Patti LuPone — the Tony-winning, brassy Broadway legend with a penchant for strong opinions — let everyone know exactly how she feels about ABBA and their hit “Mamma Mia!” musical in a new joint interview with Nathan Lane on Wednesdsay.
To hear her tell it on “The A24 Podcast,” LuPone has never even seen “Mamma Mia!” on stage or on film out of protest against the Swedish pop supergroup of 1970s fame.
“I’ve never seen ‘Mamma Mia!’ I’ve never seen any of the movies. Every time their music’s on, I turn it off,” LuPone said, detailing her hatred for the band. “I protest them.”
“How can you hate ABBA?” Nathan Lane asked, shocked.
Turns out, it has to do with LuPone love of rock ‘n’ roll from the same era. The pop-dance stylings of members Agnetha Fältskog, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad just never sat right with her.
“They became famous in the rock ‘n’ roll era, and I am a devotée of The Band. So ABBA comes — it’s The Band, it’s The Beatles, it’s The Rolling Stones, it’s Three Dog Night. It’s all — it’s rock ‘n’ roll era. And then it’s ABBA,” LuPone said. “I went, ‘What, are you kidding me? You’ve got to be kidding me.’ ‘Dancing Queen’? Give me a break. So I have protested all of it.”
She then chalked it up to her being a “Swiftie — only for The Band.”
The conversation came about between LuPone and Lane — each stars this year in A24 projects “Beau Is Afraid” and “Dicks: The Musical,” respectively — after Lane reminisced on the late Elaine Stritch. He recounted how when she wanted to see a hot-ticketed show, the stage icon would simply walk to the box office 10 minutes before curtain and ask for a single ticket in the back. She’d always get one for free.
“I said, ‘And they always hand over a ticket?’” Lane recalled of Stritch’s story. “She said, ‘Absolutely — except for one show… “Mamma F–kin’ Mia.”‘”
Listen to the full podcast episode here, and watch the ABBA-bashing clip in the Instagram post above.
