‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ Musical Starring Sutton Foster As Loretta Lynn In Development For Broadway

Greg Evans
·3-min read

Coal Miner’s Daughter, Loretta Lynn’s bestselling autobiography-turned-smash-hit movie, is heading to Broadway, with two-time Tony Award winner Sutton Foster to play the role of the late, legendary country music icon.

Currently in development, the stage musical adaptation will be directed by Sam Gold, with music production by Jeanine Tesori. The two last worked together on the Tony-winning hit 2015 musical Fun Home.

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The stage adaptation will include songs from Lynn’s career and stories from her life, some beyond the 1980 film’s ending.

Patsy Lynn, Loretta Lynn’s manager, producer, and daughter, will serve as a consulting producer on the project, along with Loretta’s longtime adviser Nancy Russell.

According to Lynn’s family, Loretta Lynn had given her stamp of approval to both the project and Sutton’s casting prior to her death at 90 in 2022.

“We are so grateful to see that our mother’s life story and music will continue to touch the hearts of audiences and remain an important statement of the American dream,” said the family in a statement. “As one of the last creative projects our mom was so passionate about, we are thankful that she had the opportunity to experience the initial stages of Sutton’s sincere portrayal of Loretta. Mom absolutely fell in love with her and thought she was just the right person to play her onstage. The family is moved by this incredible team’s commitment to her legacy.”

The producing team includes Broadway veterans Kristin Caskey, Mike Isaacson, Bee Carrozzini, and ATG Entertainment.

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Lynn’s remarkable story – born in 1932 in the poverty stricken coal town of Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, rising to the heights of Grand Ole Opry stardom and international fame – was first told in her bestselling 1976 autobiography, written with George Vecsey, and adapted by screenwriter Tom Rickman and director Michael Apted into the 1980 film that won Sissy Spacek an Oscar for her portrayal of Lynn. Tommy Lee Jones costarred as husband Doolittle Lynn, with Beverly D’Angelo playing her friend Patsy Cline and Levon Helm portraying her father Ted Webb.

Lynn had already had a long run of hits in the 1960s and ’70s – including “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” “You Ain’t Woman Enough,” “The Pill,” “I’m a Honky Tonk Girl,” “One’s On The Way” – when the 1980 film gave a new boost in public interest in her career and music, doing the same for the great Cline, who died in a plane crash at 30 in 1963.

Over the years, Lynn sold more than 45 million records worldwide and won multiple Grammy Awards, Country Music Association awards, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Foster most recently appeared on Broadway in this season’s Once Upon A Mattress revival, with other Broadway credits including Grease, Little Women, The Drowsy Chaperone, Young Frankenstein, Shrek the Musical, Violet, The Music Man and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. She has been nominated for seven Tony Awards, most recently in 2022 for The Music Man opposite Hugh Jackman. She won the award twice: In 2002 for Thoroughly Modern Millie and in 2011 for her performance in Anything Goes. From 2015 to 2021, she starred in the TV Land comedy-drama Younger.

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