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Cynthia Erivo (40:23)

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Ariana Grande (40:52)

And we're back. Okay, so next up in our myths and our trends, here's a good one. They won't give the Tony to a person two years in a row. Now I was looking this up. There are a couple of times where people have won Tonys two years in a row, but rarely in the same category. Gwen Verdon won two times in a row. The first time she tied with Thelma Ritter, her co star in New Girl in Town. That might be the only time that two co stars tied for the Tony Award. Also, Ms. Judith Light won two years in a row for Other Desert Cities and Assembled Parties. Steven Spinella won two years in a row for Angels in America, but he was in featured the first year for Millennium Approaches and then lead for Perestroika. Laurie Metcalfe won two years in a row, but again won in lead and then in Featured. One of the reasons why we don't often see people winning Two years in a row is that it's actually not that common. From my research, what I've gathered, it's not that common for actors to be nominated multiple years in a row. We're often in the last 40 years, honestly, throughout the whole run of the Tonys, people actors will get nominated like every other year. Maybe they'll get like two years in a row and then like have a year off. But it's very rare that you get actors sort of nominated consistently in a row. Someone like a Carrie Young is actually quite rare. I think Laurie Metcalf is one of the only other Broadway performers to have a similar string of nominations that frequent. But this is also brought up because a people go, well, Kara Young could win for featured actors and Purpose, even though she just won last year for Pearly Victorious. She could more on that in a second then also people going, oh well, Jonathan Groff could win two years in a row this year for Just In Time. I was looking this up for leading actor in a musical. From what I could tell, there have only been five men who've had nominations for leading actor in a musical two years in a row, not counting Grafsas. The first one I could find was Gregory hines in the 1980s and he lost both times. He would win on his third nomination for Jelly's Last Jam in the 90s. Next up is George Hearn who won his second Tony for La Cage aux Fall. His first from what I could see was For A doll's life in 1983 again. And I was just looking sort of per category. So if some of these people were nominated multiple years in a row in different categories, forgive me, but I'm looking specifically in this category. Yeah. So Gregory Hines was first, then George Hearn with two years in a row and he won the second time. Next up I found Patrick Wilson nominated back to back for the Full Monty in Oklahoma. He lost both times. Then Michael Serveris nominated back to back for Sweeney Todd. Then I believe, love music. Yeah. And then after that is Brian d' Arcy James who was nominated back to back for into the woods and Days of Wine and Roses. And none of these men won Tony's two years in a row. In fact, of these men, George Turner is the only one who won a Tony for the back to back nominations. Gregory Hines, from what I gathered, he was nominated opposite Kevin Klein for Pirates of Pentance. Let me confirm this for a second. But yes, I believe that's who he was up against. Sorry, his first nomination was up against Jim Dale for Barnum and that was a major, major star turn that he was just not gonna beat. Gregory Hines was in the musical Comet Uptown where he played Scrooge, so I'm assuming this was a version of A Christmas Carol. His next year he was in Sophisticated Ladies where he was probably the lead performer of what was an ensemble jazz dance piece. But he was opposite Kevin Kline and George Rose for the Pirates of Penzance with Kevin Klein winning. Those were just two gigantic turns that no one was gonna beat. Not anybody. Next one, we have George Hearn, who lost for A Doll's Life. He lost to Tommy Tune in My One and Only. This is a year where, you know, I wouldn't say that Tommy Tune in My One and Only was an undeniable performance so much as that he personally turned around a shipwreck out of town and made it a hit on Broadway and was very delightful in the leading role. And George Herndon at Doll's Life was in one of the biggest flops of the season. Him being nominated was kind of a miracle if you ask me. But he did win the following year for La Cage, where he was nominated alongside his co star Jean Berry. More on that later. Next up, I believe I said, was Patrick Wilson. Yes. Patrick Wilson nominated in 2001 for the full Monty. He lost to Nathan Lane in the Producers. Nobody was beating that. This is actually a good category now that I'm looking at it. It's Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick for the Producers, Kevin Chamberlain for Seussical, Tom Hewitt for the Rocky Horror show and Patrick Wilson for the Full Monty. Honestly, if I were to vote for anyone to beat Nathan Lane here, it would be Tom Hewitt in Rocky Horror Show. Listen to that cast recording. The 2000 Broadway cast recording of Rocky Horror Show. It's so fucking good. The score has never sounded better. But like, Patrick Wilson was the lead of what was the first musical hit that season with Full Monty, because that came out, I want