An Ode to Patti LuPone
The word BADASS, in all caps, is the first thing you see when you enter my apartment. It’s a daily reminder of who I want to be. I created it by affixing thin strips of blue and purple craft paper to a large piece of plywood. The letters float on a colorful cloud of similarly cut pieces in pinks, reds, and oranges, which I like to think of as a striated sunset. When I created this collage, I was newly single and had just moved to LA to film Bunheads, my first television series. Amy Sherman-Palladino had asked me to play Michelle, an aging (at the geriatric age of thirty-five) ballerina turned Vegas showgirl who marries a man on a whim and winds up running her mother-in-law’s dance studio after her husband suddenly dies.
The chance to work with Amy was enough for me to say yes, but I also connected deeply to the character of Michelle. In the script, she was looking for a fresh start. In many ways, I was too: I was thirty-six years old and heartbroken. I had been doing live theater for close to two decades and was looking for new challenges. I was ready for my own reinvention.
It all felt very meant to be when I found a 1969 A-frame Laurel Canyon bungalow with an airy loft: perfect for an art studio. After so many years of keeping all of my craft supplies in various Tupperware bins, canvas totes, and Hefty bags stuffed in a closet, I finally had a place to spread out. It was in this bungalow that I made the collage that has since become my daily affirmation.
For me, being a badass meant owning my talent and my major life decisions—not waiting until I was in a relationship, or more “settled down,” whatever that even means. I had unknowingly started to take ownership of my actions when I bought the lake house and accepted the role of Reno. But something about buying that bungalow after spending six months in LA felt undeniably like a badass move! The lake house felt comfortable because my brother lived nearby, and Reno was challenging, but I played her on the Broadway stage, where I had a history. In LA, nothing was certain, but I claimed my place there anyway. I’m sure some people might have considered it rash or unnecessary, but for the first time in my life, I didn’t care. I had always depended on the permission and approval of others—it was exhausting. It finally clicked with me that life didn’t have to be that way.
That revelation was part of a long journey that started with Patti LuPone. In my mind, no one epitomizes a badass more than her.
I first saw her perform when I was sixteen years old and sitting in my living room in Troy, Michigan. It was December 1992, and she was performing in PBS’s Great Performances series, which I watched with my mother, who was by no means your typical stage mom. She didn’t fawn or fuss over me, though she did find every theatrical opportunity for me as a child, starting with that Annie audition in Augusta. When we moved to Detroit, and I didn’t get cast in the Boulan Park Middle School production of Oliver!, she searched for a “professional children’s theater” and found the Peanut Butter Players, who not only let me perform in musicals like The Wizard of Oz and The Wind in the Willows, they paid me fifty dollars a week to do it! By then, we had become a die-hard musical theater family, but we had never visited New York City and our only access to Broadway was through TV, records, and cassette or VHS tapes. I had amassed quite the collection of cast albums—or “original Broadway cast recordings,” if you want to be official. If a show was nominated for best musical in the late eighties or early nineties, then I had to have the album.
On this particular night, my mom and I were watching Sondheim: A Celebration at Carnegie Hall, which aired on PBS. I didn’t know much about Sondheim beyond the song “There Won’t Be Trumpets” from the musical Anyone Can Whistle, which I had sung for auditions because I had a big voice. I could hit all the high notes, but I had no clue what the song was about or why Sondheim was such a big deal.
And then Patti LuPone emerged on my television screen, wearing an extremely low-cut gold brocade pantsuit with major shoulder-pad action. I immediately recognized her—not from Evita, for which she had won the Tony in 1980, or even as Reno in Anything Goes, who she famously played on Broadway in 1987, but from the television series Life Goes On. On that show, she played the mom to a boy with Down syndrome, and I knew that she sang the show’s theme song, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.” When she took center stage, the audience burst into applause, but instead of acknowledging that, or them, she just closed her eyes and began to sing. I was mesmerized. She was not just singing the song—she was embodying it, equal parts bold and vulnerable, sexy and intimate. There was something simultaneously terrifying and thrilling about her confidence. I’d never seen anything like it.
It was also the very first time I heard “Being Alive,” from Company: “Somebody crowd me with love, somebody force me to care.”
