really bad review. As a result of it, I was like, you know what? Can't win.

[8:07] Michael Riedel: No. Did you read the Frank Rich review?

[8:10] Patti LuPone: Oh, I think I did. I never understood that, though, because I didn't see your performance. But I think he thought you were miscast.

[9:49] Michael Riedel: Sunset Boulevard.

[12:56] Michael Riedel: I do not want to be on the wrong side of Faye Dunaway, Glenn Close, and Patti LuPone individually, let alone the three of them going at you at the same time. So now Andrew's got this production in London, which is frankly really not making that much money, if any money at all, but that's sort of a big secret then. He had this $12 million production in Los Angeles, which was doing very well under Glenn Close but had not paid back. He's got to shut that down at a loss. He's paying out Patti LuPone, he's paying Glenn Close, and now he's paying out Faye Dunaway. So the costs of Sunset Boulevard are mounting and mounting and mounting, and eventually it will get to the point where Sunset Boulevard, it's the last of those great British big overproduced, you could say, spectacles, and it never makes any money.

And even though they open it, I think in Germany and Australia, it becomes such a drain on the company that in one very dramatic moment, I remember Andrew announces that he's closing down all of the Sunset Boulevards.

[14:20] Michael Riedel: So I think for Patti, it was profound humiliation. I mean, here's a woman who had won Tony awards, everybody loved her, she was considered one of the great musical theater stars of all time, really, had gone from one hit to another. And it was important to remember also that, you know, Patti had left the theater to take this TV job, which was unsatisfying to her. So she really wanted to come back to be a Broadway star again. And here she faces the greatest humiliation of being fired, fired from your job. For Andrew, he is being completely pilloried in the press. And you know, I know Andrew well, and he's a really brilliant and lovely guy, but he was made out to be this heartless, cold, horrible man, fire these women and feel nothing, which was not the case at all.

And it really took its toll on him physically, mentally and emotionally to the point where he told me in an interview that he almost put his entire company up for sale and thought that he would never sit in front of a piano and go to work again. And so we come to the end of the dramatic saga of Sunset Boulevard. But as this episode is being released, we're getting ready for another revival of Sunset Boulevard on Broadway in the fall 2024 starring Nicole Scherzinger. Now, I saw the production in London. I went with Andrew to the first preview. It's sensational. Nicole Scherzinger is going to be the next great Broadway diva. So do not miss this new production of Sunset Boulevard and make sure to stay tuned for our next series of episodes all about the original production of Rent.

To find out more about Singular Sensation, the book and the podcast, visit bpn.fm slash Singular Sensation. This episode was edited by Sarah Goodman and produced by Dori Berenstein, Kimberly Garris and Alan Seals for the Broadway Podcast Network. Special thanks to Liz Armstrong and the entire BPN team.