Transcript
The Black Sheepof
Broadway
Dumped by his first wife for Jerry Seinfeld, Eric Nederlander is now getting terrible reviews for his antics—and members of his powerful theater family wish he’d exit stage left.
SETTING: November 2007, a luxury West Village duplex apartment,
nighttime. A man and his wife are fighting about home renovations. Wife is nursing their one-month-old daughter. Man is angry that she’s not doing enough around the house. The fight escalates and Wife puts the baby in the crib. Man follows her into the nursery. MAN: “I will smash your face in.” Wife looks frightened and grabs her phone to call the police. Man exits the nursery and tells the maid to leave, along with an electrician, who is doing repairs at the house. When Man returns to the nursery, Wife, frightened, has called her parents. Her parents arrive. Wife slips past Man and down the stairs to unlock the door for them. Man calls the police and says intruders are breaking into their home. Father stands at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at his son-in-law. FATHER: “Cut the bull. I’m coming upstairs.” his domestic drama sounds straight out of Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?—but it’s a real-life saga, pulled from New York State Supreme Court records chronicling the war between Eric Nederlander and his soon-to-be ex-wife, Lindsey Kupferman. Nederlander, 46, is a scion of one of the most powerful families on Broadway—in fact, they own the Nederlander Theatre, where Virginia Woolf premiered in 1962. The Nederlander empire includes nine Broadway theaters in NYC and more than 25 worldwide. But it’s bad-boy Eric who gets much of the press—most of it worse than the reviews for Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.
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He’s the cuckold who lost his wife to Jerry Seinfeld, the Broadway producer with only one show to his name and a string of bad debts, the pretender posing as a high-stakes theater player, according to family friends. He’s been in divorce proceedings for more than four years fighting a bitter custody battle with Kupferman over their daughter. And earlier this year, he was thrown in jail for allegedly waking up a girlfriend by yanking her hair. The girlfriend called the cops. Eric called his daddy. Daddy is attorney Robert Nederlander, a shareholder in the New York Yankees who, as partial owner of his family’s vast theater holdings, is allegedly worth millions. Robert Nederlander put up a $5,000 bond to spring his son from jail, where he’d spent the night. “Frankly, his father [is bailing] him out all the time. In this case he had to literally bail him out,” says one seasoned Broadway producer who wouldn’t give his name because he works with the Nederlander family often. In the mythology of great American dynasties, Eric Nederlander is perfectly cast in the role of black sheep. He’s a third-generation member of the largest theater-owning family in the country. And though he inherited the trappings of great wealth, he does not seem to have inherited the work ethic that helped amass that fortune. “There’s an unbelievable sense of entitlement there,” says the producer. “No one knows what he does all day.” Eric’s grandfather, David T. Nederlander, the son of a cigar maker, founded the Nederlander organization in 1912 with a 99-year-lease on the Detroit Opera House, where the Barrymores, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson and the Ziegfeld Follies all played. He went on to operate
clockwise from top left: Joe Corrigan/getty images; patrick mcmullan/patrickmcmullan.com (nederlander); charles sykes/ap; John Lamparski/getty images; joe carrigan/getty images
b y s t e fa n i e c o h e n
Eric Nederlander is a third-generation member of the largest theater-owning family in the country. Plagued by debts, arrests and delusions of grandeur, he is frequently at odds with his influential kin. “They don’t understand what’s between the ears there,” says a close family friend.
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Jimmy Sr. and Jimmy Jr., Eric’s uncle and cousin respectively (left), control the lion’s share of the Nederlander fame and fortune today. Eric’s first wife, Jessica Sklar, left him for comedian Jerry Seinfeld in 1998.