Even at sixteen, I intuited that the song was about embracing life. The messiness of it, the good, the bad, the ugliness of it. It was about leaping toward opportunities, not running away. Being afraid but doing it anyway. I didn’t know it then, but I can see now how my mother’s agoraphobia was just beginning to take hold of her around this time. She had stopped driving and grocery shopping. Her only friend was my Aunt Mary Anne. I was sixteen, and it already seemed to me that my own struggles with fitting in were more severe than those of my peers. I mean, I did have friends (though I wasn’t popular), but I always felt awkward and out of place unless I was on a stage. That was my safe space, my escape. I needed a script and direction, because I had no role models at home of how to relate to people. This song was like a war cry, especially the line, “Alone is alone, not alive…”
When Patti sang it, I felt that she was looking right at me, full-throated and so powerful. This was someone who was so alive that I could feel her voice vibrating throughout my body like an electric current. Granted, by then, my face was also a foot from the screen, so that might have been static. But it felt as if Patti was summoning me.
I turned to my mother, who was sitting on the couch behind me. “What was that?!”
“You can do that,” she responded coolly.
Could I, though? I wasn’t so sure. I knew I wanted to do that, but I had no idea how. I loved musical theater, but I didn’t have a mentor—someone to look up to, someone to emulate. Until I saw Patti.
I became such a fan that my parents bought me the official VHS recording of that concert and the CD. And funnily enough, I have no idea who else performed at that concert, because she was the only one I watched—over and over, hundreds of times.
Seeing Patti sing that night shifted something within me and put me on a path. She showed me, in that moment, that being a performer was about more than projection or hitting high notes. She made you feel the meaning behind the music. When I asked her, years later, about what she was feeling before she took the stage, she said in a very matter-of-fact way, “It was my turn to sing.”
Long before I knew the term “badass,” I developed an understanding of what it meant just by studying Patti. She was confident and unapologetic about her talent, at a time when I was apologizing for everything—to the point that Jo Anne Lamun, who ran the Peanut Butter Players, forbade me from saying “I’m sorry” because I was doing it so often.
We were living in Detroit by then, but my parents were Southerners through and through, and I was raised to be a good little Southern girl. A Georgia peach. Humble. Nice and always polite. My father didn’t mind moving to Michigan, but my mother found Northerners brash and brazen. Too outspoken and honest. Southerners might not like you, but they would never say it to your face—that would be impolite! (Have you heard the phrase “Bless your heart”? I can guarantee if a Southerner is saying that to you, it is not a compliment.) “Be careful,” my father always said. My mother preferred “Remember where you came from.” I still to this day say “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am.” In fact, when Thoroughly Modern Millie performed on the Today show in 2002, Katie Couric asked me a question and I replied, “No, ma’am.” She said, “You don’t have to call me ma’am.” I said, “My mom would kill me if I didn’t call you ma’am.”
That was how I was raised, and for years, it was how I approached my career. Sure, I had a natural singing voice and had been studying dance since I was four years old, but I also “yes, ma’amed” my way through my early career, all the way up to Millie. I related to her wide-eyed enthusiastic and adventurous spirit—but not the “find and marry a wealthy husband” part, which was ultimately her goal. I credit my mother for instilling in me, from a very early age, the importance of financial independence. I started making money at age fourteen, with the Peanut Butter Players, and paid for my only year at college with earnings from the Will Rogers tour. But Millie was the first time that a show’s success depended largely on me, and I had not yet figured out how to differentiate my own self from the character I was playing—or how to sing eight shows a week without blowing out my voice. That was why, as I mentioned earlier, I sought out the voice coach Joan Lader.
One day during Millie, I was finishing up a lesson with Joan, when her buzzer rang.
“I’ll get it!” I said.
I went to open the door, and in walked Patti fucking LuPone!
Standing there, in her chic coat, with her purse slung over her shoulder, I saw the sparkle in her big, dark-brown eyes and felt electricity course throughout my body like it had ten years prior, in my living room, my face pressed to the television.
“Oh my God, Patti LuPone,” I gasped. “Hello! Um…my name is Sutton Foster…”
“I know who you are,” she said, kindly stopping me midsentence.
WTF! “Oh, okay, wow. Um…I just have to say that you are the reason I’m in musical theater.”
She looked at me, one eyebrow raised, slightly amused. Clearly, I was not the first person to tell her this.
“I saw you perform on the Sondheim celebration at Carnegie Hall,” I continued, the words coming out in a nervous mix of halting and rapid-fire. “Well, I watched it on my TV and then wore out my CD of the concert listening to you sing ‘Being Alive.’” She was still standing in the doorway, and while I knew I should move to the side to let her in, I couldn’t stop the stream of words flowing from my mouth: “And that performance alone is why I wanted to be a performer. I just think you are amazing and thank you.”
