How Is Patti LuPone Back on Broadway Without an Equity Card?

In 2022, Patti LuPone famously announced on Twitter that she had given up her Equity card and had doubts she would ever return to Broadway. What a difference two years makes, as LuPone is now getting ready for opening night of The Roommate, playing now on Broadway at the Booth Theatre.

So how is she now, in 2024, starring in a Broadway show without her Equity card? According to a recent interview with the New York Times, it's not because she has renewed her membership to Actors' Equity Association, but due to the Supreme Court’s 1963 “financial core” ruling.

The ruling allows those seeking financial core status to pay an amount equal to union dues as a fee. Financial core members (or fee-paying non-members) are not technically union members, nor are they allowed to run or vote in union elections.

LuPone most recently won a Tony Award for her perormance as Joanne in Company. A two-time Tony Award winner for her performances in Evita and the most recent Broadway production of Gypsy, her New York stage credits include War Paint (Tony, Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle Award nominations); Shows for Days; The Seven Deadly Sins (New York City Ballet); Company (New York Philharmonic); Woman on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Tony, Drama Desk, OCC Award nominations); Sweeney Todd (Tony, Drama Desk, OCC nominations); Noises Off; The Old Neighborhood; Master Class; Anything Goes (Tony nomination, Drama Desk Award); Oliver!; Accidental Death of An Anarchist; The Water Engine; and The Robber Bridegroom (Tony and Drama Desk nominations). In addition to Company, her London stage credits include Master Class; Sunset Boulevard (Olivier Award nomination); The Cradle Will Rock, and Les Miserables, for which she won the Olivier Award, the first American artist to do so, for her performances in both musicals. Opera: The Ghosts of Versailles (Los Angeles Opera), To Hell and Back (San Francisco Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra), The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Los Angeles Opera debut), Regina (Kennedy Center).