I Ain't One To Gossip But ...

I adore Patti LuPone. She’s talented, brassy, ballsy, bold and has exactly zero fucks left to give. Even when it comes to old feuds like her decades long-running tiff with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber.

La LuPone, as I call her, is returning to Broadway this spring with the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Company and so she’s doing some press; and whenever Patti does press her tiff with ALW comes up. Now, Patti dished ALW in her 2011 memoir Patti LuPone: A Memoir and last year he countered with memories of her in his own book Unmasked: A Memoir, in which he dragged La LuPone for her diction. As you know, and if you don’t WTF is wrong with you, La LuPone was the original Evita and ALW still had a few notes for her about her performance.

Here’s how Patti found that out in a recent interview:

Did you read Andrew Lloyd Webber’s memoir?

No. Am I in it?

Oh, yeah.

Oh, dear.

The interviewer tells her that Andy “rehashed the expected stuff” like their falling out when ALW fired her from the Broadway production of Sunset Boulevard and replaced her with Glenn Close, and the interviewer says Andy “made a point of criticizing” La LuPone’s diction. Now, Patti wasn’t surprised by that, and even acknowledged it saying:

“You don’t know, when you’re in the moment, that you’re not enunciating.”

She added that John Houseman used to call her “flannel mouth” back in the day. So, she was fine with the diction comments until she realized he was talking about her performance in Evita:

“How could he talk about “Evita”? The whole thing is sung. He’s a jerk. He’s a sad sack. He is the definition of sad sack. I never wanted to do “Evita,” because it was the most bizarre music I’d ever heard. You’re raised on Rodgers and Hammerstein, Meredith Willson, Lerner and Loewe, and then you hear that? I heard the “Evita” concept album, and I went, ‘Ow, my ear.’”

But then she added:

“I thought ‘Evita’ was the best thing he and Tim Rice did. But the rest of it is schmaltz.”

That’s why I love La LuPone, a compliment and a dig going hand-in-hand.

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When Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan announced they were divorcing after nine years of marriage, they both released the same no-drama statement about their split, saying how much they loved each other, but that they just weren’t going to be married anymore.

How quickly things change … Jenna, who has a book, Gracefully You: Finding Beauty and Balance in the Everyday, to publicize, is now crying about how she found out that Channing and Jessie J were dating … like all of us, or some of us, or none of us … by reading it on the internet.

But here’s the rub … Channing and Jessie J started dating after the Tatum’s split up, so why she is now acting like the scorned spouse is odd … except she has a book to sell and coins to make.

“I was in a state of shock. One week I’d be doing really well and the next I was slammed with a whole new slew of emotions. The rumor mill was churning out story after story. There were many times I hid under the covers, wondering what was next. The pain hit me like a tumbling avalanche. I was completely overcome with fear and sadness. It took many moments of sitting alone with my grief to force me into surrendering to my roller coaster of a situation.”

Funny, all that pain, and that wild roller coaster of an emotional ride didn’t stop Jenna from meeting and dating and hooking up with and having a baby with  Broadway actor Steve Kazee. I wonder if she called Channing to let him know, or if that’s just a one-sided thing … when you have a book to sell.

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Lori Loughlin is hilarious. She’s currently awaiting trial for her :::cough::: ALLEGED role in Operation Varsity Blues where rich people used illegal bribes to get their kids into prestigious universities. Lori stands accused of paying $500,000 to fake some rowing credentials for her daughters, Olivia Jade and Isabella Giannulli to get them into USC because they weren’t smart enough to get in on their own merits.

But that’s not the funny part; Loughlin pled not guilty, where others—like Felicity Huffman—pled out, and were given very light sentences. And then ,even funnier, Loughlin has now been hit with more charges and funniest of all is that Lori Loughlin has been watching Felicity Huffman’s 13-day prison stay and wants to know what it’s like because she thinks she’ll get the same deal.

Oh Lori, you’ll be going to a Fuller Big House.

For a longer time, too, honey.

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What do you do if you’re tasked with playing a role in a film, like say, oh, I dunno, The Joker, in Suicide Squad, and think you’re gonna ride that part to an Oscar like Heath Ledger did in that Batman movie? And then you don’t. But then you think you’ll take the part on again and play it in a stand-alone film about The Joker’s origin story and you learn that Joaquin Phoenix has gotten your part?

Well, if you’re  Jared Leto you try and try and try … and try to stop the film from happening. And you fail. Kinda because Suicide Squad sucked, and many of your scenes were chopped from the film, and so no one wanted Jared Leto back on film in that role except for Jared Leto. And now, in 2019, that Joker film is killing it at the box office and it looks like its star, Joaquin Phoenix, might get that Joker Oscar.

According to sources familiar with Leto’s behavior, when the Oscar-winning actor—for Dallas Buyer’s Club—learned of the Todd Phillips project, he not only complained to his agents at CAA, who also represent Phillips, but asked his music manager, Irving Azoff, to call the leader of Warners parent company to get Warners to kill the Phillips film if he didn’t get the lead. Sources say Leto felt his agents should have told him about the Phillips project earlier and fought harder for his version of Joker, or at least stopped the rival project, arguing that Leto wasn’t being treated properly as an Oscar winner.

Everyone said, ‘No,’ and now Jared is no longer represented by CAA or Azoff.

Oops.

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What’s that smell? 

It smells like aging Miley Cyrus desperate for attention, but it’s actually 73-year-old Suzanne Somers celebrating her 73rd birthday by posting a picture of herself in her literal birthday suit.

Oh Suzanne, desperation smells terrible at age 26 and even worse at 73.

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What smells glorious is 74-year-old Hellen Mirren at the premiere of her latest film, The Good Liar.

Somers should take notes.

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