Laura Reineke

Photograph: Joan Marcus   War Paint, a new musical that depicts the rise and clash of 20th-century cosmetic-industry titans Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, has in its corner both a true story of female entrepreneurship and the pairing of two distinctly different Broadway talents: Christine Ebersole (Arden) and Patti LuPone (Rubinstein). We talked with the Tony-winning luminaries about their characters before the show starts previews March 7. These women lived parallel lives in many ways, but there's nothing to suggest that they ever actually met.Patti LuPone: I don't think we'll ever know whether the media instigated their feud, or whether in fact it was a feud, or if they simply decided they didn't want to meet. How do you go about playing rivals who had no documented interaction with one another? Christine Ebersole: Through our individual explorations of their lives, we found there's a lot of similarity.PL: In fact, had they decided to forge a future together, they would have ruled the world. Their ideology was so similar. Were either of these women Devil Wears Prada/Miranda Priestly types? CE: That's the kind of personality that gets you that far. You're not gonna be retiring mild-mannered. [Laughs]PL: They were the creators of an empire. They were the queens. Apparently Helena saved several family members in World War II from the concentration camps, and then put them to work and treated them like employees. She wasn't too generous in that respect. She was a tyran