Patti LuPone declares she ‘will never watch’ Taylor Swift Cats movie as she ‘hated’ stage musical

She may have ended her feud with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

But Patti LuPone did not mince words when discussing his smash hit musical Cats on Watch What Happens Live this Monday.

The 71-year-old Broadway icon declared she ‘will never watch’ the Cats film starring Taylor Swift as she ‘hated’ the original stage show.

‘I will never watch it. I just saw the revival of it and walked out after the first act. I saw it originally in London and hated it, and so I’m not surprised that it bombed onscreen. From one to 10, how about zero?’ she said with a grin.

Patti tore into Cats while dishing with Watch What Happens Live host Andy Cohen and drag queen Alyssa Edwards.

She also said she was ‘pissed off’ that Bernadette Peters was cast as Madame Rose in the 2003 Broadway revival of the 1959 musical Gypsy.

Patti went on to play the same role on Broadway five years later and won a Tony as Rose, which Bernadette had not.

Since the 1980s Bernadette has been a muse for Gypsy lyricist Stephen Sondheim whose work Patti has also begun to play frequently more recently.

Patti said on Watch What Happens Live that 1917 director Sam Mendes, who directed the 2003 revival of Gypsy, initially ‘offered’ the role to her.

She shared that she found out from reading Liz Smith’s gossip column that Bernadette had bagged the role instead.

When Patti finally got in touch with Sam he sent her ‘a very cold note’ that she ‘was out’ because Gypsy’s book writer Arthur Laurents preferred Bernadette.

Although he was full of praise for Bernadette’s performance Arthur then went on to direct the 2008 revival in which he cast Patti.

Patti became a star in the 1979 original Broadway cast of Andrew’s musical Evita, less than two years before Cats opened in London.

Cats went on to become the longest-running show in Broadway history until it was overtaken by Andrew’s later show The Phantom Of The Opera.

Although last year’s movie version directed by Tom Hooper featured an all-star cast including Jennifer Hudson, Ian McKellen, Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Rebel Wilson, Jason Derulo and James Corden, it was a critical and commercial disaster. 

Andrew’s feud with Patti began in the 1990s when he fired her from the lead role of Norma Desmond in his musical of the legendary 1950 film Sunset Boulevard.

Although Patti played Norma in the original London production and was signed to reprise the role in New York, she was replaced for Broadway by Glenn Close.

Patti revealed in her memoirs that after months of rumors she learned of her firing in Liz Smith’s gossip column – and responded by trashing her London dressing room. 

She fought Andrew in court and spent her $1 million payout to install what she called the Andrew Lloyd Webber Memorial Pool at her country house. 

However she agreed to sing Don’t Cry For Me Argentina from Evita for a tribute to Andrew and fellow composer Leonard Bernstein at the 2018 Grammy Awards.

‘This is detente, ladies and gentleman,’ she said at a rehearsal for the gig before hugging Andrew, according to Michael Riedel’s New York Post gossip column.

Meanwhile Patti’s comments about Bernadette came one day after they both appeared on a livestream 90th birthday tribute concert to Stephen Sondheim.

Three years ago on Watch What Happens Live Patti was famously scathing about Madonna’s performance in the Eva movie, branding the pop act a ‘movie killer’ who was ‘dead behind the eyes’ and ‘cannot act her way out of a paper bag.’