Broadway Legend Chita Rivera to Release Memoir in Early 2023 via HarperOne

Chita Rivera is ready to share her story…

The 89-year-old half-Puerto Rican Tony Award-winning actress, singer, dancer and Broadway legend will be recapping her illustrious career in a memoir for HarperOne, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Chita RiveraThe book, with a publication release date set for early 2023 and title to be determined, will also be published simultaneously by Harper Español.

Rivera will be writing the book with Emmy-winning TV commentator and arts journalist Patrick Pacheco.

Rivera is one of the most nominated actors in Tony Awards history, garnering 10 bids during her long career. Her credits include West Side StoryBye Bye Birdie, Chicago and Kiss of the Spider Woman.

She plans to detail her associations with Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Hal Prince, Gower Champion, John Kander, Fred Ebb, Jerry Herman, and other titans of the Broadway world.

She will also share her stories about Gwen Verdon, Elaine Stritch, Dick Van Dyke, Liza Minnelli, and Sammy Davis Jr., among others.

“I’ve long considered writing my memoirs, but I’ve never been one to look back…until now,” Rivera said in a statement. “Now it feels right, and with Patrick Pacheco, I couldn’t be more pleased to pass on my experience to a new generation. I hope my words and thoughts about my life and career resonate and readers just might discover some things about me they never knew.”

Lisa Sharkey, SVP director of creative development, HarperCollins Publishers, acquired the North American rights for English and World for Spanish, first serial, and audio from Mel Berger at WME.

The book will have Rakesh Satyal as executive editor, HarperOne Publishing Group, and will be edited with HarperEspañol editor Ariana Rosado-Fernández.

Gloria Estefan to Host This Year’s Kennedy Center Honors

Gloria Estefan is returning with Honors

The 63-year-old Cuban Grammy-winning singer-songwriter and actress will host the 43rd Annual Kennedy Center Honors in June.

Gloria Estefan

It’ll be her second time hosting the event, following her previous stint as emcee in 2018.

The event will be broadcast on CBS on Sunday, June 6, 8:00 pm ET/PT, and will available to stream live and on demand on the CBS app and Paramount+.

Estefan received a Kennedy Center Honors in 2017.

This year’s previously announced recipients are Dick Van Dyke, Debbie Allen, Joan Baez, Garth Brooks and violinist Midori.

CBS has broadcast the event every year since it’s debut 43 years ago.

Traditionally held in early December, last year’s Kennedy Center Honors special was postponed until May 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Joan Baez Among This Year’s Recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors

Joan Baez is set to receive a special honor in Our Nation’s Capital.

The 80-year-old half-Mexican American contemporary folk singer has been selected to receive the 43rd Kennedy Center Honors alongside Garth Brooks, violinist Midori, choreographer Debbie Allen and the ageless Dick Van Dyke.

Joan Baez

“It has been my life’s joy to make art,” said Baez in a statement. It’s also been my life’s joy to make, as the late Congressman John Lewis called it, ‘good trouble.’ What luck to have been born with the ability to do both; each one giving strength and credibility to the other.”

Traditionally held in December, the 2020 edition of the Kennedy Center Honors was postponed to May 2021 due to the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Live events and filming are planned for the week of May 17-22. The Honors Gala will be recorded for broadcast on CBS as a two-hour primetime special that will air on June 6 at 9:00 pm ET/PT.

But the pandemic will have an impact on how the event is staged, with live-filmed tributes and virtual moments to take the place of the traditional event in a packed Kennedy Center Opera House.

“The center’s entire campus will come alive with small, in-person events and re-envisioned virtual tributes. Featuring multiple events for physically-distant audiences in locations across the Kennedy Center’s campus…Programs for each event will encompass both performances and speaking tributes for the honorees,” according to a statement. “Virtual events will also be held throughout the week beginning May 17, and the viability of additional in-person events will be considered as COVID-19 safety protocols evolve over the upcoming months…An honoree medallion ceremony for the honorees and a limited audience will be hosted by the Kennedy Center during [the week of] May 17–22.”

Joan Baez

President-elect Joe Biden is expected to attend the Honors Gala, as presidents traditionally have done (barring a national crisis). Donald Trump was the first president to decline the invitation every year of his term.

This is the first time in five years that a majority of the honorees have been women. Carole King, Rita Moreno and Cicely Tyson were three of the five honorees in 2015.

“The Kennedy Center Honors serves as a moment to celebrate the remarkable artists who have spent their lives elevating the cultural history of our nation and world,” said David M. Rubenstein, Kennedy Center Chairman.

Here’s a look at each of this year’s honorees:

Joan Baez: The folk legend had three top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 in the 1960s, including Farewell, Angelina. Her classic version of Robbie Robertson’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971. Baez was just 21 when she made the cover of Time in November 1962. Baez has one of the longest spans of Grammy nominations in history, from 1962 to 2018. She has yet to win a Grammy in competition (despite nine nods), but she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Recording Academy in 2007.