Broadway show, Play On!, a version of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night set in 1940s Harlem with music by Duke Ellington. It was 1997. Play On! was, of course, mounted in a Nederlanderowned theater, the Brooks Atkinson. Sklar was often there, says the musical’s coproducer, Mitchell Maxwell, and Eric relied on her support and opinion. It looked like the beginning of the good life. But as in any good script, a jaw-dropping plot twist was waiting in Act 2. Play On! got decent reviews and three Tony nominations but wasn’t a hit. Maxwell says that because of his name, there were a lot of expectations that Eric struggled to live up to. “He was a lost boy,” Maxwell says. “He was a young man and entered a world he wasn’t prepared for—and I don’t think he was given the proper support or guidance he needed.” At that time, says Maxwell, Eric had the backing of his family. But when the show closed after only three months, Maxwell believes, the more powerful Nederlanders decided Eric wasn’t cut out for show biz. He hasn’t helmed a Broadway production since. “I don’t think he really took the responsibilities with the appropriate gravitas that one should when you are doing a several-million-dollar musical,” Maxwell says. “Theater is a tiny world. There are 100 people who run it, and your name can only get you so far.” Eric’s next big production was his wedding to Sklar. Their invitation looked like a Playbill, according to the Daily News. It read: Jessica Sklar (bride) is thrilled to be making her Broadway debut. Jessica is looking forward to spending the rest of her life with Eric Nederlander. Their lavish 1998 wedding, held at the Blantyre hotel in the Berkshires, was “over the top, as only a Nederlander could do,” says a guest who attended. “It was absolutely beautiful—except on the wedding day itself, it poured.” As can happen on Broadway, the lead was replaced early in the run. Weeks after the couple returned from their honeymoon in Italy, Sklar was in the gossip pages for flirting with Jerry Seinfeld at the Reebok Sports Club on Columbus. She denied an affair, and Eric himself told the Daily News: “I know that they see each other at the gym...They talk to each other on the phone. I have no problem with it.”
from left: jemal countess/getty images; mark lennihan/ap
the Shubert and Cass theaters in Detroit, where headliners such as Jack Benny and Bette Davis performed. D.T., as he was known, had six children: Joseph, James, Harry, Robert, Fred and the only girl, Frances. D.T.’s second oldest, James N. Nederlander, known as Jimmy Sr., dropped out of college to work at the Shubert Theatre box office in Detroit. Soon he began producing shows. After a stint in the Air Force, he opened a string of theaters in the Midwest. In the 1960s he was often in New York booking shows, he told Playbill in 2005. “A theater colleague said, ‘Why don’t you acquire a theater in New York?’ and I said, ‘Where?’ And he told me about the Palace. So we went up to see the president of RKO, which owned it, and I made a deal with him on the spot. And then I went back to Detroit and raised the money. And we remodeled the Palace and opened it with Sweet Charity.” He bought more theaters: the Minskoff, Neil Simon, the Gershwin, Richard Rodgers, the Brooks Atkinson, the LuntFontanne, the Marquis, the Billy Rose (later renamed the Nederlander, after his father). He snapped up venues in Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Tucson, Detroit and London. All told, the Nederlander Organization is believed to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Because the company is privately held, it’s unclear how much of the pie each sibling gets, but Jimmy Sr., who turns 90 on March 31, still runs the show with his only son and heir, Jimmy Jr., Eric’s cousin. Members of Eric’s immediate fam“He was... ily declare that their boy is an imporcuckolded tant part of this theatrical dynasty. by a gigantic “My son, Eric, is a third-generation TV star. Nederlander,” Robert Nederlander He became wrote in an e-mail to Page Six Magaeven more zine. “He is an important part of our of a lost soul overall business, including music and after that. ” theater, which he has worked in for the —Producer past 25 years. We value Eric’s integrity Mitchell Maxwell and his contributions.” However, when asked what specifically Eric does for the family business, Robert declined to elaborate. According to a close family friend speaking on the condition of anonymity, Eric shows up at the family’s offices “once in a blue moon.” ric grew up in Franklin, Michigan. His mother, Caren, was a psychologist. He has an older brother, Robert Jr., who now runs Nederlander Worldwide, which presents Broadway shows in China. Eric spent his high school years at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, where he was involved in the theater program. “They force that on you,” he said of his family to The New York Times in 2002. “One of my biggest disappointments was the year I had the lead and got sick.” He graduated from Boston University and moved to New York, where he met 21-year-old Jessica Sklar, a pretty brunette from Oyster Bay, Long Island. The two lived together in an apartment on 68th and Columbus and seemed devoted: She worked in book publishing; he was producing his first
