Renowned Tony Award winner Laura Benanti recently found herself at the center of social media humor after sharing a video on Instagram about an unexpected encounter during a flight.
The Broadway sensation recounted boarding a plane packed with enthusiastic teens from a theater group, only to be met with surprising indifference.
“Not a single one of them recognized me, and clearly, I couldn’t handle that,” the 46-year-old actress quipped, her expression dripping with irony.
She continued, “I asked them if they were part of a theater group, and upon their confirmation, I mentioned that I do theater too. A young man, sporting a beret and casually draped jacket, simply responded, ‘Cool,'” she recounted with a resigned sigh, adding, “RIP.”
This humorous tale sparked a wave of sarcastic responses on X, with comments such as, “I don’t know who she is either,” “Anyone know who she is without Googling?” and “She seems like someone who might be refused entry for having too much wine at the airport bar.”
On Benanti’s own Instagram page, the ridicule became so intense that she had to add a disclaimer to her caption: ‘to the people in my comments saying you don’t know me either, I don’t expect you to! I’m taking the p*** out of myself. Not them.’
Tony-winning stage star Laura Benanti came in for a deluge of mockery over an Instagram clip she posted about a disgruntling airplane experience
Benanti, a major name among Broadway lovers, arrived on an aircraft filled with a teenage ‘theater group’ who gave her a rude awakening
Her original caption had included a gentle jibe at her young fellow passengers: ‘I guess they weren’t alive to watch The Tonys in 2008.’
Benanti’s reference harkens back to her acclaimed performance in 2008, where she starred alongside Patti LuPone in the revival of the classic 1959 musical “Gypsy,” earning her a Tony for her role as Louise.
Her glittering career on the Great White Way began with a 1998 revival of The Sound of Music in which she moved up from the ensemble to the lead role of Maria von Trapp, the character immortalized on film by Julie Andrews.
Over the years she has also starred in revivals of such classic Broadway shows as Into the Woods, She Loves Me, Nine and My Fair Lady.
Among her most memorable turns was as a ditzy, high-strung model in the 2010 musical of Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, the 1988 Pedro Almodovar comedy that helped make an international star out of Antonio Banderas.
On TV, she has acted on such series as Nashville, Supergirl, Go On, the Gossip Girl reboot and The Gilded Age, and for about a decade has held a longstanding recurring gig as Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Her pedigree proved to be distinctly unimpressive to the crowd on X, where users posted reactions like: ‘I had to Google who she was and still don’t know who she is.’
One posted a meme that read: ‘Who the f*** are you, and why should I care?’ over an old movie still of a bemused-looking Humphrey Bogart.
Benanti (center) is pictured with Boyd Gaines (left) and Patti LuPone (right) performing at the 2008 Tony Awards, where all three of them won for their turns in a revival of Gypsy
Benanti is pictured playing Eliza Doolittle in a 2018 revival of My Fair Lady, alongside Harry Hadden-Paton (left) and Allan Corduner (right)
Her original caption had included a gentle jibe at the young theater group: ‘I guess they weren’t alive to watch The Tonys in 2008’; she is pictured at that ceremony accepting an award
For about a decade has held a longstanding recurring gig as Melania Trump on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, on which she is pictured a month ago
‘Top Broadway actors exist in a tiny bubble in which they are huge celebrities,’ observed an X user: ‘But that bubble bursts the second they cross the Hudson’
An X user called Kel Varnson created a comic in which Benanti asks an airline gate agent: ‘Do you know who I am?’ prompting the announcement: ‘Attention ladies and gentlemen, we have a woman here who does not know who she is.’
Still others trolled her by sharing the poster of her own upcoming one-woman show, which is self-deprecatingly entitled Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares.
‘Top Broadway actors exist in a tiny bubble in which they are huge celebrities,’ observed an X user. ‘But that bubble bursts the second they cross the Hudson.’
Benanti had her defenders as well, one of whom fumed: ‘She is a literal legend and the fact that people are this uncultured is terrifying. We are living in a society of NPCs. She deserved way better than a plane full of people who do not know art. Our standards have truly hit rock bottom.’