Garth Brooks: The country star, 58, is one of the best-selling recording artists in history. The RIAA lists him second only to The Beatles, with 157 million albums sold in the U.S. (compared to 183 million for the Fab Four). He has had nine No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, including Ropin’ the Wind, which topped the chart for 18 weeks, still the record for a country album. Brooks has amassed 14 CMA Awards, including a record seven awards for entertainer of the year. He was artist of the decade for the 1990s at the ACM Awards. He has won two Grammys. He received the Gershwin Prize for Popular Song last year. He made the cover of Time in 1992 in a story headlined “Country’s Big Boom.”

Midori: The Japanese-born American violinist, 49, was just 19 when she received her first (and to date only) Grammy nomination for best classical performance, instrumental soloist (without orchestra) for the album Paganini: 24 Caprices For Solo Violin Op. 1. She made her debut with the New York Philharmonic at age 11 as a surprise guest soloist at the New Year’s Eve Gala in 1982. 

Dick Van Dyke: The actor, 95, won three Emmys for The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-66), which is widely regarded as the granddaddy of smart, sophisticated sitcoms. He also won an Emmy in 1977 for Van Dyke & Company, which took outstanding variety or music series. He was inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame in 1995. He won a Tony in 1961 for Bye, Bye Birdie (in which he introduced the jaunty “Put on a Happy Face”) and a Grammy for 1964’s Mary Poppins (in which he took the lead in singing the Oscar-winning “Chim Chim Cher-ee”).

Debbie Allen: The actress, dancer, choreographer, singer-songwriter, director and producer, 70, has won three Emmys for choreography: two for Fame and one for Motown 30: What’s Goin’ On. She also received two Tony nods for acting in revivals of West Side Story (1980) and Sweet Charity (1986). She is a former member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.

Lopez to Star in NBC’s Live Television Adaptation of the Hit Broadway Musical “Bye Bye Birdie”

Everything’s coming up Rosie for Jennifer Lopez

NBC has slated Bye Bye Birdie as its next live musical, with the 46-year-old Puerto Rican actress/singer set as the star.

Jennifer Lopez

Lopez will executive produce with Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas, Benny Medina, Craig Zadan and Neil Meron, and her company Nuyorican Productions will produce with Universal Television.

Harvey Fierstein will write the television adaptation, with the special set to air in 2017.

The original Broadway production of Bye Bye Birdie won the Tony Award in 1961 for best musical. It starred Dick Van Dyke, who also won a Tony for best actor in a musical, as Albert Peterson, the manager of rock star Conrad Birdie, and Chita Rivera as Rosie Alvarez, Albert’s girlfriend and secretary. When Birdie is drafted into the Army, Albert and Rosie concoct a plan to have Birdie give “one last kiss” to a small-town high school girl live on The Ed Sullivan Show before heading off for induction.

The show was adapted into a 1963 feature film starring Van Dyke and Janet Leigh. A short-lived 2010 Broadway revival starred John Stamos and Gina Gershon.

Lopez, who stars in NBC’s Shades of Blue, will play the part of Rosie in the NBC version. No other casting has yet been announced.

Under Greenblatt, NBC has made a tradition of airing live musicals in December, where the network believes the holiday time is a fertile ground for family-friendly co-viewing. The first, Sound of Music Live! starring Carrie Underwood, aired in 2013 and was watched by 18.6 million viewers. That effort was followed by Peter Pan Live! starring Allison Williams and Christopher Walken, and The Wiz Live! starring Queen Latifah and Shanice Williams.

Zadan and Meron have served as exec producers on all four NBC live musicals, and Fierstein previously wrote the television adaptation for The Wiz Live! and wrote the adaptation for NBC’s upcoming Hairspray Live!, which will air on December 7.

Miranda In Talks to Join Walt Disney Studios’ “Mary Poppins” Sequel

Lin-Manuel Miranda may be ready for a little Chim Chim Cher-ee.

The 36-year-old Puerto Rican composer, lyricist, rapper and actor, best known for creating and starring in the Broadway musicals In the Heights and Hamilton, is in talks to join the Walt Disney Studios’ planned sequel to Mary Poppins. Emily Blunt is in talks for the lead role, played by Julie Andrews in the 1964 film.

Lin-Manuel Miranda

Disney had no comment, but a source with knowledge of the project says the untitled film will connect with Mary’s charges, Jane and Michael Banks, now grown and with Michael’s own three kids in need of a nanny. Mary and her “lamplighter” friend Jack — kin to Bert the chimney sweep played by Dick Van Dyke opposite Andrews in the film — help the family rediscover the joy and wonder missing from their lives.

Miranda’s Disney ties already include the bar scene music for Star Wars: The Force Awakens and the score for the animated film Moana, coming in November.

According to the source, the new film will be set in Depression-era London and include material drawn from the seven Mary Poppins books writer P.L. Travers’ published between 1935 and 1988 following the initial novel.

Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman will be composing original songs and an all-new score. David Magee is attached to write the screenplay. Rob Marshall is attached to direct.

Disney and Marshall are working with the Travers estate, and Mary Poppins composer Richard Sherman is reputedly aware and supportive of the project. Word of the talks first appeared earlier today in Variety.