After a scary encounter, Audra McDonald has posted a “little sort of PSA” for her fans.
On Aug. 16, the Broadway star took to Instagram to tell them not to bombard actors at the theater after someone recently followed her home following her performance as Rose in “Gypsy.”
“There’s a lot of reasons that performers don’t do the stage door,” she explained in a video.
She listed reasons why actors may not greet fans after a performance, such as anxiety, exhaustion, “health reasons,” or that they’re simply in a rush to catch a train. McDonald then said she sometimes greets people after a performance, but she hasn’t been doing it recently.
“I have not been doing it in ‘Gypsy’ for a myriad of reasons,” the Grammy-winning singer, who ended her run as Rose on Aug. 17, explained. “The main ones have been because of health and exhaustion and vocal health, and trying to conserve what little energy I have.”
“Also, I’ve got a kid that I’m trying to get home to,” McDonald added.
The “Beauty and the Beast” star then revealed why she was making the PSA and said she recently had an unsettling encounter with a fan who followed her home and asked for an autograph.
“Last night, someone … snuck around and found me the way I had exited from the theater last night and followed me all the way to where I was staying, came into the building and was uncomfortably close,” she said.
“And then when I finally got some security to help me, their response was, ‘Well, hey, I’ve come all the way,'” she continued. “And they named some town, some city that they’ve come all the way from, and they wanted an autograph, and felt that they deserved an autograph. And that is crossing a big old boundary.”
McDonald explained that the whole encounter was “a big no-no” in her book.
“That’s now messing with my safety, and it’s not right,” she said. “So when you see an actor leave the stage door, if they don’t stop, leave them alone. There is a reason that they’re not stopping, and it has nothing to do with you. It’s them protecting their space and peace, whatever that may be.”
