*With just one week before rehearsals were due to start on Broadway’s Cats, star Nicole Scherzinger has pulled out of the production, supposedly because Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber wouldn’t put her name above the title.
According to Page Six, the former Pussycat Doll, who starred as Grizabella in the musical’s London run, requested that her name be above the title for the Broadway show, as well as on the marquee — like it was in London.
The show’s Broadway’s producers said no. According to Page Six, Scherzinger responded by bowing out and returning to her judging gig on UK’s “The X Factor.”
Lloyd Webber was highly upset. “I mean, she’s crazy,” he told the Economist Radio. “But the American producers just took a view — ‘well, fine, we’ll get somebody else,’ because she’s actually not very well-known in America.”
He continued, “I’m furious because I really believe she’s the most fantastically talented girl, and I went out on a limb to get her for the London Palladium here, and it makes me look like an absolute [bleep] with them all.”
He added, “But never mind, there’ll be another girl on Broadway, and Nicole will not get her Tony Award.”
She’s been replaced by UK singer and fellow “X Factor” star Leona Lewis, who’s just arrived in New York for rehearsals, according to the column.
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