You and Me Both with Hillary ClintonThis week, we bring you the first ever live recording of You and Me Both before a sold-out audience at Symphony Space in New York City. Hillary was joined by singer, actor, and three time Tony Award winner Patti LuPone, while writer and comedian Amber Ruffin served as MC.
Patti is best known for her roles in the Broadway productions of “Company”, “Gypsy”, “Sweeney Todd”, “Anything Goes”, and “Evita”, among others. She’s also appeared in many films and television shows, including, most recently, Beau Is Afraid, and the forthcoming Marvel miniseries Agatha: Coven of Chaos. She’s currently putting together a new concert: “Patti LuPone: A Life in Notes”. Patti and Hillary talk about her early music education on Long Island and at Julliard, the challenges of performing in “Evita”, and why these days you will find her everywhere but on Broadway, as she seeks out new theatrical experiences as a performer and theatergoer. Together with Hillary, she laughs, she cries, and then she sings!
Event MC Amber Ruffin is an Emmy and WGA Award nominated writer and performer for NBC’s “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and her own “The Amber Ruffin Show.” She and her sister, Lacey, co-authored the New York Times bestseller You’ll Never Believe What Happened to Lacey: Crazy Stories of Racism and The World Record Book of Racist Stories, and they now co-host the podcast, The Amber & Lacey, Lacey & Amber Show! Amber is also writing a revival of the musical “The Wiz” which began touring America this fall and lands on Broadway in the spring of 2024. She joined Hillary and Patti for an audience Q&A.
I'm Hillary Clinton.
Welcome to a very special episode of You and Me Both. You know, just about a week ago, I had the pleasure of taping our first ever live show in front of a standing room only audience at Symphony Space in New York City. Joining me was my very special guest, Patty Lapone, with some help from one of my favorite comedians, Amber Ruffin, who served as our MC. So buckle up and enjoy the show. First you'll hear from Amber Ruffin.
It is my pleasure to introduce a bona fide Broadway legend, the three time Tony Award winning actress singer Patty Lapone and former Secretary of State and podcast host Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Whoa, whoa, this is so excited everybody. I want to thank my friend and one of the most genuinely funny and wonderful human beings, Amber Ruffin for being with us, and Amber will be back out later. But I have to tell you this is like a dream come true for me. Number one, we are doing the very first live version of my podcast, You and Me Both, and I could not think of a better person to do that with than the one and only Patty LuPone. So Patty welcome to this sold out audience here at Symphony Space. And when I was thinking, you heard Amber talking about how when Chelsea and I did uh gutsy and we interviewed a lot of gutsy women who embodies gutsy more than Patty and her spunk, her heart, her talent.
I mean, it is just an amazing combination.
So I'm going to dive right in and I actually read your autobiography. You certainly have a lot of experience on stages literally all over. You know, I'm happy to be here interviewing you, but honestly, it's always been my dream to sing.
Really yes, well, then.
You should sing tonight. I an'll have to sing. You should sing tonight. You should sing tonight. Oh no, Hilary, you should say Now, I.
Had to make the confession because it would end the show early, and so we can't do that. But later you're gonna have the real treat of hearing her saying.
You know.
I looked at the pictures in your wonderful autobiography I read about your life, and I'm so pleased that the sag after an actors strike has finished so that you could actually talk about a lot of the things You've done. It's perfect. Last Frand Dresser. That's all I've got to say. God bless Frand Dresser. So let's start at the very beginning. You were born on Long Island, Northport.
Right, Northport.
Yeah, So tell us a little bit about your family, because it turns out that you had a kind of pool of talent inside your own family.
Well, my mother and my father were not at all in show business. In fact, my father expected us all to be teachers, and my mother was just a Long Island housewife. I'm of Italian descent, and when my parents were growing up, there was a great deal of prejudice. My grandparents wanted their kids, both sides, the Patties and the Loupons, to be American. My name is made up of my parents' last name. My dad's LuPone, my mother's a Patsy, so they wanted their kids to be American. So my mother really showed business was the farthest thing from her mind for her kids. But she was the one that actually started it by enrolling me in a dance class. And my brother Bobby saw me in a huli skirt and fell in love with the hula skirt, and he started dancing. That's the truth.
Well, but in fact, didn't you form a group later?
