Actress Valerie Harper has been hit with a $2 million lawsuit by Broadway bigshot Matthew Lombardo, who charges she didn’t tell him she had cancer until after she signed on to star in his play.
Lombardo charges Harper and her husband, Tony Cacciotti, hid her bout with lung cancer until it spread to her brain, forcing her to bail out of last year’s national tour of “Looped.”
At the time she left the play he wrote, doctors had given the 74-year-old “Rhoda” star just months to live.
The suit filed in Manhattan Federal Court charges that although Harper and Cacciotti “were both aware” she had been diagnosed with lung cancer in 2009, neither bothered to disclose it to Lombardo.
Harper and her husband “knowingly withheld the truth” about her cancer, the suit charges.
Lombardo’s suit was a counterclaim to one Harper filed demanding she still be paid for the production she dropped out of for health reasons.
Harper could not be reached for comment Sunday.
She was in rehearsals for a national tour of “Looped” when diagnosed in January 2013 with brain cancer.
In the production, Harper played Hollywood legend Tallulah Bankhead, a role that garnered her a 2010 Tony Award nomination.
The suit contends Lombardo sought to get Tovah Feldshuh to take on the role, but went with Harper when she insisted taking the job.
In the lawsuit, playwright Lombardo claims he didn’t know about Harper’s earlier battle with lung cancer until December 2012, just before the release of her autobiography.
Prior to her brain cancer diagnosis, Harper was exhibiting signs of health problems, such as slurred speech and memory loss, that were hampering the show’s rehearsals.
Lombardo claims he urged Harper to seek medical attention.
Harper dropped out of the production the same month she was diagnosed, leaving Lombardo scrambling for a replacement.
Stefanie Powers stepped in, but Lombardo and the play’s producers said they lost at least $500,000 due to having to replace Harper on short notice. Lombardo and the producers of “Looped” are also suing for an additional $1.5 million because they say Harper misled them.
Harper has gone on to bravely participate in ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars.” She’s also returned to the small screen with a guest appearance in the Hallmark Channel series “Signed, Sealed and Delivered,” which aired Sunday night.
Earlier this month, Harper denied reports that she had beat cancer and was in the clear. “I am not ‘absolutely cancer-free,'” she said in a statement. “I wish I were.”
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