- The Love Boat costars Ted Lange, Fred Grandy, and Jill Whelan collaborated on the Off Broadway play Lady Patriot.
- Their former costar Bernie Kopell supported the show during its opening night performance.
- Whelan said that a costuming Easter egg in the play pays tribute to original Love Boat captain Gavin MacLeod.
The Love Boat cast is making another run!
Four cast members from the classic romance series reunited at the Off Broadway premiere of Lady Patriot, a play written and directed by Ted Lange, who portrayed bartender Isaac Washington on the beloved series.
Lange’s play also features his former costar Fred Grandy, the actor behind yeoman purser Burl “Gopher” Smith on the show, as well as Jill Whelan, who played the captain’s daughter Vicki Stubing on six of the series’ nine seasons.
Bernie Kopell, who performed as the titular vessel’s physician Adam “Doc” Bricker on The Love Boat, joined his former costars for a photo at their play’s opening night on Tuesday.
Lady Patriot dramatizes the true story of Mary Bowser, a Black woman who was formerly enslaved and may have worked as a pro-Union spy in Jefferson Davis’ Confederate White House during the American Civil War.
The play sees Whelan portray Elizabeth Van Lew, Mary’s former slaveholder, while Grandy plays a war reporter. The trio of actors explained how another Love Boat cast member impacted the production of the play during an appearance on New York’s local news station PIX11 on Wednesday.
“In the play, obviously we’re wearing period costumes, and I decided to wear a pair of earrings that I have that are perfect for the period in the 1860s,” Whelan said. “Gavin MacLeod bought them for me. I thought, what a perfect homage to him.”
Grandy added that MacLeod, who played Captain Merrill Stubing on The Love Boat, was “the spiritual leader of the show.”
Lange chimed in, “He was a wonderful man.”
Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock
The playwright also said that he realized very quickly that he wanted to work with his former TV costars on the play. “As an artist, when you find people you love who love art, [you’re] trying to get us together or find a project,” Lange said. “So I had a project, and so I called them.”
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When asked if she got opening night jitters during the show’s first performance on Tuesday, Whelan said that her familiarity with her Love Boat costars helped calm her nerves.
“I would normally say ‘Absolutely,’ and I do have some semblance of it,” she said. “But because I love these two gentlemen so much, and we have such a shorthand together, there’s a level of trust with us that just eliminates any of that. Because I know they have my back, I have their back.”
Lady Patriot is playing at Theatre Row through Sept. 20.