She stared me up and down and laughed, much like she did when the audience burst into applause at the end of her performance of “Being Alive.”
“Well, thank you, Sutton,” she said, and gave me a big hug.
I would like to think I melted into that hug, but I’m certain I was wound so tight that I just froze. She then headed in to her lesson.
I left Joan’s studio and burst into tears in the lobby. Patti LuPone knew who I was! And hugged me! And she also went to the same vocal coach! Suddenly, my idol went from being my north star to being in my orbit. Maybe, just maybe, I was more like Patti than I thought was possible.
Cut to 2010, when the Roundabout Theatre Company wanted me to play Reno in their revival of Anything Goes. Patti LuPone’s version of Reno was legendary—one of her most beloved performances ever, right up there with Evita. I hadn’t seen her in the musical when she did it on Broadway, but I did see her perform the title number on the 1988 Tony Awards, and of course I had the cast recording. I had also, by then, seen her perform live in the revival of Sweeney Todd—and even went backstage to say hello. Over time, we had become friendly through various Broadway events.
So when my agent first approached me to play Reno, my gut reaction was yes. It felt meant to be! I didn’t think about whether or not I could pull Reno off. I simply approached this role with the same “yes, ma’am” gusto I had used to approach all the other roles I had played in my career. But Reno, I soon learned, was not like the other characters. Like Patti, Reno walks into a room confident. Alive. All eyes on her. And she enjoys it. Patti fully embodied this. She’s the star of the show, on and off the stage. As an actress, I knew better than to mimic another performance, especially one like Patti’s. The shoes felt impossible to fill. I needed new shoes.
Joel Grey was my costar. In Anything Goes, he played the gangster Moonface Martin, and he is most famous for playing the Emcee in Cabaret on Broadway and in the movie, for which he won both a Tony Award and an Oscar. He turned eighty during Anything Goes. Talk about a role model! Singing “Friendship,” one of my all-time favorite duets, with him remains a highlight of my career. He’s the perfect player—always lobbing the ball back at you and keeping you on your toes. We became great friends during the show and still are.
He was also the first person to say what everyone else knew: I was struggling to find Reno. The rehearsal process was very sludgy. The music was familiar—I could hit all the notes—but the words felt clunky coming out of my mouth. It felt like I was wearing my mom’s oversized clothes and shoes, playing pretend. Accessing Reno felt impossible. She was ballsy. The kind of woman who stands in the middle of a party and laughs too loudly. The one who wears low-cut dresses and loves being adored. She was everything I was not, and I couldn’t figure out how to play her, which was a new experience for me. This was my tenth Broadway show, and I had won a Tony. I should have been able to figure this out on my own. It was starting to dawn on me that I was in over my head.
We rehearsed at Studio 54, which was where the revival of Cabaret had played. On a break one afternoon during rehearsals, Joel and I were sitting in the back of the auditorium when he looked at me with his impish smile and said, “When I was in rehearsals for the Emcee, I had no idea what I was doing. I had to figure out why I took the role in order to do the role.” Then he looked me straight in the eyes and said, “Sutton, why did you take this part?”
I felt my chest tighten.
“Okay, everybody, break is over,” our stage manager said.
I was so relieved to be interrupted, because I knew Joel was on to me, and in truth, I had no idea how to answer his question. At that time, I might have said, “Um…because Patti LuPone played it?”
I could answer that question for Millie: I was the bright-eyed optimist coming to New York to follow a dream! Same with Star to Be in Annie: “NYC! Just got here this morning! Three bucks, two bags, one me!” As Princess Fiona in Shrek, I could read the lines cold off the page and nail it, because I played the ogre princess at a time when I was waiting for my Prince Charming to come rescue me. I understood what that felt like. But Reno was an alien to me. I started having flashbacks to playing Marty when I was twenty-one and in the touring company of Grease—when I was literally fired because I had no idea how to play a tough, wise-cracking Pink Lady. Could the same thing happen on Broadway?
Actors often talk about the fraud factor: we’re all so afraid that people will realize we don’t actually know what we’re doing. We spend a lot of time living in this ambiguous place of discovery where you have to fail in order to succeed. I was simply flailing.
On my way home from a tech rehearsal, right before we started previews, I was walking through Times Square when I called my agent, Steven, in a panic. “I will not fail! I will not fail!” I screamed into the phone. I thought I was going to be fired or, if not, then definitely panned in the New York Times when the show finally opened. I thought I was already letting everyone down—the cast, director, and producers—and was destined to ruin my career. The truth was, I desperately wanted to quit. That would have been easier.
