Patti LuPone is a big star on Broadway. I've only seen her once on stage there or anywhere. It was the 2008 revival of Gypsy and I thought she did a great job of capturing the nastiness of Mama Rose and a poor job of speaking or singing the words of the play in a manner than most people could understand. My friend Carolyn, who'd never seen the show before, kept whispering "What did she say?" to me and we had very good seats.
So I guess I'd say I'm not a fan but I could be if I saw her in something where I could make out most of what she was saying or singing. I also understand why some people love her.
But some people are not loving her a lot these days as this headline makes clear: Over 500 Broadway Artists Release Open Letter Reprimanding Patti LuPone. She said some things in this recent interview that were pretty nasty towards other performers and there was some arguably-racist stuff in there. They were the kind of comments that make people lose a whole lot of respect for the commenter even when there isn't a somewhat-organized protest as there has been in this case.
Ms. LuPone has issued an apology that is pretty damned thorough and it sounds sincere. We've all seen apologies that try to dodge responsibility with phrases like "I'm sorry if anyone was offended" but this one was pretty thorough. I gather that some people in the theatrical community are willing to accept it and let that be the end of it but some think more outrage is warranted. Looking at this from afar, I'd say it's now a matter of personal reconciliation with those she attacked.
She made a number of mistakes but a big one was saying those things in print instead of in a video interview. If we all saw her say them, we wouldn't have understood half of what she was talking about.