“Funny Girl” Producers Say They Weren’t Blindsided By Beanie Feldstein’s Announcement That She’s Leaving The Show Early

We continue the postmortem on Beanie Feldstein’s departure from Broadway’s Funny Girl revival, which began innocently enough, and has quickly evolved into some major drama (appropriate, considering this all takes place in the theater). Beanie was supposed to wrap her run as the titular funny girl Fanny Brice on September 25th. Recently though, she revealed that producers of the show were going in a direction she wasn’t too thrilled about, and decided that she’d be done at the end of this month. That news broke right as it was revealed that her role would be scooped up by none other than Tinseltown tiny terror Lea Michele. Sources have claimed that no one at Funny Girl knew Beanie would be pulling out so abruptly. But the producers themselves, along with a rep for Beanie, have released a statement denying that it was that messy behind the scenes.

The original report came from The Daily Beast, which said that when Beanie announced on Instagram that she was leaving earlier than scheduled, the producers had no idea she was going to do that. The implication there was that Beanie had discovered that her agent, also Lea’s theater agent, had negotiated Lea into the role, and that she was pissed that Lea was her replacement. Especially since the internet loved cracking jokes about how mad Lea probably was that Beanie got the role Lea would have cut off her own right arm for. But it’s not like that, according to the following statement released to The Hollywood Reporter on behalf of Funny Girl’s producers and Beanie’s rep.

“The producers of Funny Girl were not blindsided by Beanie’s social post,” the message read. “The producers decided to take the show in a different direction and end Beanie’s contract on September 25th, 6 months earlier than anticipated.”

The statement continued, “A month after that decision, Beanie decided it was best for her to leave on July 31st. The producers were aware of and in support of her decision. The producers and Beanie worked on this together professionally, respectfully and graciously.”

According to that statement, everything was copacetic and Beanie totally changed her mind about when she’d leave, with absolutely no issue regarding her replacement. I might actually believe that, as there is evidence to support it. For one thing, if you pop over to Beanie’s Instagram page, her bio still reads: “@funnygirlbwy” with a link to the official Funny Girl website. If she really was mad and wanted to blindside everyone with pettiness, she might have changed it to “Formerly of THAT show. Have fun watching a Fox TV actress blow out her vocal cords.” But also, because I don’t think anyone was blindsided by anything that happened. Beanie probably put in her notice the first time, and before her resignation letter hit the desk, she asked, “You’re totally going to try to save this show by desperately stunt casting Lea Michele, aren’t you?”

Pic: Faye’s Vision/Cover Images