Scott Rudin in the Wings

As Broadway reopens, its most significant producer has been banished— perhaps for the good, perhaps permanently. But also, perhaps, not.

- Benjamin Wallace

To hear them tell it, the Broadway professionals whose careers Scott Rudin dominated for decades don't sound too torn up about his cancellation.

“People are really worried about me,” one longtime Rudin collaborator told me rather breezily this summer. “ ‘Are you going to be okay? You’re so closely linked to Scott.’ I’m not only going to be okay—I’m going to be better because I don’t have to expend the energy to deal with Scott’s personality and quirks and try to manage him.” When I spoke with a prominent Broadway creative figure, someone who has worked with Rudin on multiple shows, he was still offended by a recent Washington Post article suggesting that the Rudin-shaped void in the Theater District would be creatively and financially devastating. “Pardon my French: Go fuck yourself,” he said. “Scott didn’t produce Rent or A Chorus Line or Hamilton. The world would survive without him.”

After a Hollywood Reporter exposé in April—and follow-up reports on Vulture and in these pages as well as the New York Times—documented his savage verbal abuse and intimidation of his assistants, Rudin became an instant pariah. He put out a statement saying he would “step back from active participation” in his plays and musicals; his name was yanked from five films in development at the indie studio A24; several huge Broadway shows eliminated him as lead producer. Now, if you know where to look, Rudin’s absence is conspicuous. He’s a nonentity in rights auctions for hot new novels. When plays return to the stage in earnest—with the first preview of