Harvey Fierstein Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

The world is mourning the death of Angela Lansbury, who died at age 96 after making her mark on stage, film and television during a career spanning eight decades.

The Obie Awards, the venerable honors for outstanding Off Broadway and Off Off Broadway productions, is doing away with its annual ceremony and will instead use the funds to provide winners with grants ranging from $1,000-$5,000.

Brent Lang Executive Editor After one major cast change and a lot of off-stage drama, “Funny Girl” has recouped its $16.5 million capitalization, the producers of the Broadway revival announced on Monday. At one point, that kind of news would have seemed very unlikely. When “Funny Girl” opened in April 2022 at the August Wilson Theatre, Beanie Feldstein had the starring role of Vaudeville legend Fanny Brice, a part that had originally been filled by Barbra Streisand.

Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles,” famed director Jerome Robbins kept asking producer Hal Prince, “What is this show about?”“For God’s sake, Jerry,” Prince replied. “It’s about tradition!”Its tryout in Detroit, Mich., where it ran over three and a half hours, was poorly received by critics.Despite those hurdles, “Fiddler,” starring Zero Mostel as Tevye and Beatrice Arthur as the Matchmaker, became a huge hit on Broadway, running eight years (a long time back then) and spawning multiple revivals and the Oscar-nominated 1971 Norman Jewison film starring Topol. Harnick’s lyrics are ingrained in the minds of millions: “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match, find me a find, catch me a catch;” “If I were a rich man”; “To life! To life! L’Chaim!”  The original production won the Tony Award for Best Musical, and Bock and Harnick won the Tony for Best Composer and Lyricist.One actor who played Tevye the milkman during the 2005 revival of “Fiddler” was Harvey Fierstein, who mourned Harnick in a statement.“As a devotee of theater, as a Jew, as a person who admires brilliance and gentility, I loved Sheldon Harnick and today he left us,” Fierstein said.

Lea Michele has enjoyed monumental success since formally joining the cast of the Broadway hit Funny Girlin September 2022.But while she's earned praise for deftly portraying the coveted role of the beloved character Fanny Brice, there's a simple reason why she's not eligible for a Tony Award.According to the Tony Awards' rules and regulations under eligibility requirements, «in order to be eligible, an actor or actress must perform in the role on the production's opening night and must perform in the minimum number of performances to which the producer of such production must invite and make tickets available to Tony voters as required by Rule 2(a)vi).»And therein lies the issue — the original actress who performed on opening night was Beanie Feldstein, who left in the wake of the show being at risk of closing due to poor reviews and lackluster ticket sales. That all changed after Michele formally replaced Feldstein in September.The former star's debut came on Sept.

He’s known best for competing on the 11th season of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” but Andrew Levitt — also known as Nina West — is now headlining the new Broadway in Atlanta touring version of “Hairspray,” hitting the ATL June 30.

“Funny Girl” has extended its Broadway run until September, as principal players Lea Michele, Ramin Karimloo, Jared Grimes and Tovah Feldshuh have all signed on for more show dates.After breaking an all-time box-office record at Broadway’s August Wilson Theater, “Funny Girl” is laughing itself all the way back on stage for more dates, with the show coming to an end in New York City on Sept. 3. The American tour will officially open at Providence Performing Arts Center in Providence, from Sept.

Barry Grove will step down as the Executive Producer of Manhattan Theatre Club, a major Broadway and Off Broadway institution, at the conclusion of the 2022-2023 season.

Peacock has announced that the groundbreaking romantic comedy Bros — the first from a major studio to center on two gay men — will begin streaming exclusively on the platform on December 2nd.

died in her sleep on Tuesday at age 96.“Seinfeld” star Jason Alexander was among the mourners, tweeting out a message of sorrow: “The great Angela Lansbury – one of the most versatile, talented, graceful, kind, witty, wise, classy ladies I’ve ever met has left us,” he wrote. “Her huge contribution to the arts and the world remains always.”Comedian and thespian Mario Cantone also responded with a photo of him and Lansbury, writing, “she was a glorious one.”“Rest In Peace Great Dame Angela Lansbury,” he added.Playwright and screenwriter Harvey Fierstein also shared a photographic memory, declaring, “She, my darlings, was EVERYTHING!”RIP Angela LansburyA remarkable talent…She started out as an ingenue in movies like #Gaslightthen became a TV star with #MurderSheWroteA very long career where she kept reinventing herself pic.twitter.com/2E2oJm0KTRAngela Lansbury – She, my darlings, was EVERYTHING! pic.twitter.com/MLKlRNjxhA“Star Trek” and “Mulan” alum George Takei added, “Angela Lansbury, who graced the stage for decades winning five Tony awards and brought the sleuthing Jessica Fletcher into our living rooms for a dozen years, has passed.”“A tale old as time, our beloved Mrs.

