The biggest night of the year for Broadway stars is upon us. From how to watch to who is nominated, here's what you need to know.
The biggest night of the year for Broadway stars and fans is upon us. June 16 marks the 77th Tony Awards, celebrating the best and brightest of this year on Broadway. With 28 of the 36 shows catching at least one nomination, a highly contested Best Musical category, and nine musical performances, this year’s show is sure to excite viewers.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The guestlist is star-studded, with the presenters alone proving to be an impressive list. Tony Award-winners Cynthia Erivo, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Idina Menzel, Jeffrey Wright, and Ben Platt will hand out awards, as well as Josh Gad, Andrew Rannells, and Anthony Ramos.
From how to watch to who is nominated, here’s what you need to know about this year’s celebration of talent, art, and theater:
This year, the Tony Awards will be held at the David H. Koch Theater, the home to the New York City Ballet in Lincoln Center.
The three-hour main telecast will air on CBS and stream on Paramount+ with Showtime from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. EST for U.S. audiences.
There will also be a pre-show on Pluto TV, hosted by dancer and presenter Julianne Hough and actor/rapper Utkarsh Ambudkar, where more technical Tony Awards will be awarded.
This year’s host is Ariana DeBose, known for her Oscar-winning performance in Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story, making history as the first Afro Latina and openly queer actor of color to win an acting Oscar. She was also in the original cast of Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton, and in 2018 she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical for her breakout performance in Summer: The Donna Summer Musical. This will be her third time hosting.
“This is Broadway’s biggest night. Why not give the people at home even more of a Broadway experience?” DeBose told the Associated Press on Thursday. “Our show is going to move like a Broadway show. We want to give you a full Broadway experience.”
The cast of the nominated dance-musical Illinoise, based on the music of singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens, and of Suffs, a musical about the suffragette movement produced by Hillary Clinton, are set to perform during the awards.
They will be joined by performances by the casts of of Stereophonic, Hell’s Kitchen, Cabaret, Merrily We Roll Along, The Outsiders, The Who’s Tommy, and Water For Elephants.
Nicole Scherzinger will also perform for the “In Memoriam” segment, where fans may see tributes to Broadway stars such as Ron Simons, Tony Mordente, and Chita Rivera.
A total of 28 shows earned at least one Tony nomination nod, led by the musical Hell’s Kitchen, powered with songs by Alicia Keys, and the play Stereophonic, composed by Will Butler of indie rock band Arcade Fire fame, each with 13 nominations respectively. In fact, five of Stereophonic’s seven performers were singled out for individual acting nominations.
The musical The Outsiders, an adaptation of the S. E. Hinton novel and the Francis Ford Coppola film, also earned 12 nominations; and the revival of the classic Cabaret, with British actor Eddie Redmayne at the helm, has nine nominations to its name.
After a star-studded few months on Broadway, the guestlist for this year’s Tony Awards looks strong. Rachel McAdams snagged a nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Play for her Broadway debut in Mary Jane, as did Succession actor Jeremy Strong, who is up for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play on account of his work in Enemy of the People.
Actors Jessica Lange and Sarah Paulson also both received nominations for their roles in Mother Play and Appropriate respectively, as did Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame for his role in fan-favorite Merrily We Roll Along.
Redmayne in his second show on Broadway got a nod as Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical as did actor Brian d’Arcy James for Days of Wine and Roses and Jonathan Groff in Merrily We Roll Along.
There are also a record-breaking number of women nominated for best directing, holding seven of the 10 slots. In the category of Best Direction of a Play, Anne Kauffman, Lila Neugebauer and Whitney White are nominated for Mary Jane, Appropriate, and Jaja’s African Hair Braiding respectively, and in the category of Best Direction of a Musical, Maria Friedman, Leigh Silverman, Jessica Stone, and Danya Taymor are nominated for Merrily We Roll Along, Suffs, Water for Elephants, and The Outsiders respectively. Only 10 women have ever won Tony awards for directing.
You can see the full list of Tony Awards 2024 nominees here.
