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      Leslie Odom Jr. on Tony Nomination for ‘Purlie Victorious’

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      The day of the Tony Award nominations is like college acceptance day a bit earlier in the spring, but on the scarcity model: Of the dozens of artists eligible in each category, only five or so are “admitted.” That means some great work gets left by the wayside — but also, because the number of nominators is small enough to be idiosyncratic, that plenty of outcomes defy all prediction. Here are our thoughts on this season’s inadvertent (and possibly advertent) snubs, delightful (or mystifying) surprises and other notable anomalies. Television stars are considered good box office but not always good Tony bait. This year’s crop, including Sarah Paulson, Jeremy Strong, Steve Carell and William Jackson Harper, complicates that wisdom. Paulson is a likely winner but the men are already canceling each other out. Though Carell, in his Broadway debut, and Harper both play characters competing for the love of a married woman in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of “Uncle Vanya,” only Harper, excellent in a role that is usually considered supporting, was nominated as best leading actor in a play. (The production, which featured many lovely performances, was otherwise shut out.) Note that Chekhov let neither man win.Deep cuts for ‘Stereophonic.’How the nominators handled the ensemble in David Adjmi’s recording-studio-set play was going to be one of the morning’s most interesting questions. The answer: Generously, as five members of the young cast were singled out for their supporting performances, including Tom Pecinka and Sarah Pidgeon as the fraying central couple, and Juliana Canfield and Will Brill as their bandmates. Without an instrument in hand, Eli Gelb got in, too, as the ’70s rock group’s frazzled sound engineer. Spreading all that love helped take the show to Number One with a Bullet — the most nominated play in Broadway history.Too many riches to go around.On the other hand, the superb ensemble casts of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” and “Illinoise” were skunked. That’s no accident: As more works these days distribute the storytelling burden equally among many members of a cast, odd nomination outcomes — feast or famine — can result.That’s why we often argue here for a new category that honors ensembles. And Actors’ Equity, the national union representing actors and stage managers, goes further, with its annual award for Broadway choruses. Of the 23 musicals that opened this season, 21 are eligible; the winner will be notified on June 15 — pointedly, one day before the Tonys.Women lead in directing.In the history of the awards, only 10 women, beginning in 1998, have won prizes for directing. This year that number seems likely to rise, with seven of the 10 possible directing slots filled by women. Anne Kauffman, Lila Neugebauer and Whitney White have been nominated for best direction of a play, and Maria Friedman, Leigh Silverman, Jessica Stone and Danya Taymor (the niece of Julie Taymor, the first woman to win for direction of a musical) are in contention for best direction of a musical.To love, honor and ignore.The Tony nominating committee said “I do” to two pairs of actors playing married characters: Brian d’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara as lovers undone by alcoholism in “Days of Wine and Roses,” and Maryann Plunkett and Dorian Harewood as an older couple grappling with dementia in “The Notebook.” But the shows did not receive the same love. Neither was nominated for best musical, though “Days of Wine and Roses” did pick up a nomination for score and “The Notebook” for book. Guess you can’t always have your wedding cake, and eat it too. A warm Willkommen to ‘Cabaret.’Rebecca Frecknall’s crepuscular revival of Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret” was celebrated when it opened on the West End in 2021, eventually winning seven Olivier awards. But its Broadway transfer received a more muted response. (“Too often a misguided attempt to resuscitate the show breaks its ribs,” The New York Times wrote.) So who cares? Not the Tony nominators, who recognized the show with a nomination for best revival of a musical and gave nods to the actors — Eddie Redmayne, Gayle Rankin, Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell — in all four categories.No yellow brick road for ‘The Wiz.’The much-anticipated revival has been one of spring’s early hits, but Tony nominators followed the lead of critics, not audiences, who didn’t have much nice to say about the show’s look, script and performances. “The Wiz,” which earned seven Tony awards when it arrived on Broadway in 1975, didn’t get a single nod this time around.Shaina Taub gets out the vote (mostly).Like “Hamilton,” the musical “Suffs” looks at American history through a contemporary lens. Like “Hamilton,” the show started at the Public Theater before moving to Broadway. And like “Hamilton,” it was written and composed by its multitalented star, here 35-year-old Shaina Taub. When nominations were announced, though, Taub didn’t pull off a Lin-Manuel Trifecta. She received nods for her music and book, two of six nominations for “Suffs,” but not for starring as the suffragist Alice Paul. Nikki M. James, already a Tony winner for “The Book of Mormon,” got the show’s one acting nomination, as Ida B. Wells.Pop/rock storms another stage…Squint and you may think you’re at the Grammy Awards on Tonys night, as the best score nominees include Arcade Fire’s Will Butler (“Stereophonic”); David Byrne and Fatboy Slim (“Here Lies Love”); and Jamestown Revival (“The Outsiders”). Plus, of course, Sufjan Stevens, whose 2005 concept album is transcendently reorchestrated for dance in the best musical nominee “Illinoise,” and Alicia Keys, whose existing tunes power the most nominated musical of all, “Hell’s Kitchen.”Except when it doesn’t.Among those who might instead be watching from home: the not-nominated Barry Manilow (“Harmony”); Ingrid Michaelson (“The Notebook”); and Huey Lewis, whose songbook energizes “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” but didn’t rouse Tony nominators.Waving the flag for ‘Illinoise’ and more.Monday’s roster reflected a Broadway season that was notably American, even aside from “Illinoise,” a show actually named for a state. “Hell’s Kitchen,” nodding at the New York City neighborhood where Keys grew up, told a story we like to think of as local: Big dreams come true. “Suffs” took us behind the scenes of American history, as women fought for the vote. “Purlie Victorious” and “Appropriate” took contrasting approaches — one comic, one gothic — to the peculiar American institution of racism. But even aside from their content, the 17 productions nominated for the biggest prizes are overwhelmingly the work of American authors. (One of the touted London imports, Peter Morgan’s “Patriots,” didn’t even make the list for best play.) Is Broadway, which has too often resembled a British colony, finally achieving independence? More