omehow Eric survived the maelstrom and found love again. In 2000 he met Lindsey Kupferman, a pretty blond singer studying clinical psychology, when the two shared a summer rental in the Hamptons with some other friends, according to the New York Times. She had, of course, heard about the theater heir who was dumped for the television star, but Kupferman said that at the time she didn’t know Eric was the same guy. “Emotional baggage is my business,” she said. “Male post“When I met her, everything fell partum into place,” Eric told the Times. depression Eric was also trying to make it in is probably the downtown theater scene, rentsomething ing out the Village Theater (now Le I’m going Poisson Rouge) on Bleecker Street. through.” He mounted two productions: —Eric Nederlander, 2001’s Love, Janis, about Janis Jopin an e-mail excuse about his behavior lin, and 2003’s Dream a Little Dream, to ex Lindsey about the Mamas and the Papas. Kupferman Things seemed back to normal. Kupferman was lovely, says Randal Myler, who directed and wrote Love, Janis. He says the show was a well-run production that lasted for more than two years. “We had a great time working on it. We ran for a few good years,” he says. “That’s better than most Broadway shows.” Kupferman, says Myler, “could not have been a nicer person,” and the two seemed happy together. But the blissful scene quickly began to fade. When Myler and Nederlander went on to stage Dream a Little Dream, there was an alleged falling out between Eric and the show’s star, Denny Doherty, an original member of the Mamas and the Papas. The show closed after six months. Soon the collectors came calling. Eric owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to everyone from the video and sound company to the musicians union, and even to the actors, the Post reported at the time. The theater owner, Irwin Stillman, called Eric “one of the worst tenants,” and kicked him out of the theater in September 2003, saying he was always late with the rent. But after Eric vacated the theater, he allegedly crept back in the middle of the night and took a bunch of technical equipment. He came back days later and carted away 75 chairs, 30 tables, a water cooler and two speakers, Stillman told the
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Post in 2003. Nederlander denied the allegations and said the property was his. The case was settled out of court. At least Eric’s personal life was still rosy. In 2004 he married Kupferman at the Breakers resort in Palm Beach, Florida, under a firework-filled sky, according to the wedding announcement in the Times. And yet soon after their daughter, Mira, was born in October 2007, the marriage began to sour. According to court documents, Kupferman says Eric threw tantrums and went on tirades. She paints a picture of a man who behaved like a child when he didn’t get his way, and who scared her. Although Eric called the police after their epic blowout in the nursery, the couple stayed together, at least temporarily. But just two weeks later there was another explosion, this time over credit card debts Eric had allegedly accumulated. He responded by ripping up the baby announcements they had yet to mail. Frightened, Kupferman called the police. When officers arrived, they advised her to take herself and the baby elsewhere. On December 17 Eric wrote Kupferman an e-mail to explain his behavior: “Male post-partum depression is probably something I’m going through,” he wrote, according to court documents. “This is not uncommon that a man can feel this way during the early stages after a child is born…I love you. Can we please talk and can you please come home and be with me. I’m feeling very depressed that you and Mira aren’t here and I need your help.” But four days later Kupferman filed for divorce, and soon after a judge granted an order of protection keeping Eric away from her and giving her sole access to their home. “I don’t think he’s the most violent person on the face of the earth,” wrote Judge Harold Beeler in issuing the order. “In fact, in many ways I think he’s a coward because he does back off from what he says he’s going to do. But it’s very hard to know where that line is with him and whether or not he could go beyond that line...I think there are times where he loses control.” Eric has “a Jekyll and Hyde personality,” Kupferman’s attorney, Robert G. Smith, said in court. “He has serious self-control and anger management issues. I don’t know that he has ever in a meaningful way sought real help,” adds Bonnie Rabin, who along with Martha Cohen Stine is Kupferman’s new counsel. Eric, who has denied Kupferman’s version of events, was In 2004 Eric married Lindsey Kupferman, but soon after their daughter Mira was born in 2007, their relationship fell apart because of his temper.
patrick mcmullan/patrickmcmullan.com
He spoke too soon. Sklar divorced Eric four months later and was suddenly seen cavorting all over town with the sardonic funnyman. Day after day, stories ran detailing Sklar’s every move with Seinfeld. “[Eric] was a normal spoiled kid before that, and then he’s on the cover of the papers as a cuckold day after day. I think that’s a really bad combination: entitlement and humiliation,” says the Broadway producer. Maxwell agrees. “He was always a lost soul, and anyone who’s cuckolded like that, in New York City, by a gigantic television star and humiliated every day in every paper in America...he became even more of a lost soul after that.”