Yes, we did, because we had we had first it was Miss Marguerite Dance Studio. Then it was Donald and Rosalie Grant Dance Studio. Then it was the Andrea and Bonnie and their friend Betty Dance Studio and Andre and Bonnie. Andre was it was French. It was so kind of exotic and wonderful, and he's a French accent, and he put my brothers and I did an adagio waltz. My brother Bobby and I did a tango. We actually competed at Jones's speech. We won third prize. I still have the trophy. So it was sort of even though my mother never she actually was famous as saying to my brother and I, it upsets me that you flip from job to job. Yuh mau. Yeah, that's the way it goes. But because she had no clue about about show business. But she was the one that introduced us, and Bobby and I both found our place. Yeah, it was a calling.
But you know, I actually love that story because it's a story of a certain time and a certain place and going from those dance studios and those other opportunities.
And I love the story that stories you.
Tell about your rather unusual audition for Juilliard. I mean, here is this young girl, you were still a young girl, and let it be said you hated school except for music.
Right, No, it's not in hate school. I was lucky to go to a high school, an elementary, a junior high, and a high school where music was an integral part of our education as important as English, math and science. We all studied and we also with the third grade was marched into the Ocean Avenue Elementary School. There were two posters on the wall band instruments orchestra instruments, and our music teachers said pick an instrument, and we learned started to learn how to read music in the third grade and we carry that all the way through high school. So kudos to the Northport school system for instilling music into our lives. It breaks my heart that there isn't music.
It breaks my heart in school.
And you know, when you think about it, because that used to be the norm, you would have, you know, music, you might even have music appreciation because I can remember in third grade we had a music teacher who would come in and she would introduce us to things we would.
Never have known about.
I remember having her tell us about Aida and playing from the score.
I'm in third grade. What do I know?
I know nothing about opera, nothing at all.
But now so many kids don't have that opportunity.
So it's really important to, you know, remind everybody that it used to be much more common, and it gave so many kids a chance to find themselves, find their talents or enhance what they need.
And the arts are the soul of a nation.
Amen.
Well, you've done your part to try to, you know, deliver a lot to a lot of happy people. And I want to go back to this audition at Juilliard because here you are in high school and you do have support from some teachers and some other adults in your life.
And what did you decide to do?
I knew what I was going to do. I actually I wanted to be a rock and roller because I grew up in the age of rock and roll. But whenever I opened my mouths to sing a rock and roll so I sounded like ethel Mermons, so that wasn't going to work. But still I'm a closet rocker, so I knew that my I knew at a very young age. First of all, I remember when I was sixteen saying, my career is in Europe, and of course it hasn't been. But I've always felt more European than American, and I always wanted my career to be I wanted to sing in Europe, and I knew what I was going to do. I knew that I wouldn't end up on the Broadway musical stage. I just knew that. So it's not that I hated school. It's just that I knew where my focus was. And when my junior high school guidance counselor asked me what I wanted to major in in high school, I said music. He said, you can't. Why did you ask me then? And ultimately what I did do was skip every other class and just went to the music classes. I don't know how I graduated. They wanted me out, so that's how I got out, and then Julliard, and then my mother wanted me to go to a college, and I went n and I moved to New York City, found one hundred dollars a month, five floor walk up railroad flat on East nineteenth and Second Avenue, and got a job at the Ginza at waitress, and I auditioned for Broadway musicals. My brother Bobby was attending the dance division of Juilliard. He said they were starting a drama division, and I only auditioned for my mother and my brother. I did not want to go to college, and my audition was I didn't even care. I picked the most obvious classical speech, the most obvious contemporary speech. I went at the time, we were hippie, so I was in a granny dress with granny shoes and granny glasses. And when I did my it was Kate's epulogue from Taming of the Shrew five fi on that threatening on Kim Brown, dark knot scornful glances at thy lord, thy Master. When I finished the speech, John Hausman came to the foot of the stage and said, I don't think that's what Shakespeare had in mind. And I frankly couldn't care less. So I did that, and I did Dolly Levi's money speech from the Matchmaker, and then there was a lot of silence out there, and of course I couldn't see them. Then somebody shouted out an improv, which is I got a rejection letter from the drama division of the Juilliard School. So I went over to opened up a mailbox, pulled out the letter, opened it up, read it, throw it over my shoulder.
That's what got me in.
That's what got me in.
And didn't you say John Houseman? Did you say John Houseman?
Yeah? Okay, mister Housman, mister Houseman to me, yeah?
For people, who was John Houseman? Because not everybody remembers well.
