Harshest gossip I’ve read - Beanie Feldstein dumped from Funny Girl

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why would they cast someone who can't even sing into the lead role?

She can sing, but not Broadway-caliber, filling-the-shoes-of-Streisand sing.

+1. It is an iconic role, like “A Star Is Born”. After Judy Garland and Barbra Streisand, they cast Lady Gaga. Actually, Lady Gaga would have made a great Fanny.

Yes, Beanie would have been much better suited to a role like one of those in Six where there are a bunch of different personalities AND it's new to audiences. Putting Beanie is such an iconic role was doomed for failure.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone actually see her? I did and she CAN sing and she sounded great! We were prepped for it being awful and she was charming and wonderful. She had all the big belts down (and btw this is not what makes good singing). I think all this criticism is really about something else.

No one said “big belts make good singing,” but when the songs and the role are *known* because they have been performed a certain way, very visibly and famously and popularly, by actresses like Streisand and Menzel and Lea Michele, a certain style is expected.

Like, I think Natalie Merchant is an amazing singer. But she would not be amazing *in that role.* Her voice is amazing in a different way, a different style, for different reasons.

[Anonymous]

I'm not a Lea Michele fan but do you remember the mockery she got when Beanie Feldman was cast? Hundreds of twitter posts memes of Michele's head exploding in rage etc.? This project has been a little toxic from the start, as though one woman's success hastened the other woman's doom or something. It's turned into a "Who will take over the Tonight Show" bitter rivalry, probably not due to any of the three women in question.

I wanted Feldman to succeed; sounds like maybe she could have if circumstances had been different. It's not fair she has to go through all this. It's perhaps not entirely fair that Michele had to go through all that when the casting decision was first made, though given her treatment of the Glee actresses that bothers me a little less. Still. We should all be decent to these actresses, it's a terribly pressure filled life.

[Anonymous]

I saw Funny Girl with Beanie and while she was good in Hello Dolly, she doesn't have 'it' for Funny Girl. Her voice isn't powerful enough.

I saw it again when Julie Benko stood in and she's phenomenal. She doesn't have the name recognition, though, which is what they need from Lea Michele.

I'll probably go see Lea Michele in the role in October or November. I'm excited because I'm a Lea fan and actually going to see her next week in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love that Jane Lynch, who's in Funny Girl, went "Wait, Lea's coming? Hell no!" and noped the heck on out of there.

Ha, this. She was careful to be diplomatic about it of course. I wouldn't pay one red cent to see anything Lea Michelle is in.

For every one of us who wouldn't go, there are 10 tourists to NYC from Flyover America who will scramble for a ticket and remember her as "The girl from Glee." They don't give a sh#t about how she acted on set toward POC or how she got dragged on social media during the BLM movement of June 2020.

Agree, and it makes me sad. Like when LuAnn was drinking and so many 20's women went to her stupid caberet shows just because they could see a famous person. It fed LuAnn's ego in terrible ways.

LuAnn is sober now and still does cabaret. You’re expecting a reality TV star not to have an ego? I honestly don’t understand your issue with seeing a campy show if they want to. She’s not allowed to earn a living?

You clearly weren't watching Real Housewives of NY like I was. She was obsessed with herself, more than all the other women put together. Her caberet thing was all she could talk about. She got stopped by police driving and pulled a Reese "Don't you know who I am?" Witherspoon and wound up in jail. Awful.

LOL, I’ve watched every season. So she tanked, she got help, she’s sober and doing well now. Good for her. Plenty of people tank AND are in show business at the same time…are you new to the world in general? Lots of people are a hot mess and still sell tickets. Why shouldn’t she pursue what she loves? Why shouldn’t she be proud of her success? And by the way, Lu at her worst was still nowhere near as self-obsessed and self-promotional as Bethenney Frankel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I saw Funny Girl with Beanie and while she was good in Hello Dolly, she doesn't have 'it' for Funny Girl. Her voice isn't powerful enough.

I saw it again when Julie Benko stood in and she's phenomenal. She doesn't have the name recognition, though, which is what they need from Lea Michele.

I'll probably go see Lea Michele in the role in October or November. I'm excited because I'm a Lea fan and actually going to see her next week in DC.

DP who never watched Glee or anything else with Lea Michele. I just watched her videos from Glee singing “People” and “My Man”. I got chlls when she sang “My Man”, which was originally sung by Fanny herself. She’s got what it takes, hands down. I’ll bet it becomes a smash.

[Anonymous]

People say it's nepotism but Jonah Hill doesn't really have that much pull does he?

