![Ask Peter 06/05/26 [UPDATED]](https://storage.ghost.io/c/35/80/35808fb2-0a85-46be-ac84-42b54557296d/content/images/size/w600/2026/06/AP.png)
UPDATE: I’m here with the last word on Sunday’s Tony Awards. Pink was a dynamite host (who knew?), but the show felt longer than a bloated Apple series. Good stuff included John Lithgow at 80, becoming the oldest acting winner for showing how it’s done in “Giant,” and Ali Louis Bourzgui, 26, stepping up as the youngest for his explosive turn as a rock star vampire in “The Lost Boys.” The great Laurie Metcalf took home her third Tony, this time for “Death of a Salesman” in which she made the doormat wife role into the strongest character on stage. My favorite musical revival “Ragtime” also scored big for Cassie Levy who sings and acts the hell out of “Back to Before” and for Joshua Henry, a thundering talent who not only gave the best and most emotional speech of the night but did it without notes. Shame on 90 percent of the other winners who needed crib sheets. This is Broadway people, learn how to speak your heart.
FOR THE RECORD: HERE ARE THE NOMINEES AND THE WINNERS
https://www.billboard.com/lists/2026-tony-awards-winners-list/musicals-2/
What effect do you think movies and streaming will have on the Tony Awards being presented on Sunday night on CBS? (published 06/05/26)
Ahell of a lot. Carrie Coon, Tony nominated this year as Best Actress in a play for “Bug,” written by her playwright husband Tracy Letts, has claimed that being in the hit TV series “The White Lotus” and “The Gilded Age” is one of the reasons she keeps working. “Actors don’t get hired now,” she said recently. “Celebrities do.” No movies or TV series and you’re not employable on Broadway. “They need to replace you with somebody more famous,” said Coon. Sadly, her comments ring disturbingly true.
Look at this year’s nominees. The leading candidates for best musicals are “The Lost Boys,” based on a movie, and “Schmigadoon,” based on a TV series. In the Best Musical Revival category, the frontrunners are “Ragtime,” from a movie, and “Cats: The Jellicle Ball,” from one of the worst movies of all time, though it had Taylor Swift starring in it.
The actors have the same problem. Does relatively unknown Will Harrison, nominated as Best Actor in a play for “Punch,” have a chance when fellow nominees include movie and TV names “Nathan Lane (“Death of a Salesman”), John Lithgow (“Giant”) and Harry Potter himself Daniel Radcliffe (“Every Brilliant Thing”)?
I’m not saying the bigger names don’t deliver superb performances—Lithgow is at his career best playing the antisemitic children’s author Roald Dahl, Lane is an institution in every medium, and Hogwarts’s own Radcliffe, a recent Tony winner for the musical “Merrily We Roll Along,” has drawn sellout crowds to his solo performance.
Besides Carrie Coon, the nominees for Best Actress in a play include Oscar contender Rose Byrne and “Gilded Age” star Kelli O’Hara, both for “Fallen Angels,” and the brilliant classical actress Lesley Manville, an Oscar nominee for “Phantom Thread,” in “Oedipus.” How does the relatively uncelebrated Susannah Flood stand a chance for “Liberation,” a play that won a Pulitzer Prize but closed early? Could it have been a cast most audiences didn’t recognize?
These are questions you might consider when trying to win your office pool as the Tony Awards prepare for their national closeup on Sunday night on CBS. What wins on a network TV show definitely has impact on the box office (read survival). That’s why a Best Musical trophy for “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York),” starring newcomer nominees Christiani Pitts and Sam Tutty, could be life or death for their original musical. The show has no movie or TV series to call attention to itself. It’s out there on its own—a truly scary prospect.
There are no sure things at the Tonys this year—OK, if Joshua Henry doesn’t win for “Ragtime,” I will mount a formal protest. Ditto Laurie Metcalf in “Death of a Salesman.” Is originality without star insurance really a curse on Broadway, as Coon suggests? Look at the attached Tony ballot and try picking winners with no movie or streaming series to increase their chances. You might not like what you see.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/video.broadwayworld.com/vidupload/2019/TonysBallot2026.pdf