EW gathers 2023 Tony Award nominees to discuss their work and the Broadway season at large.
It’s almost time for Broadway’s biggest night.
For a time, the Tony Awards seemed in flux, denied a waiver amidst the WGA strike.
The Tony Awards 2023 Awardist panel.Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman (2); LEONARDO MUNOZ/AFP/Getty
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But first, hear from some of the nominees below.
What are the challenges of approaching those different things?
Sara Bareilles in ‘Into the Woods’.Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade
Do you find one easier than the other?
Jeanine, I want to ask you this.
JEANINE TESORI (Composer,Kimberly Akimbo):I knew it, Arden.
Arian Moayed and Jessica Chastain in ‘A Doll’s House’.Courtesy of A Doll’s House
I knew you were coming for me.
There are challenges in both.
So it’s a revisitation.
Victoria Clark in ‘Kimberly Akimbo’.Ahron R. Foster
For something new likeKimberly Akimbo, I have no idea how it’s going to work.
That’s really scary because there are no guarantees at all.
It’s a different kind of fear that you’re putting something in front of an audience.
Christian Borle and J. Harrison Ghee in ‘Some Like it Hot’.Marc J. Franklin
And we don’t know how it’s going to hit at the time.
That’s true for revivals and for new shows.
It’s a gamble both ways.
Wendell Pierce and Sharon D. Clarke in ‘Death of a Salesman’.Joan Marcus
That’s what a good revival should do.
That’s what a classic does.
Long after we’re gone, the humanity there will still speak to those who come after us.
Micaela Diamond and Ben Platt in ‘Parade’.Joan Marcus
That’s the thing that madeDeath of a Salesmana classic.
And then, our interpretation heightened that with an African American family.
Without changing a word, it gave a new insight to it.
Joomin Hwang, Rachel Webb, Bobby ‘Pocket’ Horner, Lorna Courtney, and Virgil Gadson in ‘& Juliet’.Matthew Murphy
I was one of the only members that didn’t knowA Doll’s House.
I had no relationship to that play.
So, I had to weirdly approach it like a new play.
Annaleigh Ashford and Josh Groban in ‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’.Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman
But there’s so much baggage with these characters because everyone knows these characters.
You’re battling with a lot of preconceived notions.
It’s crazy to see a play like that.
People in New York are seeing the show that just went through a breakup.
Even with a revival likeA Doll’s House, these themes feel even more present.
I was in Dave Malloy’sGreat Comet of 1812; Sara was in and wrote Waitress.
Now we both find ourselves in widely beloved Sondheim revivals.
The pressure there is great as well.
It’s yours to mess up in some ways.
That is similar to doing a new work to introduce it to somebody.
Most people are coming to it as a new piece of theater, even if they know the score.
I have to interpret the piece but also start over with it.
They’re on the ride in time with the story.
TESORI:You bring everything that you have with you in your pockets and your memory and your soul.
It’s this incredible, wonderful dance of new and old.
Every day I’m still growing as a person, I’m understanding myself more.
That is changing my Juliet day to day.
It’s challenging because being in a Broadway show in and of itself is challenging.
But we do it because we love telling stories and we love inspiring others.
The energy that we give and that we receive fuels us.
I enjoyedSome Like It Hotand was like, “Wow, what a fun property.”
But the cool part of writing a book is, I could tailor it to this dude right here.
Actors are such a huge part of the creative process.
Because once you see it come out of somebody’s mouth, it becomes a new North Star.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Sara and Josh, you’re both part of a recent wave of Sondheim revivals.
Why do you think his work is striking such a chord right now?
It heightened the sense of reverence to his legacy and wanting to hold the work sacred.
The approach of our creative team was, let’s put the orchestra dead center.
There’s no set.
This is community theater adjacent.
I never got to meet Steve, so he remains this monolith in my mind.
I felt very intimidated, but really honored to get to go on the journey of telling that story.
When you’re dealing in fairy tales, there is something that elicits a very childlike response.
Part of the resonance of this production had to do with the healing that people still need to do.
GROBAN:Steve did know thatInto the Woodswas happening though, right?
GROBAN:Same withSweeney.
That’s the nature of work as brilliant as his.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Amber, how much did starting with a beloved movie impact your process?
I firmly believe that.
How much more fun would that be?
And at some point, you gotta look at it, honestly, right?
Wasn’t nobody thinking about us when they wrote that movie.
It does make you feel a little freer in your interpretation of it.
Because anchors famously allow people to soar.
I’m a mess, but you get it.
How much has your work onSuccessioninfluenced playing in this world but in a more domestic setting?
I thought of them as different spiritual attacks on social norms.
As I was reading the play, I could only think about Iran.
By going after those micro-truths, somehow or another, it talks to everyone.
People are having their own DNA on it, and it’s true to them.
It feels it’s coming from their own worldview and perspective.
So, sadly, I didn’t take too much fromSuccession.
The other thing is, I don’t really understand much of the financial jargon that’s happening there.
That’s basically the energy.
Jeremy [Strong] knows everything about finances now.
And I was like,I have no idea what he’s saying.
So, I said, “Why are you bothering me with this?”
[Laughs] That gives you an idea of how much I understand.
TESORI:So much rhymes with derivatives, let’s start there.
MOAYED:[Laughs] It does, actually.
TESORI:It’s just because I’m old.
Look, I grew up in the pit.
I started out studying science.
I’d never even seen a musical, I didn’t know what the hell a musical was.
I played field hockey and tried to keep my distance between me and my Sicilian father.
This is my seventh Broadway score, and I’m so amazed that each one is so different.