to say, like October of 2000. And then producers came in that March just fucking dick swinging and Nathan Lane winning his second Tony for that. So, yeah, that wasn't. Nothing was going to come from that. The next year Patrick Wilson was nominated for Oklahoma. And he could have one here. This revival of Oklahoma was kind. Was mostly considered a letdown. It came from the national three years prior with Hugh Jackman as the lead in London for that. And this production was considered like Carousel 2.0. This was the London Oklahoma that fucked. And oh my God, they dusted off the cobwebs. It's so sexy, it's so dark, it's so stylish. And Trevor Nunn wanted to bring the entire British cast over. He was denied by Equity, so he only brought over Schuyler Hensley, who's American, and Josefina Gabrielle as Laurie. Everyone else was recast. And this was considered a recasting that really diluted the power of that production. Patrick Wilson got off pretty okay and he is a very good curly, but he didn't have the sort of smoldering sexiness that Hugh Jackman had at that time, which is ironic because I would argue that now Patrick Wilson absolutely has that kind of rizz and Hugh Jackman has lost it. But at the time, Patrick Olson was sort of considered a little more clean cut and washed out curly in Oklahoma. So he lost to John Lithgow in Sweet Smell of Success, which was a flop of a show. But Lithgow was considered the saving grace of it. And the only other real competition either one had was Gavin Creel and Millie, which wasn't going to happen. That was Sutton's show. John McMartin into the Woods, which also wasn't going to happen. And John Coleman, you're in Town, which could have happened. But ultimately it makes sense that it was Lithgow. And then finally, or sorry, our last two, I should say Michael Cerverus losing for Sweeney Todd. He lost to John Lloyd Young in Jersey Boys. He probably could have won here. This would have been his second Tony. It was pretty soon after his win for Assassins. So John Lloyd Young winning for Jersey Boys, which ended up being our best musical winner, does ultimately make sense. He is the face of the biggest hit of this season. It was a vocally demanding role. There was a lot of to do about how John Lloyd Young was singing in a way that no man had ever sung on Broadway before. And so it ultimately made sense. Sweeney Todd was a show that was very hot for a couple of months when it opened. And then that revival started to lose traction. By the time it got to the Tony Awards, it had just been open, I think, a little too long by that point. And people were finally admitting that they were a little turned off by it. So that probably dug him a bit in a hole. And then the following year, he lost for Love Music to David Hyde Pearson Curtains. And as we all know, that was the Tony that everyone expected to go to. Raoul Esparza. Cerverus was wonderful in Love Music, but Love Music was ultimately considered a disappointment and he had no chance of winning that one. And then after that, we have The Brian d' Arcy James years. We have Brian d' Arcy James nominated back to back for into the woods, which he was never going to win because into the woods had long been closed. That Baker is not really a role you win for. It was sort of considered a huge get that he got nominated for it at all. And that was the year that Jay Harrison G was just going to win for Some Like It Hot. And we all knew it. And then the following year, Brian d' Arcy James lost in Days of Wine and Roses to Jonathan Groff in Merrily We Roll Along. My hot take is that I would have voted for Brian d' Arcy James, but Days of Wine and Roses was a polarizing musical. I did not personally like it, but I thought that Kelly and Brian were astounding in it. But the show was polarizing and it had closed. And Graffs us was one of the main leads of, again, one of the bigger hits of the season. The story of quote, unquote, Merrily now works. And it sort of just felt like his time Grof had put in the work. This was, I guess, at this point, his fourth Broadway show, which doesn't seem like a lot considering he's been around for 20 years. But, yeah, it just. It was sort of his time. It could be his time again. He is doing a much more star turn in this. This is a production that's all about him. There are other urban legends around. Jonathan Groff playing Bobby Darin in Just In Time that people think goes to his advantage. He is playing a real person. And people feel like, oh, the Tony Awards. Really like that when you play a real person. Correction. That's really more the Oscars than that's the Tony Awards, at least for musicals. I was looking up the numbers of the last see 40 years. And what I have here is in the last 40 years, and I'm talking about specifically, like, playing a person who not only actually existed, but a person that everyone can recognize. It's not like an Ian McKellen and Amadeus where no one knows what Salieri actually sounded or looked like. It's not really an embodiment because you can't tell it's your own version of it. But something like a John Lloyd Young in Frankie Valli where we have a touchstone to come to to measure the likeliness of that performer's interpretation. So of those decades, 11 actors in plays who've played real people have won the Tony. Only five actors in musicals have won the Tony for