Patti LaBelle Wants To Play Dolly After Bette Midler

Patti LaBelle wants her shot at Dolly Levi! In an interview with WWD.com she says she was offered the lead role for the current revival four years ago, but turned it down.

"That was something else I said no to. Now [Bette Midler] is doing it. I'm going to check it out and I think I might do it when she leaves - I mean, I would like to" she told WWD.

No word from production sources on any upcoming casting for the production.

Check out the full interview here!

Singer, author, actress, and entrepreneur Patti LaBelle began her career in the early 1960s as lead singer and front woman of Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles. After the group, which had been renamed Labelle, split in 1976, LaBelle began a successful solo career, which has included numerous hits, and two GRAMMY Awards®, as well as multiple GRAMMY® nominations. Over 50 years, she has sold more than 50 million records worldwide. LaBelle has been inducted into the GRAMMY® Hall of Fame, the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the Apollo Legends Hall of Fame and the Songwriters' Hall of Fame. In 2005, the World Music Awards recognized her years in the music business by awarding her the Legend Award. She was included in Rolling Stone on their list of 100 Greatest Singers.

This production of Michael Stewart and Jerry Herman's masterpiece, Hello, Dolly! instantly became the hottest ticket of the year when it broke the record for best first day of ticket sales in Broadway history. By the time it began previews, it had the largest pre-performance advance sale in Broadway history. It previously broke the Shubert Theatre house record over the weeks ending April 2 and April 16 with $1,965,673 and $2,032,256, respectively.

Directed by four-time Tony Award winner Jerry Zaks and choreographed by Tony Award winner Warren Carlyle, Hello, Dolly! began performances at Broadway's Shubert Theatre on March 15, 2017, and officially opened on Thursday, April 20, 2017.

This Hello, Dolly!, the first new production of the classic musical (based on Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker) to appear on Broadway since it opened more than fifty years ago, pays tribute to the original work of legendary director/ choreographer Gower Champion, which has been hailed both then and now as one of the greatest stagings in musical theater history.