John Housman was a very powerful producer in the Mercury Theater. He worked with Orson Wells. He was a frightening man when I met him, and he was the co artistic director of the initial drama division of the Juilliard School. The Julliard School used to the Julliard School of Music, but in order for them to move down to Lincoln Center, they had to become a complete performing arts swing, so they had to add a drama division. And Peter Mennon, who was the president of the Juilliard School of Music, was not happy that we would now have actors in the building, and John Housman and Peter Manon did not get along at all. But John was also frightening to me. I mean, he was a very imposing man, and he it was difficult, It was scary to be in that school. It was a brutal education.
And one of the people who you were in that school with was someone who I think became your boyfriend for a number of years, right, Kevin Klein.
Yes, yeah, he was my boyfriend.
And that's all we'll.
Hear about that.
Ladies and gentlemen, moving right along.
So you get out of Juilliard, but you're still part of a almost a kind of acting company, right, And you performed nearly anywhere, anytime anybody asked, and it was apparently an amazing, full immersion experience for you.
It was you know, acting as a craft, and a craft takes training, and we were given the golden opportunity to hone our craft. We learned what we could at Juilliard, and Juilliard was our class was sort of the guinea pigs of the entire acting experience. What they wanted was to break the psyche down of an American actor and form the Juilliard actor that could be a classical actor, a contemporary actor, act in every particular styles, restoration, Jacko Beean, Elizabethan modern, and be able to work with Russian directors, French directors, American directors. So in school we were inundated with technique, not so much acting classes, but a lot of technique. When John put us on display on our third year, mal Guso, who was a critic, second string critic for the New York Times, said, keep this company together, don't break them up, which was John's q. To keep this company together. So when we graduated from Juilliard, he handed us an equity card and a seat on a dominical bus and we toured the shows that we had been performing in our third and fourth years with sets that weren't built to tour. That was the first problem, and we had been trained to do three shows and on the fourth the performance fell apart. We didn't know how to maintain and so we got lessons that no actors get any more, which is a pity because we were armed to the teeth with technique, so that when somebody says something to me, I don't go no, I can't do that. At a fear, I say, yeah, I can do that because I want to. Whether I know how to do it or not, I have the technique to figure it out. And if I fail, that's okay. That was the other thing that techniques allows. The technique allows you to fail because you know, you can figure something out.
I think that's incredible for people to hear, because it's not just about acting, it's about life. Yeah, and you know, being equipped, you know, having skills putting yourself in new situations, oftentimes difficult ones. You're constantly learning, You're constantly honing who you are, and for that, you were honing who you became as an actor. And I read with just almost open mouthed wonder at how you all were willing to do anything, take on any challenge, you know, just to fulfill that craft of being an actor.
I think it has to be a passion. That's it, you know. I have tremendous problems with the younger performers today that say I can't basically or it's too hard. You have to love it and you have to want to be challenged in anything. I'm not just talking about theater. You have to want to be challenged in order to grow because you love what you're doing and you want to learn. That's the other thing you want to learn. And I have to I have to say in many of these cases, I think maybe that the younger generation is fearful, and fear is a crippler. And if you don't admit your fear, embrace your fear, then you will put up blocks. I can't do that. I won't do that. My character wouldn't let me do that. What the fuck? Sorry, my character, you know what I'm saying. So, but and I think that I think fear. I think we don't acknowledge fear enough in our own lives or in our whatever it is we do. And if if we David Mammott said this, dare to live in the area where you do not know what's going on. That's the area you learn. That's the area where things start to pop, things start to blossom. When you admit you are not in control.
Then you learn you make yourself vulnerable and you kind of take a leap of faith, almost, don't you.
We're taking a quick break. Stay with us.
Well, the first time I ever saw you on a stage was in your breakthrough role in Avida. Okay, that was back in nineteen seventy nine when you played Ava perone. Now, you were cast over a lot of really big names, famous names, people.
Who were vying for that role, but they picked you. Why do you think they picked you?
I I don't know. Actually, I know that Joanna Merlin got rest her soul was house casting director. Joanna had seen us in the acting company, and she knew I could act. She didn't know whether I could sing, and so my auditions were primarily whether I could sing. And I think that Hal would have preferred someone that was unknown. Prince help Prince would have preferred someone that was unknown to have the control that he needed for this particular piece. I mean, I'm just speculating that if there was a bigger name, there might have been ego clashes. I don't know. It's a very difficult part. Mandy and I actually because Mandy went to Juliet as well Patinkin. Mandy and I were able to connect the dots in because it's only exposition, and then she did this, and then she did that, and then she did this, and then she did that and then she died. You know, It's like, but it's exposition. There's very little conflict. There's very little drama in that. So Mandy and I were able to figure out how to connect the dots and make it dramatic because we had training as actors and the singing was the thing that killed me.