wrote comedian, actor and thespian Mario Cantone. “She was a glorious one.”Comedian Kathy Griffin spoke for the larger community of fans of Lansbury: “I cannot tell you how many ladies and gays are crushed, moved and feeling nostalgic about something in the past with the news of the passing of the fabulous Dame Angela Lansbury.”Tony-Award winning playwright Harvey Fierstein tweeted, “Angela Lansbury – She, my darlings, was EVERYTHING!”“2012. And this VERY excited #theaterkid got to meet her, after one of our shows at Godspell,” wrote actress Uzo Aduba.

A New Yorker Festival panel with actor and comedian Billy Eichner and playwright and actor Harvey Fierstein, who both appear in Bros, turned into an onstage post-mortem about the gay rom-com’s disappointing opening.

A heartfelt, hilarious classic Hollywood-style romantic comedy, Bros (★★★★☆) doesn’t screw around with the formula of forebears like When Harry Met Sally or You’ve Got Mail. Rather, the movie — produced by Judd Apatow, directed by Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), and co-written by Stoller and star Billy Eichner — delivers fresh takes on tropes that worked for those films, while trafficking in jokes and situations they never touched.With tart dialogue and earnest intent, Bros leans into the romance of the giddy first kiss, and the determined dash across town to declare one’s love right now in front of an audience of awww-ing friends who will dance out the scene in a joyful montage.The filmmakers’ attention to genre detail includes layering Bros with that rare, underrated quality of a good romantic comedy: a believable resistance to romance. To stir the pot, somebody or something has to be standing in the way of happily ever after.Here, the culprits are our lead pair of lovebirds, commitment-shy New Yorkers Bobby (Eichner) and Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), who at least commit to a text-assisted dance of hooking up and sort of dating, after meeting at a club.Their rocky progress towards a climax, or several climaxes, follows a familiar rom-com path, but with both the rom and the com rendered through the specific lens of Bobby and Aaron’s modern gay experience.

Billy Eichner has his list of deal-breakers. ET spoke to Eichner at the premiere of his new rom-com, , where he shared what he won't put up with in his own dating life.«Oh man, people trying really hard to be funny,» Eichner said was his number one deal-breaker.

Jennie Punter Tucked in a corner of the Catskills, Casa Susanna was a modest private resort where cross-dressing heterosexual men and transgender women gathered on summer weekends through the 1950s and ‘60s to live as their true selves, dressed in the ladies’ fashion of the day and engaging in bourgeois social activities such as taking snapshots.   Over the past 15 years, a handful of articles, academic research, and photography exhibitions (and let’s not forget the 2014 Tony-nominated play by Harvey Fierstein) have gradually opened the door to this secret subculture of Cold War America. Now “Casa Susanna,” a new documentary by French filmmaker Sébastien Lifshitz (“Wild Side,” “Little Girl”), flings it open.

Billy Eichner’s “Bros” just make history at the Toronto International Film Festival? It certainly felt like it. The Universal movie is breaking all kinds of barriers: It’s the first gay rom-com ever made by a major studio, the first with an all openly LGBTQ cast and Eichner is the first openly gay man to ever write and star in a studio movie. Audiences finally got to see the movie for themselves in Toronto on Friday night and, judging by the shrieks of laughter throughout the screening, it was a hit. “I want to thank TIFF for letting a comedy into a movie festival!” Eichner yelled into the audience before the film rolled, making a valid point about the dearth of studio comedies that world premiere at top international film festivals.

Lea Michele had a monumental day on Tuesday! Before hitting the stage for her opening night performance as Fanny Brice in  on Broadway, she celebrated a tearful motherhood milestone. «Today is a special and important day that within the blink of an eye was here...» she wrote on her Instagram Story, following up with a photo of her two-year-old son, Ever, wearing a monogrammed backpack as he embarked on his first day of Little School.«I cried as I tied your little shoes this morning,» she wrote. «I feel like just yesterday you were born.