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      Three Former Elphabas in ‘Wicked’ Scored Tony Nominations

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      The Green Girls are making good.Three women who have starred on Broadway as Elphaba in “Wicked” picked up Tony nominations on Tuesday.Shoshana Bean, who inhabited the role for a year starting in 2005, was nominated as best featured actress for “Hell’s Kitchen,” in which she plays a tough-minded single mother trying to protect her adolescent daughter from the temptations of the street. (This is her second Tony nomination — she was also nominated in 2022 for “Mr. Saturday Night.”)Eden Espinosa, who succeeded Bean as Elphaba in 2006, was nominated as best leading actress for playing an artistically and sexually adventurous painter in “Lempicka.”And Lindsay Mendez, who became Elphaba in 2013, scored a nomination as best featured actress for portraying a hard-drinking novelist in this season’s hit revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.” (Mendez already has one Tony, for her portrayal of Carrie Pipperidge in a 2018 revival of “Carousel.”)Who is Elphaba? Well, “Wicked,” a musical based on a novel by Gregory Maguire, is an imagined back story for the Wicked Witch of the West, and Elphaba is that character. (Reconsidering her actual wickedness is the subject of the musical.) Her name is derived from the phonetic initials of L. Frank Baum, who wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”; her skin is green as a nod to the green makeup worn by Margaret Hamilton in “The Wizard of Oz,” the much-loved film adaptation of Baum’s novel.“Wicked” has been running successfully for so long, with so many companies, and with juicy leading roles for two young women, that it now appears on the résumés of many musical theater performers.The actress playing Elphaba needs a big belt; her iconic song is “Defying Gravity.” The role was originated on Broadway in 2003 by Idina Menzel, who won a Tony for her work, and who is expected to return to Broadway sometime in the not-too-distant future with “Redwood,” a new musical about a woman and, well, trees. (The musical had a production earlier this year at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.)The other main character in “Wicked” is Glinda (traditionally described as a good witch, although again, your mileage may vary); that role calls for a high soprano and was originated by Kristin Chenoweth, who is also hoping to return soon to Broadway — she is starring in a new musical called “The Queen of Versailles,” adapted from the film, that will have an initial production at the Emerson Colonial in Boston this summer. (A 2023 Glinda, McKenzie Kurtz, is currently starring in another new Broadway musical, “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” while Katie Rose Clarke, who had three separate tenures as Glinda on Broadway, is featured in this season’s revival of “Merrily We Roll Along.”)Meanwhile, “Wicked” is heading for the big screen, with Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba and Ariana Grande as Glinda. The first of the film’s two parts is scheduled to be released in November, as a Thanksgiving weekend movie. More

