Lindsay Lohan, in London this week for a celebrity-stocked Jeremy Scott fashion show, told the New York Times she'd been preparing for several months for a potential appearance in an upcoming West End revival of David Mamet's Speed-the-Plow.
Celebrity castings in West End and Broadway shows are usually announced via official press release. But the notoriously unreliable Freaky Friday and Mean Girls star, who has been in and out of rehab and in trouble with the law several times, has never done things the usual way. And the Times's careful phrase "potential appearance" means this is only potential news.
"It's the first time I've done a stage play or anything like that," said the potential stage thespian. "I'm nervous but I'm excited." Though admitting that "I live for fashion," the actress said she was "going back to my West End world" after the Jeremy Scott show rather than attending other London Fashion Week events.
With its story of Hollywood machinations, Speed-the-Plow seems a good fit for a Hollywood actress. Lohan would play "Karen," a studio executive's fill-in secretary who becomes integral to the play's exploration of Hollywood's struggle between artistic quality and the money motive. Madonna, another stage newbie, played the role (to mostly bad reviews) opposite Joe Mantegna and Ron Silver in the Broadway premiere in 1988, which received Tony Award nominations for Best Play and Best Direction of a Play and netted a Tony for Silver.
Alicia Silverstone played "Karen" in a 2006 production in Los Angles. A 2008 Broadway revival featured Elisabeth Moss (also in her Broadway debut), Jeremy Piven and Raúl Esparza. A production that same year at London's Old Vic starred Laura Michelle Kelly, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Goldblum.
