Tony Awards 2023: The 5 biggest talking points
Ariana DeBose hosted night, which saw big wins for non-binary representation and British shows
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Broadway’s biggest night took place on Sunday (11 June), as the 2023 Tony Awards celebrated the best of New York theatre.
The annual ceremony has recognised the biggest achievements in Broadway theatre since 1947.
This year’s Tony Awards took place at New York’s United Palace, led by Oscar-winning performer Ariana DeBose.
The new musical Some Like It Hot, based on the 1959 feature film of the same name, led the pack with 13 nominations. In the plays category, Ain’t No Mo’, A Doll’s House, and Leopoldstadt were the most nominated, with six nods apiece.
The two biggest awards on the night went to Leopoldstadt for Best New Play, while Kimberly Akimbo was named Best New Musical.
Throughout the night, the audience enjoyed performances from the Tony-nominated casts of Camelot, Into the Woods, & Juliet, Kimberly Akimbo, New York, New York, Parade, Shucked, Some Like It Hot and Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. Lea Michele also returned to perform with the cast of Funny Girl.
You can read the full list of winners here.
Brit shows win big
Three years after it first opened in London’s West End, Tom Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt took home one of the night’s biggest awards for Best New Play.
The epic production also won for Best Director of a Play for Patrick Marber, Best Featured Actor in a Play for Brandon Uranowitz, and Best Costume Design of a Play for Brigitte Reiffenstuel.
Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie, which also began life in London, took home one of its four nominations, while the Broadway production of Life of Pi won in three design categories.
Ariana DeBose goes off script
Host Ariana DeBose may not have achieved a moment quite as viral as her Bafta rap and “Angela Bassett did the thing”, the actor still made a statement as she opened Sunday’s show.
With the Tony Awards impacted by the ongoing writers’ strike in the US, the West Side Story star opened the show from inside her dressing room, holding a binder labelled “script” filled with blank pages.
In her following speech, DeBose explained that there was a “good reason” for the blank script, saying: “Our siblings over at the WGA [Writers Guild of America] are currently on strike in pursuit of a fair deal – and how many of us know what that is?”
While striking members of the Writers Guild of America agreed not to picket the awards show, its writers were not permitted to work on the broadcast as part of the strike.
Jodie Comer declares Prima Facie role her “greatest honour”
Just days after she was forced to bring a Broadway performance to an end due to poor air quality in New York, Brit actor Jodie Comer took home her first Tony.
The Killing Eve star received the award for her role in one-woman sexual assault drama Prima Facie, beating fierce competition from Jessica Chastain, Audra McDonald and Jessica Hecht.
Speaking to the crowd about her Broadway debut, Comer said: “This has been my greatest honour, and it continues to be these three weeks left.”
The actor, who hails from Liverpool, also won the Best Actress in a Play award at the Oliviers earlier this year for the London production.
You can read The Independent’s review of Prima Facie here.
Lea Michele gets her Funny Girl flowers
Thirteen years after Lea Michele first performed “Don’t Rain on My Parade” at the Tony Awards as part of the Glee cast, the actor returned to the stage.
This time, however, she was there in the role of Funny Girl’s Fanny Brice, after taking over the role from Beanie Feldstein in the Broadway production this year.
While Michele wasn’t eligible in this year’s Tonys – the show debuted on Broadway last year, when it picked up just one nomination – she performed once again at the 2023 ceremony, in a moment seen as symbolic for the actor.
Non-binary actors make history
It was a historic night for the LGBT+ community, as both Alex Newell and J Harrison Ghee became the first openly non-binary actors to win Tony Awards.
Newell, who appears in the Broadway musical Shucked, took home the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical.
In their speech, Newell told the audience: “Thank you for seeing me, Broadway. I should not be up here as a queer non-binary, fat, Black lil baby from Massachusetts.”
Ghee, meanwhile, won the gong for Best Lead Actor in a Musical for their portrayal of a gender-questioning musician in Some Like It Hot.
