Neil Patrick Harris is currently starring in Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway, and his legions of fans – male and female – come out to see his performances pretty regularly. One of them got a little overzealous during one of this week’s performances… and the response she got was less than cordial.
From the New York Post:
Mid-performance, a female fan yelled out, “I love you, Neil!” Harris — who plays a transgender East German punk — yelled back, without missing a beat, in character, “I’m doing something up here, motherf–ker!”
The Post’s Barbara Hoffman reports it was met with rapturous applause.
If that sounds rude as hell, don’t worry – the audience really did love it and it was all in good fun, according to his rep:
“The response to the fan yelling was actually done in character — Neil as Hedwig, not as though Neil stopped the show to respond out of character.”
In fact, the full interaction wasn’t even reported, much less accurately.
Harris’ rep explains, “When the fan initially yelled, ‘I love you, Neil,’ Neil (as Hedwig) then responded, ‘Who’s Neil? I’m not Neil.’ He then looked over at Yitzhak (played by Lena Hall) and said, ‘Are you Neil? You better not be Neil’ followed by Hedwig then offering the quote in question.”
“It was all done in good fun, and fully in the context of the show. The audience went crazy and it really was a light-hearted moment, which is not being properly contextualized in any of these various posts,” adds the spokesperson.
Yeah, yeah, we get it. No need to overcompensate so much, damn – no one thinks NPH is some awful monster or anything. He said what he felt in the moment and everyone thought it was hilarious. Done and over with!