playing a real person. And on top of that, four actresses in musicals and two actresses in plays. So if you're going to play a real person and win a Tony for it, chances are you better be in a straight play rather than a musical. And for this one, I am including both Roy Cohn's and Angels in America because that even though it's Tony Kushner's version of Roy Cohn, it still counts. It still counts. We have that touchstone for it. So that's another myth. That would be just two myths in one there. The back to back people. Oh, people won't give them the Tony back to back. And also if you play a real person, that really boosts your chances. I think people kind of got on that mind frame after Stephanie J. Block won for the Cher show. Which actually brings us to the quote unquote career Tony. The idea that somebody might not do their best work, the legacy win, some might say might not do their best work. But because of their contributions to the industry as a whole, this is not such egregiously bad work that people feel okay awarding them. Through my research, I really could only find something that really felt like a legacy win. With Mike Nichols, when he won director of a musical for Spamalot and director of a play for the revival of Death of a Salesman, no one really felt that he deserved either Tony. And if you watch his speeches, he doesn't really think he deserves either Tony. But both shows were sort of like a return to the form for him and were very successful. And Spamalot ended up winning musical, and salesman won revival of a play. So it all kind of lines up. But those were cases that actually felt like legacy wins. So they do exist. They seem to exist less for performers. The only ones I could find that one could make an argument for would be maybe Kevin Kline in Present Laughter where he beat Jefferson Mays in Oslo. But I think that that win being a legacy win is very debatable. Kevin Klein again was the face of present laughter. He was playing a role that has been awarded in the past. He single handedly made that production a financial success and he got really strong reviews for it. He's a veteran of the stage. I mean, yes, he is an Oscar winning movie star, but he got his start on Broadway. So anytime he comes back to Broadway, it's always considered a return to form and very exciting. And he also hadn't won in a very long time. It had been like, I'd say, what, like 35 years since his last win. So it sort of felt like time another one that maybe felt like a legacy win was Alan Bates for winning for Fortune's fool, and he died later that year. So it definitely was sort of like a hurry up and give him the Tony. Now he beat Billy Crudup in Elephant man and Jeffrey Wright in Top Dog Underdog, both of whom could have been very strong contenders at the time. But I think that's one that sort of definitely felt like a legacy win. Other ones that people might have found a bit like a legacy win. Cicely Tyson in Trip to Bountiful. Her competition wasn't extraordinarily strong. Her two biggest competition actresses, I would say, were Amy Morton in who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, who many people thought should have won for August Osage County. And this was like, oh, maybe she'll finally win for this. But that production really was centered around George in Tracy Letts performance, and then also Christine Nielsen for Vanya and Sonya and Masha and Spike. But again, you can't really deny a legend. So, yeah, with a legacy, when people talk about, oh, it's for their career more than the performance, yes and no. I think you'll sometimes see legacy wins more on the creative side than on the performance side for something like a Stephanie J. Block in the Cher show. I think there are a lot of myths that all sort of come to play in that year that don't really apply realistically, but sort of. I can't think of the word, but sort of like, in theory, those. Those myths would apply. So the exact. For example, she's playing a woman who is real, a celebrity, Cher, an icon named Cherry. So there is the she's playing a real person element of it. Her competition that year included Kelli o' Hara and Kiss Me Kate, Eva Vazada in Hadestown, Caitlin Kinnnan and Beth Leavel for the Prom. And some have argued that Beth Leavel and Caitlin Kinnanen split the vote, which allowed Stephanie to win. On top of that, this was Stephanie's third nomination, I believe, and she had been working on Broadway for the better part of 16 years at that point. And people felt like, oh, it was her time, she was due. And even though this isn't her best performance, the career is such that we must award it. All of those things are things. Whether they're actual, tangible facts is debatable. Yes, she played a real person, but the year prior, Lachanze played Donna Summer and did not win. And while Lachanze did have a Tony award by that point, it had been the better part of 12 years since she Last won. So not necessarily, you know, overcrowded with awards at that point of her life. Yes, Stephanie J. Block had a quite long and illustrious career, and it was her third nomination. Lest we forget how many nominations Kelli o' Hara had before she finally won. How many nominations Danny Burstein had to get before he finally won. Jan Maxwell unfortunately passed before she could ever win. And she had five nominations, I think at