10 Shocking/Surprising Things We Learned About Patti LuPone Today

Patti LuPone just did a Q&A with Time Out New York, in which she talked about playing a community theatre diva in SHOWS FOR DAYS at Lincoln Center and more.

BroadwayWorld can't get enough of this Broadway legend and her insights on the industry. Below, we've rounded up 10 of the most shocking and surprising things we learned from today's interview!

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1. LuPone thinks Times Square is a "disaster".

"I left An American in Paris the other night, and I walked out into a f-ing zoo. It's nuts. And it's so inelegant. It's so crass. It caters to the bottom-feeder. I don't know what the fuck it is."

2. She cried onstage because SHOWS FOR DAYS is "her life."

"Yesterday, I actually started to cry onstage. Because it's my life...Not enough attention is paid to how many people it takes to get you onstage or the ones that train you, the ones that keep you on the right path. A lot of people in my career have taught me very valuable lessons -- good and bad."

3. She has Ethel Merman's jewels from the 1959 Broadway musical HAPPY HUNTING.

Before heading out onstage for the charity concert scene in EVITA, wardrobe supervisor Adelaide Laurino gave LuPone Merman's jewels from the production. "So when I left the show I took them, because I knew that that information wouldn't be passed down to the next Evita, and eventually they would get destroyed."

4. LuPone was "dating some asshole" who broke up with her during LES MISERABLES with the RSC in London.

"It was perfect for Fantine!"

5. Karma is a bitch, especially in theatre.

When asked about her long Broadway hiatus, LuPone responded, "Right? What about that? And it continues to this day...I don't know what it is, because I know how good I am, and that's not a boast. This is a gift from God that I've known since I was four years old...Anything Goes went to London without me. And now Gypsy. What the fuck did I do wrong? What karma is coming back to bite me in the ass?"

6. TV cameos are going to "Patti LuPone her out of the business".

"When people call and say, 'Will you play yourself?' it's like, Okay, but how am I going to get hired after that? I'm not Cher, I'm not Britney Spears...I don't want to be Patti LuPone first. I want to be an actor first."

7. She has "pepper blood".

"My emotional expansiveness isn't American at all, and I have always struggled with that. I went to a psychiatrist once, and he said, 'You have pepper blood.'"

8. Patti has her eye on Lena Hall, Annaleigh Ashford, Jessie Mueller, Cristin Milioti and Kristin Chenoweth.

"I guess what I respond to are the ones -- female or male -- that dare on stage."

9. LuPone doles out deep thoughts in the wee hours of the morning.

"I once said on a London curb at three o'clock in the morning, 'My life is all about either crawling out of or falling into an abyss.'"

10. She holds nothing back.

Of course we already knew that, but it's part of why we love her!

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In SHOWS FOR DAYS, LuPone returns to Lincoln Center Theater, where she starred as Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes (Tony Award nomination, Drama Desk Award), Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics' Circle Award nominations), and her one-woman show Matters of the Heart. A two-time Tony Award winner for her performances as Rose in the 2008 revival of Gypsy and as Eva Peron in Evita, her most recent NY stage performances include Anna 1 in The Seven Deadly Sins with the NY City Ballet, Joanne in Company with theNew York Philharmonic, and the Broadway productions of David Mamet's The Anarchist, An Evening with Patti LuPone and Mandy Patinkin, and John Doyle's production of Sweeney Todd (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Award nominations). She is currently appearing in the Los Angeles Opera production of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles and will be seen in the upcoming season of the Showtime series "Penny Dreadful."

Douglas Carter Beane's SHOWS FOR DAYS, directed by Jerry Zaks, opens June 29 at the Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater (150 West 65 Street).