Lea Michele’s parade as the former “Glee” star made her long-anticipated debut in Broadway’s “Funny Girl” revival. Before Michele could sing a note in her crystalline soprano, the crowd at the August Wilson Theatre on Tuesday leapt to its feet as soon as she appeared on stage, making it difficult to hear the show’s famous opening line, “Hello, gorgeous.” She would receive six standing ovations in all, crescendoing in a final, rafters-shaking round of applause. It’s been a long time coming for Michele, who has spent a good portion of her career (unofficially) campaigning to embody the incandescent comic and chanteuse Fanny Brice on stage. Her obsession with “Funny Girl” became lore on “Glee,” where her character Rachel Berry regularly belted the musical’s greatest hits — including “Don’t Rain on My Parade,” “I’m the Greatest Star” and “People” — during the show’s six seasons. A public audition tape, of sorts.

Lea Michele's first night as Fanny Brice was nothing short of a success. According to multiple reports, Michele wowed audiences while making her debut in Broadway's .Michele stepped into the role Tuesday night for the first time, replacing Beanie Feldstein, who left the broadway show sooner than expected in July. Both  and  reported that the  alum received four standing ovations at the August Wilson Theatre from a star-studded audience that included Michele's castmate Jonathan Groff, creator Ryan Murphy and Harvey Fierstein, who added new material to the musical revival. Drew Barrymore and Zachary Quinto were also said to have been in the audience for the show's opening night.Michele reportedly received her first standing ovation upon her entrance, and there were at least three more before the end of the first act.More ovations were said to have followed throughout the evening, including one at the final curtain, which saw a sobbing Michele and co-star Tovah Feldshuh — who also made her  debut Tuesday -- accepting large bouquets of white roses.So far Lea Michele has gotten four standing ovations at this Funny Girl performanceIt’s intermission at #FunnyGirl, and so far Lea Michele has gotten 4 standing ovations also shared footage from the show, including a clip of Michele taking her first bow as Brice.Lea Michele takes her first bow as Fanny Brice at #FunnyGirl on Broadway.

Lea Michele is the toast of Broadway!

Four standing ovations before intermission. Sounds like Lea Michele’s first night as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl is going, well, gleefully.

Universal’s Bros, the gay romantic comedy starring, co-written and executive produced by Billy Eichner, is heading to the Toronto International Film Festival for its world premiere ahead of its Sept. 30 release.

Wilson Chapman editorIn September, Billy Eichner will star in the gay rom-com “Bros,” which has made headlines for featuring an all-LGBTQ cast of actors. On the MTV Movie & TV Awards red carpet in Santa Monica on Sunday, Eichner talked with Variety about why having an all-queer cast for the Universal film was so “important” to him.“So often in Hollywood, a lot of the great LGBTQ roles historically have gone to straight actors, and they win awards for it.

Billy Eichner is taking his brand of comedy from the streets to the theaters by co-writing and starring in the first-ever, R-rated gay rom-com from a major studio.

John Waters‘s lovable 1988 indie film about a big girl with big dreams in ’60s-era Baltimore danced its way to wild success on Broadway, courtesy of the savvy, perfectly realized musical adaptation by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman.The life and creative partners won the 2003 Tony Award for Best Original Score, just one of eight total trophies racked up by the heart-warming Hairspray, including the top trophy as Best Musical and wins for the show’s director Jack O’Brien, book writers Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan, and three members of the original cast, led by Harvey Fierstein, who donned drag to play the show’s leading matriarch Edna Turnblad.“There was no gay agenda behind Edna being played by a man,” Shaiman told Metro Weekly in 2005. “First of all, it’s just there because that’s the way it was in the movie.

EXCLUSIVE: Jai Rodriguez (Bosch: Legacy) has wrapped a role in Nicholas Stoller’s groundbreaking LGBTQ+ rom-com Bros for Universal Pictures. He’s set to star alongside previously announced cast members including Billy Eichner, Luke Macfarlane, TS Madison, Miss Lawrence, Symone, Guillermo Diaz, Guy Branum, Monica Raymund, Jim Rash, Harvey Fierstein, Bowen Yang, Amanda Bearse, Dot-Marie Jones and more.