that point, in just about every category you could get nominated for. I think she got nominated for all four categories. Actress in a musical and in a play, both leading and featured, and had been working on Broadway since the late 80s and just never won. So even though, yes, Stephanie J. Block had 16 years of Broadway experience and two other Tony nominations and was playing a real person, none of those things are such obvious standards of which to go by that she would just naturally win. Same thing with the idea of splitting the vote. And we'll talk more about what splitting the vote actually means later on. But yeah, I think because of that win, and then with Adrian Warren winning during the COVID gas leak year for Tina, there's now become this narrative of, oh, if you play a real person, you're more likely to win. Not, not totally true. More true if you're an actor in a play, but not. Not super true. Which actually this now leads me to a trend I want to talk about for a quick second. Speaking of Mike Nichols as well as Joe Mantello and the Wicked versus Avenue Q, I was looking into this, and of all of the best musical winners of all time, there has only been one Best musical winner at the Tony Awards that was not nominated for Best Director. That was Titanic in 1997. Titanic did, however, have a nomination in another category that's very important, which is Best Book, which it did win. Titanic was nominated for five Tonys and it won all five. Did a big ol sweep. Otherwise, every other best musical winner when there have been nominees, because the first couple of years of the Tony Awards, they didn't have nominees, they just announced the winners. But ever since, there's always been a nomination for Best Director for the Best Musical winner. So that's always a good thing to think about when you're predicting your Tonys of the last 31 years that we've had a split category of Best Musical Revival and Best Play Revival. The best Musical revival winner has only had. There have only been two winners for Best Musical of a revival that did not also have a corresponding Best Director nomination. One was La Cage aux fall in 2005. But in fairness, none of the revivals that season had a director nomination. The other was Annie get yout gun in 1999. Swan Lake was not nominated for Best Revival. I don't think the Tonys really knew what to do with Swan Lake that year, but it did win director for Matthew Bourne and you'd're a Good Man. Charlie Brown had a nomination for Michael Mayer for director, which did compete with Annie get you Gun. I think the difference between the two is simply that Annie Gitrigun once again was the slightly larger hit, was the more recognizable title, and was just a bit more of an event than Charlie Brown. Charlie Brown was really known for launching Kristin Chenoweth's career, but it did not really take off on Broadway in the way that I think they were hoping it too. So Annie get yout Gun winning, probably a bit of campaigning from the Weisslers, just having a little bit more financial clout than Charlie Brown, but those are the only two examples. So when we look at revivals of the musical, it helps to see what's nominated for Best Director as well and go from there. It's very rare for a director of a revival to win, but the revival itself to not win. I believe the only time that's happened in the last 31 years was when John Doyle won Best Director for Sweeney Todd, but the Pajama Game won Best Revival. It's possible for a director to win director of a musical and have their show not win best Musical. That's happened before. Not a lot, but more than the revival stuff, I know Gene Sachs won for I Love My Wife and that lost Best Musical to Annie. Bob Fosse won for Pippin, but A Little Night Music won best Revival, won Best Musical. And then of course, Come From Away wins Director, while Dear Evan Hansen wins Best Musical. So I don't think, to put this in perspective for this year, I don't think there's a world in which Jamie Lloyd would win director and then Gypsy would win revival or Floyd Collins or Pirates. Just saying this is not shade to anybody. But this is just sort of. This is a trend that's happened so often that even though the voting body does shift over time, there are some mentalities that I think a lot of people just can't get past. In the same way where I had said earlier, and we'll do actual winner predictions next week, but I think I said, in either the reaction episode with Rachel and Will or the final prediction episode of nominations, I was like, I don't know how you vote for Audra and not for Gypsy or vote for Sunset and not for Nicole because they're just so, they're just so tied together. But some voters are able to just do just that. So I don't know how a voter would vote for Jamie Lloyd but not for Sunset. But there's a precedence. We we once voted for John Doyle, but not for Sweeney Todd. But also a fun fact. Sweeney Todd has never won best revival ever. Sweeney Todd has won best musical but never revival. It was nominated for revival three times in 1990 or 1991 with Beth Fowler and Bob Gunton, then again in 2006 with Patti and Michael Cerverus, and then two years ago with Annaleigh Ashford and Josh Groban. And it has never won revival any of those three times. Fun facts in terms of director for plays, this is actually where it gets a little more