Freshman GOP representative George Santos has been caught lying about a lot of things. No, he’s not Jewish. No, he’s not a former college volleyball champ. No, his mother didn’t die in 9/11 (!!). But this alleged whopper might be the strangest of all: He reportedly lied about producing one of the biggest flops in Broadway history.
As per Bloomberg, during his first, failed campaign in 2021, Santos allegedly told potential donors that he was once a producer on Spider-Man: Turn on the Dark, the notorious stage musical that ended its relatively short run with, as Playbill put it at the time, a “monumental financial loss.” The production was plagued with technical mishaps and actor injuries, as well as bad press. It was a walking punchline that still attracted large crowds — albeit not as large as the ones for Wicked.
When asked about Santos’ claim by Entertainment Weekly, a spokesperson for the show, Rick Miramontez, said, “Of all the tribulations the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark had to endure, we are very pleased, proud and relieved to report working with George Santos was not one of them.”
Why would Santos — whose name never appeared in the show’s playbills — lie about this, of all things? The elected lawmaker has yet to comment. It would have been strange had he helped produce the famous bomb. For one thing, he’s 34 now (or so he says). The show started previews in 2011, which would make him 21 or 22 then — a very, very young age for someone mounting any Broadway production, let alone one of the most expensive in history.