Instead, my agent waited for my rant to subside and suggested I reach out to Larry Moss. I had heard about Larry from other theater friends. He was an acting coach, but really more of a therapist. He famously worked with Hilary Swank on Boys Don’t Cry and with Helen Hunt in As Good as It Gets—both women won Oscars for their performances.
Larry helped me find Reno’s humanity. He made me go beyond that façade and ask, “Why is she this way?” I had no idea. He kept pushing. Finally, I got so upset that I literally stomped my foot and blurted, “I don’t like women like that! I don’t know how to play her because I don’t like her!”
At that moment, Larry pointed at me and said, “There it is. Why?”
I froze up. I didn’t have an immediate answer. Why didn’t I like her? What was the hurdle? What was holding me back? Why was I so afraid to embody her? Were these my feelings or my mother’s? “Be good. Be nice. Be humble.”
I was finally playing a character who demanded to take up space and made people uncomfortable. I didn’t know how to play her because for so many years, I had done exactly the opposite! While I could belt things out onstage with the best of them, in my personal life, I kept myself, and my voice, small, so as to not intimidate anyone. Even the characters I chose reflected this. I would play the self-deprecating goofball to make people comfortable and use humor to deflect. Reno took the opposite approach: she was a woman who insisted on doing things her way.
Larry pushed me to ask, “Why does she behave this way? What is she hiding?”
One day, it clicked: she wants love. Attention is one kind of love—but Reno really wants unconditional love. Once I recognized that her façade was not her truth, I could play her. I finally understood that we both wanted the same thing, we just came at that shared desire in polar opposite ways.
Larry came to see me in dress rehearsal. I was feeling a little bit better, but I knew that I still wasn’t wearing the character, the character was wearing me. It was frustrating—I could hear myself saying the lines, like I was still outside of her, instead of living them, like she was in my skin. I tiptoed at first.
For our first preview, in front of a live audience, I walked out onstage in a delicious gold beaded top and a brown skirt with a high slit, a faux-fur wrap draped over my shoulders. I had to sit at the bar and cross my legs.
The bartender said, “What’ll it be, Reno?”
My line was: “A martini. But make it with rye and put a cherry in it instead of an olive.”
When he handed me the Manhattan, I was shaking so badly that the drink splashed over the edge.
Still, the audience responded positively. That was because the last song in the first act is a huge, eight-minute tap dance number to “Anything Goes,” in which I sang the lead and danced with the company. By the end of it, I had to turn my back to the audience just to catch my breath before I swung back around to belt the last line, arms flung in the air. It was a thrill to do, and the audience would always go wild. Kathleen Marshall, the director and choreographer, gave me the greatest gift by having this version of Reno dance with the ensemble.
Larry came to another preview, and on that night, we got a standing ovation. I was beginning to gain confidence and was just outside my dressing room when Larry came barreling around the corner, his finger thrust out and pointing at me. “Stop apologizing!” he practically shouted. “You have to come onstage with the confidence you had at the end of your second act number! You have to take control from the minute you hit the stage, knowing that the audience already loves you! You have to own it!”
My heart was pounding.
He was right: I was still holding back. I was starting at zero, and he wanted me to start at nine.
“Enter the stage as if you had just received a standing ovation,” he continued. “Own it!”
I thought of Patti LuPone walking on that stage at Carnegie Hall, in full control. It was her turn to sing.
I thought, Why am I so afraid of this? Nothing bad will happen if I allow myself to be big. To be bold and strong and powerful. To be a badass.
It was my turn to sing.
My heart was still pounding as I marched into my dressing room and wrote NO APOLOGIES and BADASS in lip liner on my dressing room mirror.
I needed to claim it.
From that moment on, I took Larry’s note to heart and started dialing up every performance. I was on the fifty-yard line, and I had to get to the goal before opening night.
That night, I walked out in my first scene. Sat at the bar. Tossed off my faux fur. Crossed my legs. Lounged across the bar. Grabbed my Manhattan and my hand didn’t shake. There she is! I thought. I found her!
Finally, I was Reno. Everything fell into place, and the cast felt it as much as I did. When the audience erupted into a standing ovation that night, I felt like I finally deserved it.
As I was in a car on my way to the after party that same night, my agent called me. “You just got a love letter from the New York Times,” he said.
I hadn’t read a review since I did Millie, and I still haven’t read the one for Anything Goes in its entirety. I was excited and relieved, but I also realized that it didn’t matter. I had this strange sense of peace about all of it, because I had found her. In the fucking nick of time.