interesting. So as I said, only one best musical winner has won without a best director nomination, which was Titanic. But also, I want to say there's never been a best musical winner. If it was eligible for best book, that wasn't nominated for it as well. So something like A Fosse or an Ain't Misbehavin. Obviously not nominated. They didn't have books. But Contact was nominated for best book and best Director. They didn't win either, but they were nominated. So I feel like I said this once before, but like when the nominations in 2022 came out and it was MJ and Strange Loop and 6 and 6 did not have a best book nomination, that's how I knew it wasn't going to win best musical. That's just how I knew because six was eligible. And that's also how I knew Illinois wasn't going to be wasn't going to win because they were eligible for book and director and they weren't nominated for either. Best director of a play has gone to the best play winner for the last six years in a row. There was. And There was another seven year stretch in a row from 2005 to 2012. There have been times when a director of a competing play has won. Well, a different play won. The last time that happened was Rebecca Teichman for Indecent. She won over Bartlett Cherry for Oslo. Actually, I'll say Rebecca Teichman winning for Indecent. That's the last time we had a director winner that didn't also direct the best play or best play revival winner. The last best play Tony winner to not have a director nomination was all the Way starring Bryan Cranston, Another one that was a performance, an Actor playing a real person who won. And that beat CASA Valentina, Act 1 outside Mulangar and Mothers and Sons. So I believe actually none of those play nominees had a director nomination. I think all the directing nominations went to revivals that year. The Goat, or who Is Sylvia? Won Best Play without a Best Director nomination. That went to Mary Zimmerman for metamorphosis, Sideman in 1999, Last Night of Ballyhoo in 97, Masterclass 96, I'm Not Rapoport in 1986, Torch Song Trilogy, the River Niger, the Great White Hope, Luther Beckett. It is more likely to win Best Play if you don't have a directing nomination than it is for you to win Best Musical without a Best directing nomination. So that actually gives a little bit of hope to A Show Called Purpose, which is the only best play nominee this year to not have a directing Tony nomination. Next myth. This one's actually unfortunately true. If your show is closed, you have a really tough time winning. This is mostly true for musicals. It's not always true for plays. I mean, last season alone, Carrie Young won for Pearly Victorious. Now, Pearly Victorious did not win Revival, but I do think the PBS broadcast helped Carrie Young's chances. It's rare for a Best Play winner to be closed by the time it wins. I believe it has happened once or twice, but usually it's running, or at the very least running till the end of the month when they win Best Play. You can win Best Revival without having a Best Directing nomination. But similar to Best Revival of a Musical, it always helps to have it. I had something else here. Oh, okay, here's a fun one. And then we'll do another commercial break. The idea of precursors. Now, we've talked about this before. We'll talk about it again. What do we mean when we say a precursor? We are talking about other awards bodies that are giving hardware to the same properties that the main voting body giving awards to. For example, if we're talking about the Oscars, the SAG Awards, the Golden Globes, bafta, the PGA and the DGA and the WGA are all precursors. The Tony Awards do not actually have precursors. They have other awards. The Outer Critics Circle, the Drama Desk, the Drama League, the Pulitzer, even also the New York Drama Critic Circle, but they're not actually precursors. Some of the people on these voting bodies do vote at the Tonys as well. Not a lot. The Drama Desk Awards, I believe, only have a voting body of like, nine. It's definitely like a nominating body of nine. But I think those same nine also vote. Same thing with the Outer Critics Circle. It's not a huge body of voters. Drama League actually is a large body of voters because you can pay to be a member. And if you pay to be a member, you can get a chance to vote for the Drama League Awards. Drama Critics Circle, I think it's about 20 to 30 critics. But also how critics feel is not always the same as how a Tony voter is going to feel. But the reason why the Oscars have legitimate precursors as opposed to the Tonys is because, like I said, all of these awards bodies do not actually overlap with the Tony Awards. And if they do, it's such a minuscule percentage that it doesn't actually make a difference. As the Oscars have expanded their voting bodies to diversify, both in terms of gender as well as ethnicity and background, and age, especially age, as well as any sort of foreign voters, other precursors are now having more of an effect on Oscars and gives you a sense of how people are feeling. Because all of the guilds get to vote at the Oscars. The SAG body, the Screen Actors Guild body, gets to vote for acting at the Oscars. So when you see people winning a SAG Award, it gives you a really good idea of who might win at the Oscars. Not always. Last year, Demi Moore won the SAG Award, but Mikey Madison won the