Faye Dunaway Isn’t Going To Play Katharine Hepburn On Broadway Anymore, Because She Reportedly Got Fired For Slapping A Crew Member

If you didn’t know that Faye Dunaway was supposed to play Katharine Hepburn in the one-woman show Tea at Five on Broadway, I have some shocking news that’ll tip you over. Producers of a Broadway-bound show actually hired Faye Dunaway to do a live play eight times a week and work with others. But in some not-so-shocking news that’ll steady your ass once again, Faye Dunaway was fired and the reason was because she pulled several Faye Dunaways.

Tea at Five is a one-woman play by Matthew Lombardo where Katharine Hepburn reflects on her career and failed love with Spencer Tracy as she recovers from a car crash. Kate Mulgrew, Tovah Feldshuh, and Stephanie Zimbalist have all done the play. It was announced last year that the show was being re-tooled to mostly take place in 1983 and Faye Dunaway would bring it to Broadway after doing a try-out run in Boston. Well, they tried that shit out and the verdict was that Faye The Terrible had to go. The producers announced in a short statement that they have “terminated” their “relationship ” with Faye Dunaway, and I’m wondering how many “fucks” and “evil bitch devils” were in their original draft. The Broadway run has now been put on hold and the plan is to recast the role and take the show to London.

This is what Faye looked like in the role. She’s giving me less Katharine Hepburn and more Asian Marlo Thomas:

Tea at Five's Broadway bow is on hold after Faye Dunaway has been let go: https://t.co/4xAfIrirbu pic.twitter.com/k0Kk5hf6LC

— Playbill (@playbill) July 24, 2019

The Boston run played at the Huntington Theater from June 22 to July 14, but the July 10 performance was canceled at the last minute. The New York Post has all the messy, messy, messy details and you know their phones were filled with the voices of crew members who couldn’t wait to tell them how working with Faye was about as pleasant as being trapped in a closet full of wire hangers with Joan Crawford herself. These sources spilled the tea at five, six, seven, and eight.

Speaking of Joan Crawford, Michael Riedel at The Post says that while Faye was playing Katharine Hepburn onstage, offstage she was giving everyone a live performance from Mommie Dearest by terrorizing them all. Sources say that right before the July 10 performance, 78-year-old Faye attacked crew members as they tried to put on her wig:

The July 10 performance was canceled moments before curtain because Dunaway slapped and threw things at crew members who were trying to put on her wig, sources say. Enraged at the cancellation, Dunaway began “verbally abusing” the crew. They were “fearful for their safety,” said one source.

Even though that’s what supposedly got her fired for once and for all, it was allegedly just one layer of the demon cake that Faye force fed everyone with. Sources say that she regularly showed up very late to rehearsals for the play, demanded that nobody wear white in rehearsals because it distracted her, and left rambling, angry voicemails to the creative team in the middle of the night. During one photo shoot, a source says she fed her salad to the floor.

But her behavior was unsettling at an early photo shoot. Someone gave her a salad for lunch and she threw it on the floor. She was watching her weight and said the salad would be better on the floor than in her hand.

When Faye began to lose more and more weight, an assistant thought that it was due to her not taking her meds. Producers claim they called Actors’ Equity to see if it was “ethical” to put an actress in her state on stage every night. I guess Actors’ Equity ruled that it was because she went on. The Post also claims that Faye didn’t learn her lines and 98% of the script was fed to her through an earpiece Johnny Depp-style. And if you didn’t think Faye’s alleged backstage diva devil theatrics could get anymore Joan Crawford like, get into this:

Over the last weekend of June she had a full on “Mommie Dearest” meltdown and demanded that staffers at the Huntington Theater get down on their hands and knees and scrub the floor of her dressing room, sources claim.

She allegedly threw mirrors, combs and boxes of hairpins at the staff of the theater. She also pulled gray hairs out of her wig because she wanted to play a younger version of Hepburn than the playwright had written.

The Post asked for a comment from Faye’s rep but was told that she’s traveling in Europe. Europe, you’ve been warned.

This isn’t Faye’s first time getting fired from a show. After Andrew Lloyd Webber and producers hired her in 1994 to replace Glenn Close as Norma Desmond in the L.A. production of Sunset Boulevard, he fired her not long into his rehearsals, saying that she couldn’t sing the role to their standards. Faye sued since ALW and producers heard her sing before they hired her (it was settled out of court).

So if Faye doesn’t sue the producers of Tea at Five and hold a press conference on the front lawn of somebody’s Sherman Oaks house while sitting on lawn furniture, was Faye fired from a play at all? The whole video below is rich, especially after what The Post claims. (The video won’t play here so you’ll have to click and watch on YouTube if you want to get into Faye’s front lawn legal dramatics.)

These capricious tricks with their capricious salads and capricious gray wig hairs just keep fucking with Faye!

Pic: Wenn.com