Oscar-winning actress Faye Dunaway has been fired from the Broadway-bound play “Tea at Five” for creating a “hostile” and “dangerous” environment backstage that left production members fearing for their safety, several sources told The Post.
Onstage at the Huntington Theater in Boston, where “Tea at Five” was trying out, Dunaway was playing Katharine Hepburn. Backstage she was channeling Joan Crawford, the deranged, abusive film star Dunaway played in the 1981 movie “Mommie Dearest.”
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.
Dunaway was traveling in Europe and could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer did not respond to an e-mail seeking comment.
The producers of “Tea at Five” said in a statement they had “terminated their relationship” with the actress. They said the play, which was well received in Boston, would go to London in the spring and be recast with another actress.
“Tea at Five,” a one-woman play by Matthew Lombardo about Hepburn’s recovery from a car accident in 1983, was meant to be a triumphant return to the stage for Dunaway, who famously was fired by Andrew Lloyd Webber before she opened in the Los Angeles production of “Sunset Boulevard.”
Dunaway, who won her Oscar as the ambitious television producer in “Network,” was excited to return to Broadway for the first time in 37 years. (Her last appearance was in the 1982 play “The Curse of the Aching Heart.”)
“She seemed committed to the role, and fun to be around,” said a source.
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.
She was frequently late for rehearsals, sometimes up to two hours, sources say. She refused to allow anyone to look at her during rehearsals, including the director and the playwright. Although she had the script for six months, sources claim she was never able to learn her lines. During the run of the play at Huntington she was fed lines and blocking through an earpiece.
One source says, “98 percent of the play came through the 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.
As she was rehearsing, she began to lose weight. She looked so emaciated that a production member called Dunaway’s former assistant for advice.
The assistant said, “It sounds like she’s not complying with her medication.”
The producers were so concerned about her condition they called Actors’ Equity Association to see if it was “ethical” to put someone in her state in front of an audience, sources say.
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 producer knew they had to fire her when they had to cancel the July 10 performance because she physically and verbally abused several production members.
This is not the first time Dunaway has displayed erratic behavior in a show. In the early 1990s she toured the country as Maria Callas in Terrence McNally’s “Master Class.” She showed up an hour late for many performances. She had bellhops rearrange her furniture in her hotel suites in the middle of night because she didn’t like the “flow” of the room. Once, a theater in St. Louis sent her a white limousine, and she reportedly had a fit because she hates white. She demanded a rental car from the hotel to get to the theater. The limo company sent a black car instead, but it was too late — Dunaway was racing to the theater, trailed by both the white limo and the black one.
I managed to track her down back then and she was charming on the phone. “Your story sounds like a Fellini movie,” she told me.
I haven’t been able to reach her in Europe for this story. But I hope wherever she is there are “no wire hangers!”