And I.
Said it afterwards, and how I was very upset with me for saying it. But it was a terrible experience because I couldn't sing it, and it took such willpower. I willed my voice every single night, and I couldn't fail. I would not allow myself to fail. I would figure this out. This is where I belonged on the Broadway musical stage. This is a role you can play. You just have to figure it out.
And when you're talking about how difficult it was, it's because of the scoring. It's because of the saying, oh, you have to hit. It's because of the breathing that is so hard in between those notes.
Right, it sits, and I'm sure there's singers out there. It sings in a sopranos passagio. And the passaggio is if if there's a rubber band and you stretch the rubber band, the weakest part of the rubber band is the passaggio in a voice. It goes from chest to head. It's just the weakest part. That's where all the money notes were, right in the place where you hit it wrong one night, it's going to affect your voice for the rest of there's somebody in the audience now that was in my castmatee in Ivita, and he can tell you every story because one of my closest friends in Ivita, Peter Marinos, who was my support backstage, who was my support in life with Salma Stretta, because he saw what I was going through and it was the singing. The singing is so well. The first time I heard the concept score with Julie Comington, David Essex and Colin Wilkinson, this guy hates women. It was, it was, It was so difficult, and Well gave me a tape with four speeches from the Casa Rozata and the first two the voice and this is the comparison. Is only the tone, you guys, It's only the tone. You know, that pin that that that Sarah Palin has and Marjorie Taylor Green has that wason, she had that ping and so you have to pu you have to imbue the music with that quality in order to get across. He supports you, for he loves you, understands you, is one of you, you know, and those notes the d's, d's, e's, f's, and g's, and you have to in order to convince an audience. The death Camisado's an audience. Why she's such a cult figure, you cannot sing it lyrically. And that was the thing that was killing me, frankly. And what happened and I got through New York, Mandy left and I went, oh. And it was very difficult when Mandy left because he was my rock. But when I left, Tyler Gatchell, the general manager, came he said, why are you leaving? It said, because I've lost my sense of humor. The role was so controversial. My applause used to dip after Mandy's and I would go down going it's because I'm so good in the part. Literally it would dip out because they were so ambiguous on what they felt about Ivita Parron. So I had lost my sense of humor. I got to get out of here. Then the woman that played Ivita and Australia, and she was talking the part it knocked every Evita out. It's such a brutal score. So they called me and they said would you come down? And I thought, well, I'm never going to get asked to sing in Australia again? Why not? And then I said to my general manager Howard Haynes, Are you buying my performance? I don't know where that came from, and he said yes. And when I got to Australia, they were doing everything on the opposite foot, and I went, I'm not learning what you're doing. You're going to learn what I'm doing. I didn't have that much time to go back into a part and a part that scared me to death, and now I'm in the part with a brilliant company of just the most wonderful people in the world, and there was no pressure to prove myself. I wasn't in New York, one of the cruelest environments if you were a performer. I wasn't in New York. I didn't have to deal with critics that were cruel. David Mammmett said this as well, he doesn't care what the critics say as long as he knows they love the theater. I'm not sure our critics have ever loved the theater.
Well, this was really revelatory to me because watching you do this performance, which you know I have vivid memories of all those years ago, there was no sense at all how difficult it was.
I mean, you.
Inhabited that role, your arms up in that big v that you know, just was thrilling. I was not, frankly, you know, taken by the controversy over her, but I know that there was a lot of controversy there. And so you won a Tony Award, how difficult it was, and you won a Tony Award and you entered Broadway history and you were literally on your way because people were just knocked out by your performance and you were too, but they gave you a Tony for it.
But it's interesting because you know, there was a time in our Broadway legacy where leading ladies were celebrated and then leading men were celebrated, and I was in the period where leading men were celebrated. Mikael Barishnikov and Gregory Hines and Mandy and David Agdenstein all went off to Hollywood. That did not happen for me. It was a controversial character. It was a character that people were upset was being glorified on stage because she harbored the Nazis. The Patanistas harbored the Nazis. And so I had a very difficult time after I left Dvita getting work.
I wanted people to hear that, because that is not what anyone would think who loves the theater loves you.
That it was.
It was kind of a shock.
I mean, there you were with this Tony Award and you didn't have the kind of offers that shot to come now.