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      Daniel Radcliffe Earns First Tony Nomination for ‘Merrily We Roll Along’

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      The Boy Who Lived is finally the Actor Who Got Nominated (for a Tony).Daniel Radcliffe, who as a child actor became globally recognizable by playing Harry Potter in all eight films, notched his first Tony nomination on Tuesday for his work in one of this season’s biggest Broadway hits: an acclaimed revival of the musical “Merrily We Roll Along.”The nod has been a long time coming — in his post-Potter life, Radcliffe has consistently made artistically ambitious, and occasionally risky, choices in both stage and film roles. He has returned often to Broadway — “Merrily” is his fifth role since 2008, following “Equus” (which required him to take off his clothes), “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” (which required him to sing), “The Cripple of Inishmaan” and “The Lifespan of a Fact.”“Merrily” is a 1981 musical by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth about the gradual implosion of a three-way friendship; in the current revival, Radcliffe plays Charley Kringas, a lyricist and playwright. Reviewing the production in The New York Times, the chief theater critic Jesse Green praised Radcliffe for “wit and modesty,” and said he handled his character’s big song “superbly.” More

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      Tony Awards Nominations 2024: Updating List

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      Nominations for the 77th Tony Awards will be announced Tuesday morning. See below for a live list of nominees.Follow our live updates on the Tony Awards nominations.The Tony Awards nominators haven’t had much time. This year, in a crush of openings, 12 Broadway shows opened in the nine days before the eligibility deadline. (To qualify, a Broadway show must have opened between April 28, 2023, and April 25, 2024.)Nevertheless, the nominees for the 2024 Tonys will be announced Tuesday morning, with a total of 36 shows vying for awards.A few categories will be read live on CBS shortly after 8:30 a.m. Eastern; others will be revealed at 9 a.m. via livestream on the Tony Awards YouTube page. The Tony winners Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who won for his performance in the 2022 Broadway revival of “Take Me Out,” and Renée Elise Goldsberry, who won in 2016 for playing Angelica Schuyler in “Hamilton,” will make the announcements.This year’s awards ceremony will take place on Sunday, June 16, at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater. Ariana DeBose, a stage veteran and Oscar winner, will return to host for the third year in a row.Follow below for a full list of nominees, which will be updated as the announcements are made.Best New Play“Jaja’s African Hair Braiding”Read our review.“Mary Jane”Read our review.“Mother Play”Read our review.“Prayer for the French Republic”Read our review.“Stereophonic”Read our review.Best Leading Actress in a MusicalEden Espinosa, “Lempicka”Read our review.Maleah Joi Moon, “Hell’s Kitchen”Read our feature.Maryann Plunkett, “The Notebook”Read our review.Kelli O’Hara, “Days of Wine and Roses,”Read our feautre.Gayle Rankin, “Cabaret”Read our review.Best Leading Actress in a PlayBetsy Aidem, “Prayer for the French Republic” Jessica Lange, “Mother Play”Read our review.Rachel McAdams, “Mary Jane”Read our profile.Sarah Paulson, “Appropriate”Read our group interview.Amy Ryan, “Doubt”Read our review.Best Leading Actor in a PlayWilliam Jackson Harper,“Uncle Vanya”Read our review.Leslie Odom Jr., “Purlie Victorious”Read our group interview.Liev Schreiber, “Doubt”Read our review.Jeremy Strong, “An Enemy of the People”Read our feature.Michael Stuhlbarg, “Patriots”Read our review.Halina Bennet contributed research. More