[Anonymous]

To me one of the most impressive things here is that Beanie carried on and doesn’t seem hugely
impacted by being panned. I think it speaks to the secure base she must have from her childhood and sense of self-worth. Many qualified people doubt themselves. It sounds like she was always a poor choice for the role but had confidence in her self. I don’t know about you but it would my nightmare to take a job I wasn’t prepared/didn’t have the aptitude or ability to do.

It also speaks for her charm that people have a lot of empathy for her. In another context, I can see it as white nepotism kid got job she wasn’t talented enough for and bombed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did anyone actually see her? I did and she CAN sing and she sounded great! We were prepped for it being awful and she was charming and wonderful. She had all the big belts down (and btw this is not what makes good singing). I think all this criticism is really about something else.

Her weight...

She is very overweight + unattractive. W/o her family connections, she'd be a nobody.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People say it's nepotism but Jonah Hill doesn't really have that much pull does he?

It's the parents. They've thrown lots of money into getting their kids parts.

(I don't think Beanie or Jonah are bad, for the record. But this part was way above her pay grade.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People say it's nepotism but Jonah Hill doesn't really have that much pull does he?

It's the parents.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact that Lea isn’t going to rehearse in the space is not that uncommon, especially if a show is currently onstage and someone else is preparing to jump in. It’s also a way of being respectful, like the new owners of the house not showing up early to take keys and move in!

I don’t see this as very scandalous. If the reviews are that the lead can’t sing, there you have it. I get that there are many ways to present material and tell a story, but because of Streisand and Lea especially, people know these songs and expect the people singing these songs to have really strong, impressive voices. People have also heard these songs in concerts by Indina Menzel, Chenoweth, etc. Like, come on, you expect these songs to bring down the house with really big belts.

It's the way it went down that is scandalous. You don't often get a Broadway lead quitting the show on Twitter because she overheard they were replacing her.

Well, if she read the reviews, she probably had an inkling this would be a possibility. I’m surprised she didn’t step down herself, instead of continuing on as if she wasn’t tanking the show.[/quote

This! She should have just taken the L and moved on. Instead she hung around but called out sick a ton of times (she did have COVID, but even with that she missed a ton more shows than is acceptable for the lead) and got embroiled in a big, embarrassing gossip fest. If she had left early on, she'd have some embarrassment but everyone would have forgotten about it by now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love that Jane Lynch, who's in Funny Girl, went "Wait, Lea's coming? Hell no!" and noped the heck on out of there.

Ha, this. She was careful to be diplomatic about it of course. I wouldn't pay one red cent to see anything Lea Michelle is in.

I saw her in “Spring Awakening.” I honestly don’t care about offstage antics. Short of actually abusing other people, I don’t care what actors do. Do you know if your accountant is nice to his coworkers? Is your doctor nice to the nursing staff, do you even know? A job is a job and Lea onstage is magic. She has a phenomenal voice.

The "issue" with Lea Michele is that she was not an equal opportunity diva. She seemed to pointedly target her ire toward black and Hispanic cast mates and crew staff.

Heather Morris said the opposite. I don't remember her exact words but it was along the lines of Lea being a b**ch to everyone, not just POC. (Not that that's a ringing endorsement or anything...)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The fact that Lea isn’t going to rehearse in the space is not that uncommon, especially if a show is currently onstage and someone else is preparing to jump in. It’s also a way of being respectful, like the new owners of the house not showing up early to take keys and move in!

I don’t see this as very scandalous. If the reviews are that the lead can’t sing, there you have it. I get that there are many ways to present material and tell a story, but because of Streisand and Lea especially, people know these songs and expect the people singing these songs to have really strong, impressive voices. People have also heard these songs in concerts by Indina Menzel, Chenoweth, etc. Like, come on, you expect these songs to bring down the house with really big belts.

It's the way it went down that is scandalous. You don't often get a Broadway lead quitting the show on Twitter because she overheard they were replacing her.

Well, if she read the reviews, she probably had an inkling this would be a possibility. I’m surprised she didn’t step down herself, instead of continuing on as if she wasn’t tanking the show.

This! She should have just taken the L and moved on. Instead she hung around but called out sick a ton of times (she did have COVID, but even with that she missed a ton more shows than is acceptable for the lead) and got embroiled in a big, embarrassing gossip fest. If she had left early on, she'd have some embarrassment but everyone would have forgotten about it by now.

One of the articles said it could have been spun so much better, that she had to step down due to other commitments, family issue, etc. That they could have handled the transition better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People say it's nepotism but Jonah Hill doesn't really have that much pull does he?

It's the parents.

+1 Her parents have a lot of connections in the industry, and they are close friends with the Platts, who have a lot of Broadway connections.