And the thing. The other thing was, I remember, so leave you Chule as a god Risisol He's a Romanian director, and I find that I prefer European directors to American directors because of their concepts, because they come in with these fantastic ideas that you have to fulfill and leave you was doing his world famous As You Like It at the Guthrie and he wanted me to play Rosalind. And he came to the dressing room with Margot Harley, who is now one of the producers of the Acting Company, and he said, will you play Rosalind and As You Like It? And I said yes. And when I left Ivita, that was my next role. And I was sort of admonished by my agents by taking a role at the Guthrie. What are you doing? And I said, I'm going back to my roots. I'm going back to what I was trained for theater. And so I went back to my roots and it.
To feel that really, you know, rejuvenated you totally totally yeah.
I mean it's it's it's something that I would I would do today. Well, for instance, I don't think I'll ever go back to Broadway because I don't know what Broadway is anymore. That doesn't mean I won't be on the stage in New York, but i'll be downtown. I'll be east of Broadway, I'll be west of Bay, I'll be north of Broadway, I'll be south of Broadway. But I don't think Broadway is sustainable anymore. I don't know where Broadway is. I think it's the circus Las Vegas and Disneyland, I and nobody. You can't have a show that runs. I was talking to Amber. You heard me talking to Amber. Some like it hot closing with those reviews, What is going on? I don't understand it. So you can't sustain anything. You cannot sustain something, so it breaks your heart. And my heart will continue to be broken because I'll probably be in more bombs, you know, on more flops whatever, but at least I will be doing something. I'm here to recommend ja Ja's African hair bray and Stereophonic to non for profit productions that are what theater should be in this city.
Oh, you've got a great response to that.
Patty.
So you were talking about how you like European directors.
You've obviously been on Broadway, you've also been in the West End in London. What's the difference and and and tell us a little bit about how you compare the experiences.
Well, I don't think there's any difference. I think if you put on something good, audiences will react the same way because we're really the same person, you know what I mean, it's it's and so the Well, I'll tell you a story when I did lems in London, and this was Royal Shakespeare Company actors who were doing Shakespeare, not musicals, and I was the only musical person. I'm one of my favorite two stories, one of my favorite John Carrod and Trevor Nunn. We're telling me Nopati when you sing I dreamed a dream, you tell it to the audience. I looked at them, What did they think they brought over here? They said, yeah, I know, yeah, I know what you're supposed to do. You brought me over here. But but so Trevor Nunn, it's the first preview and Trevor Nunn calls us all to the stage and he goes. You know that the Royal Shakespeare audience will not be used to a musical, and do not expect the kind of response you get when you do Shakespeare at the end of the show, literally, And so I think, if you give people what they want, or you move an audience, the audience is transcended. Everybody will respond the same way. So I find no difference in London audiences and New York audiences. It's you go to the theater for a reason and if you are more than satisfied you you react that way.
Well, you've also done a lot of work in TV and film.
You know, you had these hilarious cameos in Lena Dunham's TV series Girls, you were a four hundred and fifty year old witch in the upcoming Marvel mini series Agatha Coven of Chaos, and then there's this part as Mona, a pretty cruel and manipulative mother in the film bo Is Afraid, which came out this past spring.
So what would it like being in a Marvel mini series?
Well, okay, I have to talk about First of all, I give up my equity card and I think I'm sitting in my apartment in at the kitchen table going I wonder what dire action my career is going to go in ring Hello, Marvel calling Marvel, called am my agents. I said, well, she said, talk to these people. Jack Schaefer created wand Division? Did anybody see WandaVision? Jack is brilliant. She is the creator of one Division. She has a three picture deal with Marvel. She spun off Catherine Hahn's character Agatha. So we are the second installment of this triad, and we are a coven of witches. And is Catherine Aubrey Plaza shares Amida Ali on me and Joe Locke from heart Stoppers. And it was one of the best experiences I have ever had in my career because of Jack and Catherine, who were our leaders. It was a set filled with respect, support, love and trust and we as women and poor Joe, we as women bonded and we still are bonded, and we are a coven and it's coming out next Halloween. We we finished you and we finished right under the strike. And Jack came into my trailer and well, basically, when is this coming out? She said, A year from now? I'm reserving my walker, but it was an incredible experience, and she's an incredible writer. So I don't know whether I've had a Marvel experience. I've had a Jack Schaeffer experience, which is incredible.
Yeah. Well, I have a couple of lightning round questions here. All right, what is the favorite role you've ever played?
I don't have one. It's too limiting.
Yeah, it's that's that's a fair thing.
Yeas too limiting.
Yeah.
Are there roles that you've had that you thought should have won an award that didn't?
Oh? Yeah, every single one of them.