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      Blue Ivy Carter to Join Beyoncé in ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’

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      Beyoncé’s 12-year-old daughter will make her feature film debut as Kiara, Nala and Simba’s daughter, in a prequel to the 2019 hit.Blue Ivy Carter will be joining her mother, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, in the movie musical “Mufasa: The Lion King,” which is expected in theaters in December.The movie — a prequel to “The Lion King,” the 2019 hyperrealistic remake of the Disney classic starring Beyoncé as the voice of Nala — will be directed by Barry Jenkins, who won a best adapted screenplay Oscar for “Moonlight.”Blue Ivy, 12, will make her feature film debut by voicing Kiara, the daughter of Nala and Simba, who will again be voiced by Donald Glover. (Billy Eichner, Seth Rogen, Mads Mikkelsen and Thandiwe Newton will also lend their talents.)“A buddy of mine, Matthew Cherry, made the short film called ‘Hair Love’ that Blue Ivy did the audiobook of,” Jenkins told Entertainment Weekly in an article published on Monday. “Starting this project and just having that in the ether, I was like, ‘Is it worth a shot? Would Blue Ivy want to do it? Would Beyoncé want to act opposite her daughter? Is it too close to home?’” he said. “But once we put the question to them, they both responded with enthusiasm.”Representatives for Beyoncé did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Last year, Blue Ivy joined Beyoncé onstage during the Renaissance tour, which wrapped up in October; she already has a Grammy, for best music video for “Brown Skin Girl,” a single by her mother. Beyoncé holds the record for most Grammys in history, with 32 wins.“The Lion King,” which was directed by Jon Favreau, was a box-office smash, earning $192 million at theaters in the United States and Canada in its first weekend. It ultimately made more than $1.5 billion in ticket sales globally. More

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      in Television

      ‘Fire Country’ Star Max Thieriot Likes to Watch Things Grow

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      The “Fire Country” star talks about the road trips, the farm equipment and the family time that keep him grounded.For Max Thieriot, one of the creators and the star of the CBS series “Fire Country,” all roads lead back to his roots.He was raised on a vineyard off the coast of Sonoma in Northern California. And for a while, he lived nearby on 90 acres of his own with his wife and two sons.But “Fire Country” — about prison inmates joining elite firefighters to battle the region’s blazes in exchange for shorter sentences — shoots near Vancouver, British Columbia. So Thieriot, 35, moved his family to rural Washington, where his kids could continue to run around with the chickens and the goats.“I wanted to try and keep the same lifestyle for my wife and my boys, and not to totally upend their world,” he said.Alas, Thieriot still has wine in his blood.About 14 years ago, he and a couple of childhood friends started their own vineyard. The big lesson?“It’s much faster to do, and makes a lot more sense, when you have an entire crew,” he admitted before discussing the tractors, the road trips and the grapevines that keep him grounded.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘The Interview’ Podcast: Anne Hathaway