They’re like having kids, and each kid, they tell you what they need.
As I age, I want to see, especially, women and female-identifying protagonists centered.
Kimberly Akimbois based on a beautiful play that David Lindsay-Abaire wrote right out of school.
I love working with playwrights.
I love writers because they’re generally smarter than I am.
In the beginning, there was the word.
That’s why there’s a strike right now.
I know so many badass older women who have that twinkle in their eye.
It’s actually an acknowledgment of our ignorance and intolerance.
It shouldn’t be a badge of honor.
There should be a badge of shame.
I felt a great obligation to both.
How do you acknowledge and meet that obligation?
You think of one man who wrote this uniquely truthful story, and that’s Arthur Miller.
You do the play.
When you do the play, it magnifies all the things that you bring to it.
What are your thoughts on gendered categories and making space in the awards race for everyone?
RUFFIN:Sometimes the question comes up of should our categories be gendered.
But it’s also quite old."
I fear gendered categories might become that.
Lorna, what do you say when people ask you about that?
COURTNEY:I mean, this is the 76th Tony Awards.
Seventy-six years have passed and a lot has changed since then.
I don’t believe that there should be gendered categories.
I call myself an actor, right?
So it should just be that.
To say, “Listen, bring whoever you are to it.”
Willie Loman’s slow dirge to death.
And the harder it became to fight even more, to fight with your last breath.
It became the complete opposite of how the role over 70 years has traditionally been done.
We know what’s happening from the titleDeath of a Salesman.
My impulse was, in spite of everything, I’m going to fight.
Culturally, for me, it was my father, it was my uncles.
He was having an affair with a woman that another white man was having an affair with.
And they lynched him and my grandfather saved him, and he actually sued them and won.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Amber, how did you want to put your own stamp onSome Like It Hot?
RUFFIN:I can’t wait for theDeath of the Salesmanmusical.
I rage so hard against it.
I was like, “No corner of this woman can be an idiot.”
you’re able to’t be tricking ladies into bed anymore.
you’re able to’t smile and forgive that at the end of a show.
She became more than an ingenue, and this wheeling and dealing savvy lady.
It is odd when sometimes people honor things that are bad for them.
Just because that’s the way it’s been done, that’s no excuse to do anything.
Once you decide to do things your own way, people don’t care.
People are concerned with you having a great time doing the thing you love the most.
No one wants you to be confined into some little dumb box.
Busting Sugar out of that role really hit home for me.
It made me feel like, “Oh, people want people to succeed.
We’re all little baby huggy bears who want the best for each other.”
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Michael, you have almost entirely directed revivals professionally.
What is it that draws you to that specifically?
No, I’m kidding.
[Laughs] I love the history of theater.
That’s what draws me to revivals.
I’m not as interested in entertainment as I am in examination.
WithParade, I’m attracted to it because it gives me an opportunity to turn over stones.
I’m kind of a s—stirrer in that sense.
Does that pre-existing material make your job easier or harder?
Shakespeare, we all know, stands the test of time.
But the comedy and the themes that are in Max Martin’s songs do too.
I’m still discovering, and every day I’m listening.
It all works together so bizarrely.
But they’re listening to the words.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Josh, you love this show so much you named your dog Sweeney.
What has it been like realizing this dream and what have you learned about yourself playing the role?
It’s been out as long as I’ve been alive.
For those of us that have had the great fortune of having those “a-ha!”
There is a great pressure with that.
The fact that the stars aligned for it to actually happen is something I don’t take for granted.
Everybody in this community has wanted this their entire lives.
To be at the helm of that with this show, it’s an extraordinary honor.
He probably still has no idea that that was for me, and now I’m doing that.
That’s why I keep gravitating back to this community.
How does this feel different?
BAREILLES:As a kid, I imagined myself on stage.
I was stuck in the question of, “Can I even do this?”
It felt impossible most of the time.
I was so focused on trying to climb that mountain.
I am just a pig in s— this time.
I’m so excited.
I feel so lucky.
I’m so rooted in my childlike joy.
This is the dream.
All of those very childlike fantasies of getting to be on a stage someday.
The other piece of it is that the theater community is so sacred to me.
I’ve always wanted to honor the invitation in by just trying to really do good work.
The cool kids said I was okay.It matters so much to me.
The work that gets done in the theater community is so essential to humanity.
Competition’s not my bag at all.
We can get tricked into getting into the toxicity of a competitive environment.
I believe it saves lives.
We’ve got the audience, but they may feel guilty about it on the ride home.
I wish that I could see what’s going on on stage, but I feel it.
I’m always fascinated by how people react.
It’s different every night.
Some nights people are like, “Oh gee, what do I do?”
I love when audiences are torn between two things.
I always venture to get to the side and watch people at the end of the act.
And Ben Platt stays on stage all of intermission.
Some people are completely oblivious, like, “Where are we going for dinner?”
right in front of him and some of the audiences sit with him and doesn’t want to break.
I love that it’s all so different every night.
You hear people laughing, and then they start crying.
It was not even crying through laughter or laughter through tears.
It was one that had received the energy of the other.
And I thought, “Well that’s our show.”
Then it becomes the most quiet thousand people in a room ever.
It turns so completely opposite.
So when that happens, it’s a real turn.
BAREILLES:We brought boatloads of kids into these productions.
Our cast was utterly multicultural and very diverse, and there were all kinds of people up on stage.
I would watch those little faces transfixed.
This is the plight of theater, and we’re making inroads.
There’s obviously more work to do.
It reminds you that’s why we’re here.
you could watch a condensed video of this roundtable conversation at the top of this article.