So so just just just tell us all okay, you've got what three Tony's? Yeah, okay, what are the other two?
For one?
We know it's a Vita, but Madame Rose in.
Gypsy and Evita and Joanne and company jo in a company?
D Do you have any interest ever directing?
I don't think I'm smart enough to direct, I don't think i'm fond enough to direct, and I don't think I have the patience to direct. But I do give what are quote unquote master classes to singers when I'm on the road, and they're not master classes. I am a master of nothing because I am still learning. But I am an audience member and I have experience, and so I'm able to tell young kids what they're doing that isn't engaging an audience, it's not engaging me. And I'm your audience, and I can see them transforming to I can see them learning when I tell them. And it's the simplest stand still. And it's as simple as change the key. Where's your power? And your power is stillness and the right key boom, nothing else. You're free. You're free when your voice is free. You don't have to do this. And it's the hardest thing to stand still. But where do we all look when we're on stage. We're looking at the stillest person on stage, wondering why they're thinking. We're not looking everybody that's moving around. We're wondering what he's doing, which is nothing, which is everything?
Oh wow, I love that.
Well, if not directing, you know, coaching, teaching, you know, something that really gives you a chance to, you know, talk about all these experiences and all these skills and everything that you've learned.
And I love to give it back because I have to say, there's so much talent on the stage I love going to the theater, and I'm seeing not great stuff except for the two that I've mentioned, But what's on the stage, the actors and the singers and the dancers on the stage are extraordinary and they deserve better material.
Well, before we get to the great treat of you singing for us, I want to just also mention that, you know, during this amazing career.
Of yours, you're also a mom.
How I've always wondered, because it is such a demanding work schedule when you're in a in a play, how did you balance, you know, raising your son Josh with everything else you had to do?
How did you do it?
Same way you did?
Yeah?
It your job was so much tougher than mine. Every single job you've had is so much tougher than mine. Well, you know, right back at you.
But I did learn that Josh also sings an X and you've had a chance to perform together.
What was that like? Well, it sees my son, and I'm worried for him, you know what I mean? You know, and I don't know what Chelsea wanted to do, But Josh grew up in a star dressing room and he wanted to be on the stage. He wants to work in the theater, he wants to work in film. That's where he grew up. That's what he wants to do. And if you say no, they're gonna do it anyway. And so I worry for him in today's world period, whether it's show business or just walking down the street. You know, to be with him on stage is so sweet. It's so sweet. And I just hope all of you out there that are of that age, in your thirties and trying to make it in this business, I wish you all the best of luck and courage, courage, courage. Something will happen, something will change. We will make it. Oh, I could cry.
I also, really I want to thank you for your activism and how outspoken you are in case you haven't noticed, especially you're being outspoken against the anti LGBTQ legislation and because you know that's something that you chose to do and you've been a really necessary voice.
Well, thank you, you know. And I don't think I'm doing anything extraordinary. It's just that I have family and friends in the LGBTQ community and I love them, and I am protecting my friends and my family, and this is this is insanity. We're in insane times right now, and this is insanity.
I don't know what this is about, but it's it's so distressed, so much cruelty, oh and so much you know, fear and hatred and anger and insecurity, and it really is almost hard to understand how we got to where we are.
Yeah, I don't. I mean, I keep wondering. I mean, I'm seventy four years old, and I don't know what I expected when I was forty what I would be like when I was seventy four. But I never expected this. I never expected the PTSD that I live with daily to be as extreme. I never expected that I'm on the verge of tears all the time. I never expected that I would be as terrorized as I am. I didn't expect to live out the rest of my life in this kind of life fear. I don't, And so I will speak up. I will because it's an injustice to us. All I don't. I can't make cancer tails of anything. Why is love such a underestimated word, a dirty word, and hate such a powerful word? Why isn't love a more powerful word than hate? And why are people that just love each other being tormented. You're all closeted. That's what I think.
We'll be right back.
And talking about, you know, plays, musicals, history, things that can break your heart, try to give you hope afterwards. You know, I've recently signed on to help this incredible musical about the American suffrage movement.
Sucks, and you know, it's a part of our history that people don't know.
I mean, you know, women were thrown in jail for wanting to vote, they were force fed when they went on hunger strikes. And when people try to, you know, literally eliminate huge chunks of our history, I just get more determined we're going to tell the story.
Well, I don't understand, in the richest and most progressive country in the world, why we are so adamant of suppressing. I don't understand that why we don't keep moving forward.
I don't understand that people want to pull us back. I don't get absolutely get it.