Billy Eichner tells ET’s Kevin Frazier at CinemaCon 2022’s Big Screen Achievement Awards, where he was named Comedy Star of the Year. The recognition comes as Eichner — who has gone from the breakout star of to one of Ryan Murphy’s ensemble players -- takes the lead in, the first gay romantic comedy released by a major studio. Not only that, but the upcoming R-rated comedy co-written by Eichner and Nicholas Stoller, who also directs, features a cast entirely made up of out LGBTQ actors, from Luke Macfarlane to Harvey Fierstein to Bowen Yang.

Wilson Chapman editorThe bar at the August Wilson Theater, a lounge the theater’s owner Jordan Roth opened last year, was quiet after the curtain fell over Broadway’s first revival of “Funny Girl.”Save the chatter of interviews to the press and some small talk over sandwiches laid out for those who stayed behind, the atmosphere inside the theater in New York City on Sunday was hushed, subdued even, after the opening night of a historic musical: For the first time in 58 years, not since it first opened with an unknown Barbra Streisand in its leading role, “Funny Girl” is again on Broadway.Directed by Michael Mayer with a revised book by Harvey Fierstein, the revival stars Beanie Feldstein as Fanny Brice. In the lobby of the theater, leaning against the wall after a barrage of press and her opening night bows, Feldstein could use a second to breathe.“I’m a woman who needs to be distracted,” she said, thoughtful and sincere with her words.

Matthew Broderick’s first experience at a gay bar was short-lived.

Frank Rizzo “You ever feel like there’s someone watching from the shadows?” asks Beanie Feldstein’s Fanny Brice, as haunting apparitions from the Ziegfeld star’s past waft in and out in a kind of “Fanny’s ‘Follies’.”The problem with this uninspired revival of “Funny Girl” — which opened at the August Wilson Theatre on Sunday, marking the show’s Broadway return after nearly 60 years — is not simply the singular ghost of she who shall not be named. (Alright: It’s Barbra Steisand.) Rather, the issue here is the production’s inability to live up to its star-making potential that would have made us once again forgive the simplistic, sentimental and sanitized original book credited to Isobel Lennart.

Smartly sidestepping the obvious comparison from the start – the line-reading of “Hello gorgeous” sounds more conversational, less sing-songy than the one etched in our brains for all these decades – Broadway’s new Funny Girl revival doesn’t so much make a grand play for replacement as a peaceful offering for coexistence: The show that made Barbra Streisand a musical theater icon likely won’t do the same for its latest star, but neither is it cause for grumbling how-dare-shes.

Naman Ramachandran The post-COVID U.K. theater scene is getting a boost with the revival of “Kinky Boots” and “John Gabriel Borkman.”The Tony and Olivier award-winning musical “Kinky Boots,” based on the 2005 Miramax film written by Geoff Deane and Tim Firth, is written by Harvey Fierstein and features Grammy award-winning music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper. It debuted at Chicago’s Bank of America Theatre in 2012, bowed on Broadway in 2013 and at London’s West End in 2015.

K.J. Yossman Read all about it – “Newsies” is coming to the U.K.The hit musical from Disney legend Alan Menken (“Beauty and the Beast”) and Jack Feldman (“A Goofy Movie”), with a book by Harvey Fierstein (“Mulan”), is set to make its U.K. debut in Nov.

I Was Better Last Night” (Knopf), his memoir out March 1. “What I did was pass out … I hadn’t had a solid bowel movement in months.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans EditorThe world of fashion and entertainment is paying tribute to André Leon Talley. The former editor-at-large of U.S. Vogue died on Tuesday at the age of 73.Talley’s career in fashion journalism spanned six decades.

LOS ANGELES -- “Jeopardy!” champion Amy Schneider is adding to her list of bragging rights and admirers.Already the highest-earning female contestant in the quiz show's history and the woman with the longest winning streak, on Friday she became one of only four “Jeopardy!” players to reach seven figures in regular-season winnings.She's collected $1.02 million in 28 victories, solidifying her 4th-place position on the list that includes Ken Jennings with $2.5 million; James Holzhauer, $2.46 million, and Matt Amodio, $1.52 million.Schneider, who's also fourth in consecutive wins, will compete again Monday.Poised and affable on TV and in an interview with The Associated Press, she doesn't seem the gloating type. But she is tickled by the fact that she's fulfilled a prediction made by her 8th-grade classmates in Dayton, Ohio: She was voted most likely to be a “Jeopardy!” contestant, based on her geography and spelling bee prowess.More significantly, she's the first transgender person to qualify for the show's tournament of champions.