Al Pacino Allegedly Won’t Learn His Lines For His New Broadway Play

Is Al Pacino ok? We’re worried about him.

Let this be a lesson to Broadway casting directors that maybe it’s better to hire actual theater actors than movie stars.

Al Pacino is reportedly ruining David Mamet‘s play China Doll by requiring the production to have teleprompters all over the damn stage. Because he allegedly didn’t bother to learn his damn lines. 

New York Post theater critic Michael Riedel, who attended the play, wrote that it was a “f–cking disaster,” somewhat because of Pacino, but perhaps moreso because of Mamet.

Riedel writes:

Friends of the actor say they’ve never seen him so despondent. He sits in his dressing room after the show “totally lost,” one says. And sources say he’s getting no help from Mamet, who saw two dress rehearsals and the first preview and then vamoosed to California.

….Sources say Pacino seldom looks at his co-star, Christopher Denham, because he’s too busy looking for his lines. Some of them, they say, are fed through the Bluetooth headset worn by Pacino’s character, a billionaire who’s just bought an airplane.

Pacino has also reportedly brushed off the attempts of director Pam MacKinnon to intervene, allegedly snapping at her, “I’m not your f–king puppet, Pam!”

Is it weird that we kind of want to see this play even more now? But seriously, we really do hope Pacino is okay. This sounds a like a real mess.

h/t Slate

Photos by Eamonn M. McCormack / Getty Images

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