Well, you know, I know you are currently preparing a new concert, Patty Lapone, A Life in Notes, that will be at Carnegie Hall in April.
Can you tell us about that?
Well, I mean, I'm sure a lot of you know that. I just I do a lot of concert work, which was always you know, we do, those of us that go unemployed to supplement our income with concert work, cabaret and concert work. And I love doing the concert work. And Joseph Fulk and my musical director is right there, Hello, darling. He's getting to play. But Joe, Josephin and Scott Whitman and I and Jeffrey Richmond have done these shows for several years, and this one I didn't want it to be about Broadway. I wanted to be about the touchstones, musical touchstones in my life growing up on Long Island. You know, we all have a song. We all have several songs in our lives that we know where we were when we heard that song and what we felt. And so I'm looking to create a show. We're all looking to create a show where the songs are the stuff that I grew up with and that meant something to me. We're struggling right now. I grew up in the fifties in America. We had won a war, the middle class was thriving, but all the music were about teenage car crashes. Teen Angel patches, she dies, she drowns herself, Teen Angel goes running back to the room. The ring is she gets hit by a train. It's like everybody's dying in cars in the fifties. So I you know that we're looking at those songs from my past. Also, when I moved to New York City and you know, was a pothead and a hippie and heard Lilac Wine for the first time. Lilac Wine written in nineteen forty nine, but Nina Simons singing Lilac Wine, I will never forget hearing that song for the first time in my life. I think I was eighteen, free in New York City and I heard Lilac Wine and I can see the smoke haze, I can see that, you know. But it's those kind of songs that meant something to me growing up.
But everybody can relate to that.
And as a special trait for our audience, I believe you've got a song that you will sing.
Can you set it up?
And yeah, it's been cut from the show. But also you guys, I was nervous to do this. I have to tell you, Hillary, I was nervous to do this. I feel like I feel very emotional lately, and I you know, I think the world is deeply affecting me, So forgive me. But I am tearful when I sing this song, and I'm going to try not to cry. Am I supposed to God?
Any sing any.
Just ah?
Falcon ladies and tell men, the sound of applause is delicious.
It's a thrill to have the world at your feet. The praise of the crowd is exciting. But I've learned that is not what makes our life complete. There's one thing you can do for the rest of your days that's worth.
More than applause, the screaming crowd, the bookcase. Make someone happy, make just wan someone happy, Make just one.
Heart the heart you say to wah, a smither cheers you.
One face that lies when it nears.
You once saw your reading.
To fin.
If you win, it comes and goals in a minute. Where's the real stuff in life? To clean to lorne is the answer?
Someone to lie is the answer.
Wants you fall the build a world around them, someone happy, Make just one someone happy, and you who we'll be happy?
To hon is the answer.
Someone to love is the answer. What to fall that build.
Your world around them by.
Somewhat happy, Make just what somewhat happy, and you will be happy to.
Lethb.
Wow.
Wow, well you made a lot of someone's happy Amber.
I'm so glad you're Backy.
And you know, Amber is a glass is half full to a glasses overflowing kind of person.
And you're a Broadway uh, you know, star in your own right.
You co wrote the script to Some Like It Hot, and now you're updating the script for the Broadway revival.
Of The Wiz.
Tell us what that's like. Do you remember seeing the Wiz as a kid?
Yes.
I was talking to someone and I realized that I could say this. I've never known life without the Wiz. Someone was asking me, Yeah, you remember your first experience? No, do you remember the first time you watched the news?
No? So I don't.
I've just always known life with the Whiz and it's always been a huge part of I mean, I feel like it. I feel like I'm not making this up. And that it came on NBC's on Sundays when I was little, I think, I think that's true. But I know what's true is when you're sick and staying home from school after you watch The Price is Right, you would get the the VCR tape of The Wiz and you would watch that.
You know. Amber also has a podcast. She hosts The Amber and Lacey Lacy and Amber Show. Lacey is your sister Lacy?
Where you at?
Hey?
Man?
Is Lacy here today? Okay?
Also, you know you guys have written books together. You've been you've been talking. I guess since you could both talk? And was it like doing that with your sister?
Lacey is horrible? So everybody who's sitting by her, I am. So we have so much fun. We wrote a book called You'll Never Believe It Happened to Lacey Crazy Stories about racism? And she yeah, yeah, that person's like, oh, no versism, they know, but we The book is just all the unbelievable stories that are crazy and racists that have happened to Lacey that are funny.
And it's just the funny.
