Broadway Community Condemns Patti LuPone’s ‘Bullying’ of Audra McDonald and Kecia Lewis in Scathing Open Letter

Patti LuPone’s recent comments disparaging her fellow Broadway actresses continue to make waves throughout the New York theater community.

An open letter reprimanding the Tony winner, 76, over her quotes about Audra McDonald and Kecia Lewis in a recent New Yorker interview has been signed by over 500 artists, Playbill reports. Wendell Pierce, Courtney Love and James Monroe Iglehart are among the signatures.

The letter pinpoints what it called LuPone’s “deeply inappropriate and unacceptable public comments about two of Broadway’s most respected and beloved artists,” McDonald, 54, and Lewis, 59, who are both Black. “This language is not only degrading and misogynistic — it is a blatant act of racialized disrespect,” reads the letter.

“It constitutes bullying. It constitutes harassment. It is emblematic of the microaggressions and abuse that people in this industry have endured for far too long, too often without consequence,” it continues.

While starring in Broadway play The Roommate at the Booth Theatre, LuPone made viral comments about Hell’s Kitchen performing next door at the Shubert Theatre, calling it “too loud.” Lewis, who leads the Alicia Keys musical in her Tony-winning lead role, posted a video last November calling LuPone’s words “racially microaggressive,” “rude” and “rooted in privilege.”

Speaking with The New Yorker, LuPone responded, “She calls herself a veteran? Let’s find out how many Broadway shows Kecia Lewis has done, because she doesn’t know what the f— she’s talking about… Don’t call yourself a vet, bitch!”

Asked about McDonald’s apparent support via emojis on Lewis’ Instagram post, the Agatha All Along star made it clear the record-breaking Tony Award winner is “not a friend,” pointedly refusing to answer a question about McDonald’s current Tony-nominated run in the Majestic Theatre’s Gypsy, a musical LuPone previously starred in.

“We write not to shame or isolate, but to speak with honesty, clarity, and care,” the open letter states. “To publicly attack a woman who has contributed to this art form with such excellence, leadership, and grace — and to discredit the legacy of Audra McDonald, the most nominated and awarded performer in Tony Award history — is not simply a personal offense. It is a public affront to the values of collaboration, equity, and mutual respect that our theater community claims to uphold.”

The letter, addressed to the theater community as well as Tony producers the Broadway League and the American Theatre Wing, calls for those organizations to disinvite LuPone, and anyone using “their platform to publicly demean, harass, or disparage fellow artists,” from “industry events, including the Tony Awards, fundraisers, and public programs.”

In a CBS Sunday Morning interview with Gayle King, set to air in full next week, McDonald responded to LuPone’s remarks, saying, “If there’s a rift between us, I don’t know what it is.”

“That’s something you’d have to ask Patti about,” she continued. “You know, I haven’t seen her in about 11 years just because we’ve been busy just with life. So I don’t know what rift she’s talking about, but you’d have to ask her.”