Industry News: Kathy Griffin, Brett Butler, Jeff Daniels and More!

KATHY GRIFFIN TO HOST WOMEN BEHIND BARS: A new stage production of the hit 1970s comedy Women Behind Bars will stream on BroadwayHD beginning August 26^th, with Kathy Griffin hosting. Chi Chi Devayne will perform, along with Eureka O’Hara and Ginger Minj, John Waters favorites Mink Stole and Traci Lords, and Miss Coco Peru, Suzie Kennedy, Wesley Woods, Poppy Fields, Tatiana Monteiro and Adrienne Couper Smith. The prison exploitation film parody has been reimagined. 

BRETT BUTLER OPENS UP: The Grace Under Fire star Brett Butler recently shared a plea on GoFundMe, confessing that she was facing conviction from her L.A. apartment. Now, she’s talking to The Hollywood Reporter about losing her fortune, after making $250K an episode on the ABC sitcom. She explains: “I was a little bit too trusting with some people that worked for me, and I had a lot of things stolen. That’s just stupid on my part, not to have insurance for those things. And to loan and give a lot of money away. I really just felt so guilty for having it — I almost couldn’t get rid of it fast enough.”

JEFF DANIELS CELEBRATES BROADWAY’S RETURN WITH FILM: Jeff Daniels is ready to return to Broadway. The production team behind Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has unveiled a new video to celebrate their return to Broadway. Daniels said in the spot: “This is what you came for. The moment the house lights went down and you and a thousand strangers felt the same chill. And we’ve been without it too long. But come this fall, we’re turning the lights back on.”

SAHRAA KARIMI TALKS ESCAPE: The director and head of Afghan Film, Sahraa Karimi, is opening up about her escape from Afghanistan. She tells The Hollywood Reporter that Slovakian, Turkish and Ukrainian governments helped her get out and that she is safe in Kyiv, Ukraine. “The Taliban are anti-art, anti-cinema and anti-woman. If you combine that as a female director, you can see they are anti-everything towards women filmmakers,” she says, warning that if the international community does not act, “it will be a genocide of filmmakers and artists. Right now, we have the calm before the storm, but the Taliban have not changed. Ideologically, they live in the Stone Age.”