Richard Grenell, President Donald Trump's envoy for special missions, told Newsmax on Friday that reports of some "Les Misérables" cast members sitting out a June 11 show at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts because the president will be in attendance is "fake news."
"It's a fake news story completely started from CNN who heard through the grapevine anonymous sources that there were 10 to 12 cast members that were going to boycott and so the show was going to be shut down," Grenell, appointed by Trump as interim president of the artistic hub of Washington, D.C., told "Finnerty" and guest host David Harris Jr. "That couldn't be further from the truth.
"We talked to the producers, and the producers are well-prepared that if anyone calls in sick in some sort of protest, which they don't believe will happen, but if there is a call-in-sick moment that they will just replace them."
Grenell said he told the producers if any cast members do call in sick because they can't perform in front of a Republican president, "they should be told unequivocally that they're not welcomed at the Kennedy Center at all."
"We don't have people who only perform for one side of the aisle," Grenell said. "We're not going to have people who say, I can't perform for a Republican because guess what? Every single night of this show in Washington, D.C., they're going to be Republicans in the audience. There's going to be Democrats in the audience.
"I hope that we have people sitting next to each other that voted for [Vermont Sen.] Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, and you don't even know who the person sitting next to you voted for, because you don't ask. You sit and you enjoy the show. We are demanding that people be professionals and that we remove politics from this."
Grenell also disputed notions that the administration has played a role in canceling scheduled performances at the center. The producers of the long-running Broadway musical "Hamilton" canceled its 2026 scheduled performances because of what a producer described as a statement "against the partisan policies of the Kennedy Center as a result of [the Trump administration's] recent takeover."
A performance of the Gay Men's Chorus of Washington, D.C., scheduled for May 21 was canceled, but reportedly it happened before Trump took over as chair of the Kennedy Center's board and named Grenell interim president.
"I have to be clear about one thing: We have not canceled a single show at the Kennedy Center," Grenell said. "There have been certain people that say, 'I can't perform for Republicans,' and so they are the ones who have taken themselves out. But we have not done a single show cancellation."
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Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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