Harvey Fierstein: Last News

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’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 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.

The book explored his life and career, having worked his way up from the front porch of his grandmother's home in Durham, North Carolina, to being one of fashion's top individuals.But his 30-year friendship with Wintour eventually became fractured, where he described it as an "iceberg"."I hope that it will not be that forever," he admitted during an interview with Gayle King in 2020.Following the news of his passing, social media erupted with tribute left, right and centre from fans and celebrities alike.Actress Octavia Spencer mourned the loss as she wrote: "My thoughts and prayers are with his loved ones."Film and TV star Viola Davis also shared a photo of herself and Talley together, captioning it: "Rest well King.'Actor Harvey Fierstein branded him a “truly original heart, spirit and mind".

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.

Camille Saviola has sadly passed away at the age of 71.

Camille Saviola, whose many stage and TV roles included the Bajoran religious leader Kai Opaka in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the mother of the hapless Turtle in Entourage and, on Broadway, characters in Nine and Chicago, has died at age 71.