One night, not long after we opened, I noticed that everyone in the ensemble was acting a bit weird. Like they had a secret. I soon figured out why: Patti LuPone was in the audience. I felt her presence, but I didn’t know where she was sitting until the end of the performance. Every night, we got standing ovations. On that particular night, there was a V shape in the center where people remained seated—right in front of Patti, who was sitting fifth row center. Everyone stood but the five rows in front of Patti LuPone. I wouldn’t have stood up in front of Patti LuPone either!
After the show, she came backstage to see me.
By then, I had changed into gray jeans and a purple T-shirt, my long hair pulled back in a ponytail. Patti entered my dressing room and gushed. I honestly can’t remember what she said because I think I blacked out.
And once again, after she left, I burst into tears.
It’s not every day your idol comes to see you perform.
I remain to this day Patti LuPone’s number one fan. She set me on my path. I have a photo of her congratulating me in my dressing room that night sitting on my desk. It is more important to me than any review.
Anything Goes opened in the spring of 2011, and I wound up switching agents. That was when I met Amy Sherman-Palladino who is, much like Patti, a trailblazer and a badass. (She has since won writing and directing Emmys for The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, becoming the first woman to do both in the same year.) She had also just seen me as this glamazon in Anything Goes, so, when I showed up at Cafe Un Deux Trois in my natural jeans-and-sneakers state, my hair in a messy bun, I’m sure she thought, Who is this weirdo? And that was before I ordered the chicken fingers and fries off the kids’ menu. After our lunch, my agent sent me the Bunheads script.
My experience as Reno helped me prepare for the role of Michelle. Though in many ways Michelle’s life paralleled mine. I felt like she had been written for me. She was not Millie, or Star to Be, or Sandy, or Fiona. Michelle was messy and difficult. There’s this great scene where she says, “I don’t have that kid-friendly gene. I am all sharp corners and a pool with no cover.” Reno helped me access the “not nice” parts of myself. And Michelle took that a step further—she wasn’t nice, yet you still loved her.
I flew out to LA for a screen test. That in and of itself was thrilling. Other than the cameo I did years earlier on Flight of the Conchords, an episode of Law & Order: SVU, and an appearance on Sesame Street singing with Elmo, this was new. Not only was it not a one-off like those other parts, it was the lead in a series. I did the audition with Amy, a reader, and two other people. After I finished, Amy said, “We want you as Michelle!” I didn’t realize how much I wanted it, how badly I craved a change, until that moment.
I had been playing Reno for a year—the role of a lifetime, so where does one go from there? I was at a point in my career where I could continue working on the stage and comfortably have a successful career. But at thirty-six years old, I didn’t feel satisfied with that and was determined to make some strong, bold choices. I needed to test myself and find out what I was capable of. Entering the television world at my age was terrifying—but also exciting. And leaping into the Amy Sherman-Palladino universe was a dream come true.
Bunheads was filmed at the Sunset Gower Studios, where, one day, I spotted several large sheets of plywood poking out of a dumpster. I had been experimenting with collage on paper and thought it might be interesting to try it on wood. This was a riff on that missing shattered girl—but this time, I wanted to use paper, not glass. I lugged a 5½-by-2½-foot piece to my Mazda3 hatchback. It barely fit, and I had no idea what I was going to make with it. I just knew that it had to come home with me.
That evening, I propped the wooden canvas up in my art studio against the slanted A-frame walls and pulled out all my bins of paper—craft, construction, and magazine tear sheets. I started with the pink, orange, and red hues, cutting long, thin strips, ¼ inch wide, in a repetitive motion. It felt like a form of meditation. I methodically affixed each paper ribbon to the wooden canvas with matte Mod Podge. The next time I looked up it was two a.m. This went on for days until I filled the entire panel.
Over and over, I would repeat this ritual: choosing the colors, cutting the strips, selecting the patterns. Deciding the pomegranate red worked best with the cotton-candy pink. Building the foundation. Gluing it down. Making a mistake. Undoing it, covering it up, or just letting it become part of the piece.
Once the background was complete, I made the letters. As the word BADASS slowly appeared on the canvas, I felt the sentiment emerge within me. I realized, during these late-night meditative sessions, that the quality I had always associated with Patti LuPone helped me find a feeling that had always been a part of me.