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      This is the debut of The Interview, The New York Times’s new weekly series, featuring in-depth conversations with fascinating people. Each week, David Marchese or Lulu Garcia-Navarro will speak with notable figures in the worlds of culture, politics, business, sports, wellness and beyond. Like the Magazine’s former Talk column, the conversations will appear online and in print, but now you can also listen to them in our new weekly podcast, “The Interview,” which is available wherever you get your podcasts. Below, you’ll find David’s first interview with the actress Anne Hathaway; Lulu’s first interview, with the Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid, is here.Listen to the conversation with Anne HathawayOn the debut of ’The Interview,’ the actress talks to David Marchese about learning to let go of other people’s opinions.On one level, Anne Hathaway’s new movie, “The Idea of You,” which arrives on Prime Video on May 2 and is directed by Michael Showalter, couldn’t be more straightforward. It’s an adaptation of Robinne Lee’s hit romance novel about Solène, a divorced 40-year-old mom played by Hathaway, who winds up in a relationship with a much younger man — a singer in a boy band, played by Nicholas Galitzine. Warmhearted and with unabashed mainstream appeal, the film is a return for the New Jersey-raised actress, who has fruitfully spent much of her time lately playing thornier characters in indie films, to the kinds of charming fish-out-of-water tales that first helped bring her to stardom, like “The Princess Diaries” and “The Devil Wears Prada.” This time, though, instead of being the plucky ingénue thrust into a glamorous, high-pressure situation, Hathaway is playing a character who’s coming into a new world a little less starry-eyed, and with a firmer sense of self.But “The Idea of You” also works on another, more complicated, even self-referential level. It’s a movie about a woman pushing against societal expectations and getting a lot of grief for it, which is something Hathaway, 41, knows about. More than a decade ago, around the time she won an Academy Award for her work in “Les Misérables,” the online commentariat turned on Hathaway for … who knows, exactly? Some strange groupthink kicked in that caused people to pile on her for seeming like an inauthentic striver — or something. Other than as a case study in the inexplicable and random cruelty of the internet, the whole phenomenon, described at the time as Hathahate, makes even less sense now than it did then.Since that time, Hathaway told me when we talked twice last month, she has been learning to let go of other people’s opinions and expectations of her as an actress, a celebrity and a human being. This has made her work even more compelling to watch and made her more guarded as a public figure. “I really like expressing myself through my work,” says Hathaway, who after so many years and so many great performances is still figuring out the best way to play the puzzling real-life part of a famous actress.There are a bunch of things that are intriguing to me about the new movie. One of them is that there are a few of what I took to be Anne Hathaway psychological Easter eggs sprinkled throughout the film. I’ll get to those, but first: You haven’t done a romance in a while. Can you talk to me about why you wanted to do “The Idea of You”? It’s such a softball question, and I can feel my brain complicating it. More

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      Zendaya, Luca Guadagnino, Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist on ‘Challengers’

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      Can trash talk be a love language?It is in the world of Luca Guadagnino’s new film “Challengers,” which pits two best-friend tennis players, Patrick (Josh O’Connor) and Art (Mike Faist), against each other in a bid to win the heart of the superstar Tashi Duncan (Zendaya). What begins as innocent teasing becomes more charged once an injury cuts short Tashi’s career: Forced to pivot to coaching, she weds Art and goads him to demolish her former lover Patrick on the court, though both men continue to nurse their own hidden agendas.“I find them all really likable and charming — and terrible also,” Zendaya said with a grin. The complicated adult stakes of “Challengers” offer a new pursuit for this 27-year-old actress, who shot to fame as a teenager on the Disney Channel and is now best known for her Emmy-winning role on HBO’s “Euphoria” and the big-budget movie franchises “Spider-Man” and “Dune.” Though she is aware that “Challengers” will test her box-office draw as a solo star, she didn’t overthink her decision to make the movie, which comes out in theaters on Friday.“I wanted to do it because it’s brilliant,” she said. “It’s not like I sat in my room and had this master board: ‘OK, this is how I’m going to make my big transition for my first lead theatrical role.’”Last week at a Beverly Hills hotel, I met Zendaya, her co-stars O’Connor (“The Crown”) and Faist (“West Side Story”), and Guadagnino for an hour of freewheeling conversation about “Challengers” and the pressure of forging a life and career in the public eye. Here are edited excerpts from our conversation.“The triangle is not just two people after one,” Luca Guadagnino, the director of “Challengers,” said, “but the corners touch together all the time.”Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesThis movie poses a lot of questions about ambition and drive. Zendaya, has your relationship to your own ambition changed over time?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More