For die-hard Broadway fans, Patti Lupone is a Goddess. She won a Tony for Evita, at the beginning of her career, 45 years ago and today she is in the Marvel universe, as the witch Lilia Calderu, alongside Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Haan) in Agatha All Along. At the age of 75, she is magical.

One of the main scenes of the second episode of the series is when Agatha gathers her coven (a meeting of witches to perform religious rituals and rites) to travel through the Witches’ Road and recover their powers. To open the portal they need to sing. It was such a powerful moment that it was one of the highlights of the Disney panel at Comicon, with the actresses on stage singing live. Everyone, including Kathryn, was nervous about being on stage next to Patti.

“I just thought I was singing loudly, out of tune,” Kathryn said in a video on Tiktok. “I just thought, Patti, can you hear this? How embarrassing!” she said laughing. And the joke of the scene is that Lilia is accused of “being out of tune.” Anyone who knows Patti gets the joke!

Patti Lupone is royalty on Broadway because it is in the theater that she dedicates her Art. Born into a family of musicians and actors, she was in the first graduating class of the famous Drama Division of the Julliard School in 1972 and starred in several classic plays, including some of the first texts by David Mamet, with whom she is a friend. She became an international star with Evita, and was in the original cast of several classics such as Les Miserables and Sunset Boulevard, to name a few, but her strong temperament and perfectionism soon gave way to her fame as a Diva.

There are so many legends about Patti’s fights or improvisations on stage that it’s hard to pick just one. From the time she made headlines when she stopped a performance of Gypsy (for which she won another Tony) because she noticed someone taking a picture, to the most radical one in 2015, when she snatched the phone from a woman who spent the entire first act of the comedy Shows for Days texting. I would be terrified of going through that! I’ve said a thousand times that I saw Patti Lupone playing Maria Callas on stage and yes, it was one of the most magical nights of my life.

Hollywood has never had a big hold on the actress’s career and life. In general, to avoid being away from the stage for too long, she accepted supporting roles such as Witness (1985) and Driving Miss Daisy (1989), among others. On TV, she spent five years in the cast of the drama series Life Goes On, where she played a mother with three children, one with Down syndrome, but she also appeared in series such as Law & Order, Will & Grace, Ugly Betty, Oz, 30 Rock, and Girls.

The “half-witch” turn in recent years began with the gothic thriller Penny Dreadful and American Horror Story: Coven, somewhat anticipating her appearance as Lilia Calderu in Agatha All Along, where she has even greater prominence.

Lilia Calderu is the witch who reads Tarot and claims to speak to the dead, the first one invited by Agatha to form the coven. Lilia ends up having great importance because she can see the future and communicate with supernatural beings, even though she has not yet mastered her talents and is afraid of them. For fans of the comic, Lilia’s presence is a sign that there’s a good chance she’ll enter Dr. Strange’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) plot because she’s the guardian of the Book of Cagliostro, a role that’s been in her family for generations, and she eventually becomes an ally of the hero doctor, but many things will probably be adapted.

In any case, I am already glued to the screen because of Kathryn Haan, and Audrey Plaza. Adding Patti Lupone? It made Agatha All Along a must-see. And the song The Ballad of the Witches, an instant classic, is already on the Halloween playlist. How could you not sing it all the time?

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