Posted on 07/26/2019 7:36:34 PM PDT by EdnaMode
Here’s some scalding tea for you: Faye Dunaway was fired from what would have been a Broadway production of Tea at Five, thanks to some utterly unhinged behavior on-set.
According to the New York Post, the 78-year-old Dunaway lost her role playing Katharine Hepburn after production members accused her of creating a “hostile” and “dangerous” work environment. To the pull quotes!
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.
Was this a one-off tantrum? An aberration for an otherwise kind and composed professional? Seems not.
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.
The Post also reports Dunaway was often up to two hours late for rehearsals, and never bothered to learn her lines—difficult to pull off, it being a one-woman show. Despite having the script in hand for six months, she got through previous performances of the play by being fed lines through an earpiece.
While in rehearsal she left what one production source called “troubling, rambling, angry” voicemails to the creative team during the middle of the night. She also insisted that no one wear white to rehearsals because it “distracts me,” she said. When she was rehearsing on stage at the Huntington no one was allowed to move in the theater because that also distracted her.
Apparently Dunaway “hates white,” which must make every day living around things like paper towels and Maltese dogs and clouds very difficult. It’s hard being Faye Dunaway!
Indeed, dfwgator. Indeed.
Interesting points.
Many actors and actresses can be challenging to work with; very few are impossible. One simply must make an effort to understand and communicate.
Some who have a “difficult” reputation are merely highly professional people who demand a lot of themselves — and those they work with.
When they expose mediocrities on their mediocrity... the mediocre then whisper.
Seen it many times.
Thank you!!!
“But it takes a special kind of skill level to be an actor or actress.”
You are 100% correct, EEE.
Sounds like dementia.
Thank you for the reminder of a great Tom Petty video. Faye was very cool in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqmFxgEGKH0
I’ve always given Ms Swanson props for doing that role, essentially playing a parody of herself.
According to those who worked on the film with her she was a consummate professional and had no issues with playing such an unlovable character.
Her daughter Christine wrote it I thought.
I inscribe monuments for a living. A while back a daughter ordered “Mommy Dearest” as har mothers epitaph. Creeped me out cutting it for some reason.
Beat me to it.
[junkies down in Brooklyn are goin' crazy]
Frank Costanza could be in a self-help group with Dunaway.
Curious that Bette Davis said on Johnny Carson that Faye Dunaway was the most UN-professional actress she’d ever worked with.
“Dunaway began “verbally abusing” the crew. They were “fearful for their safety,” said one source.”
Yeah, as Bonnie Parker she wielded a mean Tommy gun.
Peter Wolf must feel that he dodged a bullet way back when.
There was a time, in the distant past, when I might have been OK with getting my foot/toes smashed by a hammer for her...
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