Faye Dunaway has been axed from a one-woman show about Oscar winner Katharine Hepburn amid claims she was abusive to staff members backstage in Boston.
Tea At Five was due to move to New York following a three-week run at Boston’s Huntingdon Avenue Theatre but will now open in London next year with a new actress.
In a statement, producers said they had “terminated their relationship” with Dunaway. The 78-year-old is reportedly travelling in Europe and has not yet commented on her dismissal.
Written by Matthew Lombardo, Tea At Five saw Dunaway play an elderly Hepburn recovering from a car accident in 1983, reflecting on her career and affair with Spencer Tracy.
She had already performed the play in a pre-Broadway tryout in Boston between 22 June and 14 July.
The New York Post claims Dunaway created a “hostile” environment backstage and that she “slapped and threw things” at crew members who were trying to put on her wig.
The paper also quotes “sources” that claim she was “frequently late for rehearsals” and could not learn her lines.
Her dismissal comes two years after her appearance at the 2017 Oscars, when she mistakenly named La La Land as the year’s best picture.
Dunaway previously appeared in films such as Chinatown, Mommie Dearest and The Thomas Crown Affair.
She was nominated for an Oscar in 1968 for her role as Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde only to lose out to Hepburn, but she later won the coveted trophy in 1977 for Network.
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