Last night, at the Creative Coalition–hosted season-two premiere of Showtime’s The Green Room With Paul Provenza, Lisa Lampanelli had a warning: Broadway, she’s coming for you. Lampanelli told us that she’s been writing a one-woman show with Alan Zweibel, who collaborated with Billy Crystal on the well-received 700 Sundays, and that she was staging the first reading of the show that night. “Our top-secret reading. Isn’t that exciting?” she said. “It’s something that I haven’t done yet. I’m scared to death because I have to talk about the real stuff. Like, no stand-up; there’s not one line of stand-up … it’s pretty much going to focus on my two main obsessions in life, which are men and food. And now that I’m married I only have one obsession, food, so I’m going to stick to that.”
But that show won’t be Lampanelli’s only shot at going legit: She’s also in an upcoming movie written and directed by The Sopranos creator David Chase, a period piece formerly known as Twylight Zones (Lampanelli says a new title is forthcoming). “I think it’s biographical from when David Chase was in his teens,” she explained. “So I play one of his family members, his loudmouth Italian aunt, which is a big stretch for me because, you know. I’m demure, is what I’m saying.” Luckily, then, the role didn’t require much research. “I get to hit somebody with my ass, which, you know what, I do that in daily life,” she laughed. “I practice that.”
