Episode description

Patti LuPone has been a mainstay on Broadway for half a century. She’s appeared in some 30 Broadway productions and has won three Tony Awards for her roles in “Evita,” “Gypsy,” and “Company.” And somehow, LuPone’s career seems to be picking up steam in its sixth decade. Now LuPone is returning to Broadway in “The Roommate,” a play she’s starring in alongside Mia Farrow.  At the same time, she is débuting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, playing a witch in the miniseries “Agatha All Along.”  The staff writer Michael Schulman first wrote about LuPone (in one strange, forgotten dead end of her career) in 2019, and recently spoke with LuPone at her home.  Is it true, he wanted to know, that LuPone recently had Aubrey Plaza—her castmate on “Agatha”—for a short-term roommate?  Plaza had been offered her first role in a play, as LuPone relates it, and “she'd never been onstage. I know from years of experience how it can shock you, what is required of you to be a stage actor.” LuPone, the veteran, “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 the headlights. … I did do her laundry, and I did make her soup.”