allowed to see his daughter for a few hours at a time, and only with a nanny present. They’ve been duking it out in divorce court ever since. At the same time, Eric began characterizing himself as a genuine player on Broadway, offering access to Nederlander theaters without his relatives’ knowledge, says the family friend. He even started competing against them. In 2007 the entertainment giant Live Nation put its theatrical division— roughly 40 theaters across the U.S. and Canada—up for sale. Jimmy Sr. put in a bid, only to be outmatched by Eric, who said he was backed by Goldman Sachs money. Eric’s offer drove up the bidding for everyone else, including his own uncle. Whether he had the money or not, he was eliminated from the auction early. “Those guys at Live Nation knew who the real Nederlanders are, and they flushed Eric out in the first round,” says the friend. “They realized he was the wrong Nederlander.” Asked how Jimmy Sr. and Jimmy Jr. felt about being outbid, the friend says they just shrug. “Was Senior surprised? Not really. Not anymore. It was more like, ‘What are you doing, kid?’ They don’t understand what’s between the ears there.” Eventually the two Jimmys successfully bought the rights to the Chicago share of theaters for $60 million. But again, in 2009, Eric came out of nowhere with a sneak attack, this time on Jimmy Jr., who had announced that he’d bought the rights to make a songbook musical called Thriller out of Michael Jackson’s work. Eric declared that he, too, had a contract, signed years before, to do a musical with the King of Pop. “He said that he had his own contract with Jackson,” says the family friend, incredulous. The musical, while still in the works, was delayed by Jackson’s death. But Eric’s interference didn’t help either, says the source. Eric’s erratic behavior was even on full display at family events. He stole the spotlight at Jimmy Jr.’s 2008 wedding, held at a Park Avenue church. Eric had been invited but declined the invitation, saying he was out of town. But just as the bride and guests were arriving at the church, he was seen on the sidewalk out front, wearing a T-shirt and shorts, fighting with his father. “Clearly he wanted everyone to know he 00 nypost.com/pagesixmag
steven hirsch/new york post
After Eric allegedly pulled new girlfriend Nancy Okun’s hair while she slept, he was thrown in jail and his name was splashed across the papers again. Despite his many travails, a family friend says, “the jail thing they weren’t used to.”
was in town, but had no interest in coming to the wedding,” says the producer. “He wanted to make his presence felt.” Despite his woes, Eric found love again, this time with Nancy Okun, 31, a blond divorcée and mother of one who looks remarkably like Kupferman. But it wasn’t long before he was up to his old antics, according to reports. In December 2010, Okun called the police to her W. 12th Street apartment, alleging that Eric had been violent toward her, say sources close to the case. Six months later, the pair was riding in a cab when Eric allegedly became enraged. Okun told police he smashed her face into the plexiglass divider and grabbed her arm as she tried to get out of the taxi. “Don’t get out of the cab!” he cried, “Please don’t do this to me. They’ll take her away,” he allegedly pleaded, referring to his daughter. Okun called the police anyway. The charge was reduced from assault to disorderly conduct, but a judge issued a limited order of protection. Eric was allowed to continue living with Okun but was ordered not to harass or frighten her. In the middle of the night on January 12, prosecutors say, Eric looked through Okun’s phone and found something he didn’t like. He woke his girlfriend by yanking her hair and growling: “You’re cheating on me.” Okun called the police, who arrested Eric for violating the order of protection. Suddenly Eric was in the papers “There’s an again, looking disheveled after a unbelievable night in the clink on charges of crimsense of inal contempt. Even his family was entitlement surprised at this turn. there...No “The jail thing they weren’t used one knows to,” says the family friend. “That part what he does was a little strange for them, but they all day.” think ‘innocent until proven guilty.’ ” —a Broadway His court date is set for April 2, and producer his lawyer is set for a fight. “The contempt charge is baseless,” says his criminal lawyer, Gerald Shargel. “We have asked the district attorney’s office to dismiss the charge and have provided evidence that supports our position. We will continue to cooperate and are confident that the office will come to agree with our view of the case. ” Okun would not comment for this story, and Eric offered a statement through his spokeswoman, Lisa Linden: “He has a young daughter. He is a concerned father who strongly believes [his silence] will serve his daughter’s best interests now and in the future.” But while he awaits the court hearing, many people have already made up their minds. “Every family has a black sheep, and Eric is this one’s,” says a business associate of the family. “He tries to glom onto something that might be a lot more successful than he is.” Jimmys Sr. and Jr., meanwhile, have stopped conversations with him, says the family friend. “At this point, they just say, ‘Duck!’ whenever something happens with him,” he says. “They talk about it and shake their heads and go on to the next thing.”