That said, as I continued to paste pieces down, I realized that Patti’s version of badass was not necessarily mine. For me, it was not taking the stage at Carnegie Hall. It was auditioning for the Peanut Butter Players when I didn’t get cast as Nancy in Oliver! It was going on tour with The Will Rogers Follies at the age of seventeen. It was not giving up after getting fired as Marty. It was turning down the chance to play Éponine in Les Miz on Broadway so I could be an understudy in Millie. It was never letting a “no” or a criticism deter me. It was all the ways in which I flung myself into these opportunities, knowing I had the talent and trusting, even as I leapt, that I could somehow pull it off. It was saying yes to Reno, and making my own version of her. It was moving to LA to play another messy character, but this time on TV. I had been doing badass things my whole life, but I never gave myself the credit. Instead I focused on the times when I had felt more unsure, the things I thought needed fixing.
This was not the only revelation. As I started making the letters, I also began to see how, in certain ways, my mom was a badass, too. She was the only one in her family to have left home. She advocated for both of her kids to be in the arts. She fought for me to have a different life than what was offered to her. In many ways, she saw the badass in me first, and pushed me to find it for myself. Patti LuPone was my north star, but my mother is responsible for me becoming my own late-bloomer badass.
My mantra, to this day, is: “I worked my entire life to be at this moment. I can allow this to be good.” It gives me permission to own my talent. It calms me down. I don’t have to apologize, make myself small. And I can still be nice while doing it.
For so many years, I wanted to be more like Patti. But as I glued the last strip to the collage, I realized, I needed to be more me.
There she is, I thought to myself, as I propped the final piece against the wall. I found her.
In the fall of 2019, I was back in New York, married to Ted, and our daughter Emily was just about to start pre-K. The seventh season of Younger was slated to start in March of 2020, and I had also just been cast as Marian in The Music Man opposite Hugh Jackman. Life was pretty freaking great. I went out for dinner at the Mermaid Inn with my friend Sierra and saw that Dylan Passman, one of my old students from Ball State, where I had been teaching since 2010, was the host. As we were finishing up dinner, Dylan stopped by the table to say goodbye. He smiled wide, barely able to contain his excitement, and said, “Patti LuPone is in the back room.”
I felt a giddy rush—even after all these years, I still feel the Patti effect. “Can you bring me to her to say hello?”
“Nothing in this world would give me greater pleasure,” he said as he offered his arm to escort me.
Patti was having dinner with the actor John Cameron Mitchell and another friend, and she greeted me with the warmest smile and a big hug.
She said, “I am so excited about Music Man! When do you start?”
This was pre-pandemic, so the answer then was September 2020.
We then shot the shit in the back of the Mermaid Inn. It felt oddly comfortable and normal, if that’s even possible. So much so that right before I left, I summoned the courage (or maybe it was the two glasses of wine?) to ask, “Can I get your number?”
We exchanged information, and while writing this chapter, I summoned my courage again.
“I am working on a book and you are a big part of it. A huge reason why I’m an actress,” I wrote to her in a text. “Would you be open to an interview? With me?”
I was nervous as I hit Send, but then I thought, The worst thing that could happen is she says no.
That same day, I was in the parking lot of Target doing some last-minute Christmas shopping when I heard my phone ping. Patti had responded: “Hi Sutton! Of course. I’m honored. Xoxo”
Once again, I burst into tears, this time in my car.
Thirty years after seeing her on my TV in Troy, Michigan, I spoke to Patti LuPone from my crafting/office room on Zoom and learned that we have more in common than I ever would have imagined. Here are some highlights from our conversation on December 26, 2020.
PL: What’s the book about?
SF: How hobbies saved my life.
PL: (Laughs) I get asked often, “Patti, if you retire, what would you do?” I don’t have a hobby. I tried gardening and I sprained something in my hands. I went to the doctor thinking it was carpal tunnel syndrome, and he said, “You have privileged hands.” I got injured from weeding. I don’t knit. Or paint. I do read a lot. But what I do has been my entire life. That weighs heavy on my mind. If I ever stopped performing, what would I do to stay mentally fit?
SF: That’s what my book is about! All the ways in which crafting has helped me stay sane. It’s my life seen through all the things I have made. I might cry when I talk right now, because I made this giant collage that hangs in my hallway in NYC. It says BADASS. You are my number one badass. It was your performance in the Sondheim celebration in 1992 that made me want to do musical theater for a living. I didn’t understand what I had just seen. You were this force. Did you know a sixteen-year-old kid in Troy, Michigan, would see you and lose her mind?