“For every trans, non-binary, gender nonconforming human who was ever told you couldn’t be seen, this is for you,” they said in their acceptance speech.
Jodie Comer takes it!!
Everyone’s favourite Scouser Jodie Comer has beaten out stiff competition from Jessica Chastain to win the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Play.
She stars in Prima Facie, written by Suzie Miller, in which plays defence barrister Tessa who is raped by a colleague.
She scooped the Olivier Award for Best Actress for the play’s West End run back in April.
“Comer is alternately steely and impassioned, noble and embarrassed, flustered and composed. It’s a remarkably agile performance,” The Independent said in its four-star review of the play.
Her win comes after Comer was forced off stage this week due to New York’s poor air quality.
Tom Stoppard’s ‘Leopoldstadt' wins Best Play
Sir Tom Stoppard takes home the award for Best Play for Leopoldstadt – his intimate look at “a prosperous [Viennese] Jewish family who had fled the pogroms in the East”.
All four of Stoppard’s own grandparents were Jews murdered by Nazis in concentration camps.
Advocating for writers, Stoppard told the Tony Awards crowd: “I’ve noticed the theatre writer getting progressively devalued in the food chain… Writers are the sharp end of the inverted pyramid.”
ICYMI: Alex Newell and J Harrison Ghee became the first openly non-binary actors to win Tony Awards
Just moments after Alex Newell became the first non-binary actor to win a Tony, J Harrison Ghee joined them.
Newell won Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical for their role in Shucked while Ghee won Best Lead Actor in a Musical thanks to their portrayal of a gender-questioning musician in Some Like It Hot.
Read more:
Alex Newell and J Harrison Ghee become first openly non-binary actors to win a Tony
Newell and Ghee won for their roles in ‘Shucked’ and ‘Some Like It Hot’, respectively
Sean Hayes wins Best Lead Actor in a Play
Will & Grace star Sean Hayes took home the Tony award for his role in Good Night, Oscar.
“This must be the first time an Oscar has won a Tony,” the actor quipped onstage.
Doug Wright’s play follows a 1958 episode of The Tonight Show, where host Jack Paar has Oscar Levant on as a guest comedian.
‘Kimberly Akimbo’ wins the final Tony Award of the night for Best Musical
Kimberly Akimbo, which follows a teenage girl suffering from a disease that causes her to age four and a half times as fast as normal, closes out the night with its win for Best Musical.
That’s all folks! Here are your winners...
The 76th annual Tony Awards has drawn to a close. You can find a full list of all the night’s winners and their fellow nominees here:
The full list of Tony Awards 2023 winners
‘Kimberly Akimbo’ and ‘Leopoldstadt’ were among the big winners of the night
ICYMI: Denée Benton called Governor Ron DeSantis ‘the current Grand Wizard of Florida'
Perhaps the show’s punchiest moment came when Hamilton star Denée Benton called Governor Ron DeSantis “the current Grand Wizard of Florida”.
The Grand Wizard was, of course, the national leader of the Ku Klux Klan.
The risquée jibe was met with a lot of laughter and applause at the United Palace event.
Watch Benton’s speech here:
Sean Hayes’s speech in full
Sean Hayes had a very humourous acceptance speech after his Best Leading Actor in a Play win for his role in Good Night, Oscar.
Watch it here:
Paul Sorvino and Tina Turner among those recognised in ‘In Memorium’ segment
Joaquina Kalukango performed “Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again” from Phantom of the Opera for the In Memoriam segment of the broadcast.
Watch it in full here:
Why was Michael Arden’s acceptance speech censored?
Many viewers were left confused on Sunday (11 June) night after Parade director Michael Arden’s acceptance speech got bleeped out.
Arden took home the award for Best Direction of a Musical.
Read more:
Viewers left baffled after director Michael Arden’s Tony speech is censored by CBS
Arden won Best Direction of a Musical for his revivial of ‘Parade’
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