One example, one quick example, so man, Lacey was she added, this was a while ago, and she was paying with a check someplace. Now a million years ago, you could get black history checks and they had like Malcolm ex and.
And so.
She pays for this check, she gives into the catcher.
The casher goes, I didn't know you could get your picture on checks. And the person on the check is Harriet Tubman. It's not like a rendition of it.
It's the picture you're thinking of. There's the only one. There's just like a million stories like that.
A lot.
Better to laugh, I guess right. So, Amber, I think you've got some questions for us from the audience.
Okay, so the audience asked a lot of thoughtful questions. Derek asked a question. I'm very interested in the answer for Patty. We hear that Aubrey Plaza is your roommate. How has that been working out?
It's been great. Aubrey and I, you know, were part of the Covin rebonded. Aubrey's making her theatrical debut downtown at the Lucia Ortel and Danny and the Deep Lucy with Christopher Abbott. Aubrey has never been on stage before, and I felt her responsibility for taking care of her. She had no idea what rehearsal technicals, rehearsal en previews was about. And I have loved watching her explore and discover what it is to be a stage actor. And I have in fact taken care of her. I have in fact done her laundry.
And made her soup.
And I have a funny picture of us brushing our teeth.
That is its own TV show and I cannot wait to watch it. And then a question from Jeff, Hillary and Patty. You've both been passed over for roles where you were hands down, where you were hands down the most qualified, slashed talented candidates. Jeff's question is how do you maintain grounded and motivated to stay in the game and not give up in the face of defeat.
That's heavy, heavy duty.
You look for ways to kind of keep going that you enjoy, that give you satisfaction. It's kind of like what Patty was talking about at the beginning of her acting career. You keep moving forward, you keep looking for new opportunities, you learn from you know, the defeats, the mistakes, You pick yourself.
Up and it is just a part of life.
Maybe you don't fail on the global stage, but you know, everybody fails. Everybody falls. Everybody has to decide whether to get back up. And I can highly recommend get back up.
And keep going.
And it is not only better for you, it really annoys your adversaries.
Who says I've maintained All I'll say is it hurts and you gotta go work through the pain. You gotta find the you know, the reason to keep going and learn the lesson. And if there is a lesson to learn and tell them they made a big mistake. Every fucking day, you just keep getting better. That's the mistake they made. But you just keep getting better. Hllary.
A lot of people are wondering who would play you in the musical version of your life.
I don't know.
You're ready. You want to, I mean, you want to get your card back.
I don't need my card to be on Broadway. That is the best kept secret on Broadway. You can work on Broadway without being a member of equity.
Then I have a lot of possibilities. Yeah, yeah, First somebody has to write it.
I'll write it.
You play Hillary with pleasure and I'd be honored. Okay, it's gonna be great. It's a hit.
From Christy.
And this is our last question we have today.
It's for both of you. What is the one thing you most admire in each other? May I say Hilary's uncompromising resilience? Yeah, well.
Yeah, I like both those words. I like both those words.
And for me, looking at Patty and looking at her life and looking at her incredible passion and energy.
It really is that that gutsiness.
It's that sense that I am here, whether you like it or not, as somebody who has seen her on the stage, somebody who admires her outspokenness, somebody who also hates cell phones interrupting.
When you're trying to talk to people. For all those reasons.
Gutsiness I mean, and that to me is a really high form of life accomplishment.
Thank you, Thank.
Well.
I honestly I think we could go on and on, but you know, we got to, unfortunately bring it to a close. And yeah, I know that's why I feel, but I want to thank everybody for coming tonight. It means the world to us to be able to talk and have such an incredibly responsive audience out there. Thank both Patty and Amber for who they are and how exciting it is to talk to them. Thank Joseph Falcon.
Who played the piano.
Thanks to Symphony Space and iHeart Podcasts, but mostly thanks to all of you for turning out tonight to see this remarkable woman and to give us a chance to learn more about her and her extraordinary career. And keep in mind next April, Carnegie Hall and then for Amber. Keep in mind Amber's Whiz is coming back.
Thank you all very much.
You and Me Both is brought to you by iHeart Podcasts. We're produced by Julie Subren, Kathleen Russo and Rob Russo, with help from Kuma Abadeen, Oscar Flores, Lindsey Hoffman, Sarah Horowitz, Laura Olin, Lona Valmorro.
And Lily Weber.
Our engineer is Zach McNeice, and the original music is by Forrest Gray. If you like You and Me Both, tell someone else about it. And if you're not already a subscriber, what are you waiting for? You can subscribe to You and Me Both on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thanks for listening and I'll see you next week