PL: I was doing Life Goes On in Los Angeles. It was the beginning of hiatus, and I got a phone call about performing for Stephen Sondheim’s birthday. I had recently auditioned for Stephen to be Bernadette Peters’s replacement in Sunday in the Park with George. At the audition, he saw me and said, “I don’t want a belter.” And I thought, You don’t like me. And that is not the only thing I do. I didn’t get the part and was brokenhearted. So I didn’t have a relationship with him. Or Scott Ellis or Susan Stroman [who directed the PBS special]. But I did with Paul Gemignani, the conductor, because he did Evita. I trusted him. So when I was asked to perform “Being Alive” for Stephen’s birthday, I said yes.
I get overwhelmed, especially when I don’t know the people I’m working with. I am a deer in headlights. So scared. I also know that I have been given a gift to sing full volume in an open space. It happened in Evita. That was when I realized, This is why you’re in Broadway musicals. This voice. I realized what my gift was. What God had given me. I delighted in it.
I went out on the stage that evening in fear that I was going to forget the lines. Or not hit the high D note. But then, I just let it go. There is also something about singing with a full orchestra which blows me away. It is what I was built for. I love being one of the instruments. I want to figure out where I fit in with the sound. With Paul at the helm, I could relax.
SF: That song, “Being Alive,” in particular resonated with me. My mom was agoraphobic. Oddly enough, she has two children who are Broadway actors and very much of the world. I have struggled with anxiety myself. So maybe it was a combination of you singing it and the power of the words. I now sing a version of it in my concerts because you sang it, but there is something about the cry to embrace the messiness of life that really strikes me. I want the sleepless nights. I want to feel it all. Not running away from life but wanting to dive into it.
PL: And the connection: we want to be loved. “Somebody hold me too close.” Somebody know me. And care for me. So many things go on in your head as a performer. And you can still have an effect on an audience. That also may have been my debut at Carnegie Hall, which is an intimidating place. But I went out there. It was my turn, and I went out there.
SF: That is so great.
PL: Don’t you sometimes feel like you’re being fed to the lions? Especially when you have to perform in a big lineup of people. I feel like I’m going to fail, that I’m not going to be good enough for the company I’m in. I also think, Is the audience going to be with me? Every night that I perform, I go and look at the audience. I want to see who I’m playing to. I look people in the eye during the show—so I pick one or two audience members to sing to. I don’t want to be thrown during the performance, so I pick the one that is indifferent. And I play to him or her. You see it immediately. And you think, Oh God, they hate me! As opposed to the rest of the people, who don’t necessarily hate me. I don’t know if it’s reinforcing my inferiority complex or if it’s the stuff that makes me a performer. I have to go out there and get them. Maybe it’s a psychological thing that I look for the one who’s hard to get, and I get him.
SF: Do you have a mantra?
PL: I have a prayer I say before all performances: “Help me remember the lyrics.” Then I thank all the gods and goddesses in the world that I am worthy of what I have and what I can relay.
I also think about what Walter Bobbie said to me at Encores at City Center, after I came back from a vocal cord operation: “You’ve got it. Now give it away.” I love that. Of course.
That’s what we’re supposed to do as performers. There is no holding back. Maybe that’s my mantra: “Give it away.”
I was raised a Catholic, and while I don’t practice at all, I still cross myself and pray before I go onstage. It’s so funny, because in life, I’m scared of everything. I’m scared of the dark. Someone must have read me very scary books as a child, because I think the boogeyman is under my bed. If all the lights are out, I get into bed really quickly. 9/11 terrorized me. But I’m fearless onstage. I guess it’s the only place I can be fearless—so I don’t let myself down.
SF: I feel that way too! The stage is the one place where I am in complete control. I know if the spotlight light has been changed because it’s a bit brighter. But in my real life, I’m like, Ahhh!
PL: The life fear has nothing to do with the stage fearlessness. David Mamet said, “Wipe your feet at the door! Don’t bring the shit from your life onto the stage.” How many times have we had to go onstage and say, “Get out of my way, I am here for a reason”? The badass comes from controversy. From obstacles. She comes to survive. I am not a badass in my life. But I won’t let anyone fuck around with me onstage. I have said, “You can fuck with me in my real life, but not onstage.”
SF: I have said that very same thing!
PL: We are very much alike, my dear. The stage is our special place. We have been gifted. It is not to be toyed with. I never know what to do in real life when people say something shocking. And then twenty minutes or three days later, I come up with the perfect retort—but never in the moment. In real life, I’m vulnerable and in shock. But onstage, I’m in control. Of course, someone else has written the lines for me.
SF: You have an ownership on the stage
PL: So do you. You have a light around you. You own it! People always are shocked that I want to rehearse as much as I do. And I say, “That’s because I don’t want to stink onstage.” I want the audience to relax. I want them to know that I got this. When I’m in the audience and see someone stumbling, I can’t watch the play anymore. I’m nervous for that performer! I never want to be that performer.
SF: I have dreams where I’m on the stage and everyone is looking at me, waiting for me to do or say something, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to be doing.
PL: When I’m onstage, I feel as if I’m participating in good in the world. Contributing to the universe. Doing something positive. Even if I’m playing a villain. There is a risk in doing this work. Opening nights take minutes off of my life. First preview.
SF: Same! Who discovered your talent?
PL: My mother. She used to trick me out to guests to do my Marilyn Monroe impersonation—as a four-year-old. I was precocious. I would drop my shirt off my shoulder and pout my lips. My dad was the principal of the elementary school in my hometown, and he started an afterschool program. There was a dance class taught by Miss Marguerite, so my mom enrolled me to give me something to do, and I fell in love with the audience. I never looked back. The voice was this big loud thing that was always there. I had to take piano lessons, and I was in chorus. And I joined the band because there were boys. Northport had a great music program. When we were in third grade, we were given an instrument to play. It was integral to our education—just like math was. I knew I was destined for the Broadway musical stage.
SF: Did you do youth theater?
PL: Yes, I was Rosie in Bye Bye Birdie and then I played Louise in Gypsy with the Patio Players. The Patio Players were teenagers from the high school music department, and putting on musicals with no adult supervision was our summer activity. Kids who just loved the stage.
SF: I was in the Peanut Butter Players!
PL: Then I went to New York City and I went to Broadway. When my mom and dad divorced, I said to my brother [also an actor], “We’re free.” My dad wanted us to be teachers.
SF: Did you have a Patti LuPone growing up?
PL: Bette Davis was my badass. And Edith Piaf. Her voice was not perfect. But you could hear the emotion in every word. Why do we do this? We do it to transport people. We don’t do it for us, we do it for them. I would cut school if there was a new Bette Davis movie. She was not the most beautiful movie star, but she was the fiercest. There is something about her strength. It’s a composure or sense of self.
SF: That is what you have: sense of self.
PL: Really? I’m glad you think so. I know who I am and it is constantly evolving. It doesn’t stay the same. But I think the sense of self comes from one’s experience in life. I say this without wanting to evoke self-pity, but I come from the school of hard knocks. I had to fight for everything I’ve got. I have been unemployed. I have been vilified. I have a reputation, and while some of it may be deserved, it was never about me. It was always about the production. What we were doing onstage. A lot of it comes from survival. More often than not, I fought to continue because I have a God-given gift, and no one is going to stop me from doing it. I have been kept out of employment because casting directors didn’t like me, so they wouldn’t see me! Now I’m on the other side, but a lot of the beginning of my career was fighting to work. And then the critics didn’t like me. And I’d say, “Let them say whatever—I have an audience who wants to see me because I speak to something in their bodies that they relate to.”
I wish I didn’t have a hard-knock career, but I don’t know where I would be if it was handed to me. I understand when actors are humiliated onstage. I understand fear. I’ve been through it. I’ve seen people who have had their careers handed to them—and I’m not sure they’re as good.
SF: I love everything about you!
PL: I love everything about you, because we’re the same person.
SF: What is your advice to young performers?
PL: That they should know their craft, starting with, that it is a craft. That takes study not only of the craft itself, but its history. Who came before you? Why are you here? Why are we here and what are we doing?
SF: I have work to do! What was your relationship like with your mom?
PL: Strained. I come from Italian immigrants—my parents were both first-generation American. Their parents were immigrants and didn’t speak English. I’m 100 percent peasant. My mother didn’t understand my brother’s or my desire to be in this industry. They were not supportive growing up. I wanted to go to the school for performing arts. And she wouldn’t let me go. It felt like a punishment. I was like, Don’t you see that I’m going to do this for the rest of my life? There was a lot of strife. I left the house. When I could get out, I got out.
[Young man enters room.]
This is my son. Josh, say hello to Sutton Foster.
J: Hi, Sutton Foster.
PL: I’m going to cook fish. Honey, do you want the fish?
SF: Do you like to cook? Cooking is a hobby!
PL: Yes. But you have to practice.
SF: Patti, I am so grateful.
PL: I love you, and I love your talent. And I am so honored to be part of your process.
SF: I’m going to cross-stitch a poem. It’s called “An Ode to Patti LuPone.”