Oscar. But if you listen to Oscar Pundit Podcast like I do, there was a lot of talk of when Mikey Madison won the BAFTA award, which is the British, basically, like the British Oscars. When Mikey Madison won the bafta, that was when people started to go, oh, Mikey Madison's probably gonna win the Oscar. Because the Oscars have heavily diversified their voting body with a lot of foreign voters, and those voters all vote at BAFTA exclusively. And when Mikey Madison won, it was a very good indicator for her chances at the Oscars. In the same way that Olivia Colman won the BAFTA for the Favorite, I believe Emma Stone won the BAFTA for Poor Things, and that gave a really strong inclination of where the tide was turning. Dga, that is the Director's Guild, whoever they vote for, has a really good shot at winning the Oscar because those directors vote for the Oscars. Writers Guild, Producers Guild, again, they're not set in stone. But when we were talking about Oscar chances this year and Anora ended up winning Critics Choice and then won DGA and pga, everyone's like, oh, Honora might be locked and loaded for. For the Oscars. Now, again, we don't have that for the Tonys. And to give you a better idea of this, the Drama League Awards. People look at the Drama League Awards and they go, okay, okay, okay. Who wins and how does that affect anything? Since 1996, the drama leagues have gotten the best musical winner wrong 10 times. Now, you know, that's 29 times that overall. 10 or 28, I guess. 10 of which they got wrong. That's less than half. But that's not nothing specifically giving it to eligible musicals that were. That lost to, you know, the other show. For example, last year they went with Hell's Kitchen. Hell's Kitchen lost the Tony to the Outsiders. The year before, they went with Something Hot, which lost to Kimberly Akimbo. They've gotten best play wrong four times. So they actually have a pretty good track record with that. They started doing revival of a musical and revival of a play. They've been doing revival since, I guess, 1998, but they only split it into revival and musical in 2004. They've gotten revival of a play Wrong 10 times and revival of musical Wrong 5 times. They've had 13 distinguished performance winners not win the Tony when they were. Only when they're eligible are the ones I'm counting, by the way, because they have a couple of off Broadway winners that I'm not counting. They've gone. Yeah. So of the eligible distinguished performance winners for the Tony, 13 did not win the Tony since. But that's. I think that's not overall. I believe that's since 1980. So again, not a huge 1980. Maybe 1990. I can't remember when I put the cutoff date, but it wasn't super long ago. Distinguished performance, for some reason, is the award that you can find going all the way back to, like, the 1920s. But musical and play only go up until 1996, which I don't know if that's when they started those awards or if they just don't reveal older winners for that. But, yes, best play again. They've gotten it wrong four times since 1996. Ten times for wrong for best musical, five times for revival of the musical since 2004. Ten times for revival of a play since, like, 1997. From what I can tell, they've only been doing director of a play and director of a musical for four years now. And in both cases, they got it wrong twice. So possibly three. We'll see what happens this year. But two out of three times they've gotten it wrong. The drama desks have not given the best musical winner of the Tony Awards a drama desk or best musical 12 times. I can see sometimes there's overlap because some shows that come to Broadway start off Broadway and are only eligible at the drama desks for their off Broadway run. Shows like Fun Home and Kimberly Akimbo and the Band's Visit. But there have been 12 best musical winners that were not given the drama desk for best musical. Nine plays that won the Tony for best play. We're not given the drama desk for best play since 1994. 6 best musical revival winners were not given the drama desk. And those drama desks were given to non winners. Famously, their very first split, she Loves Me beat Carousel, which did not go the same way at the Tony Awards seven times since 1993 for Best Revival of a play. But all actually I will say since. Yeah, so since 1993 they've gotten drama desks have gotten revival of a play wrong seven times. Those seven times though were all post 2001. So that's the other thing is that a lot of these numbers I'm talking about, a good chunk of them have been in the last like 10 to 15 years. So even though it's a wide spread of years, a lot of this actually applies to now. Outer Critic Circle has definitely had a couple of bumps, bumpy spots again similar to the drama desks. A lot of shows that would go on to win best musical on Broadway were eligible for their Off Broadway run and might have won best Off Broadway musical at the time. But sometimes that still didn't happen. Dear Evan Hansen lost to Bright Star and Brightstar famously would go on to lose to Hamilton. And Dear Evan Hansen would go on to win best musical the following year. The Outer Critics circle did give a gentleman's guide to Love and Murder. Best musical which made Fun Home lose Fun Home would go on to win the following year Come from Away be the Off Broadway production of the Band's Visit. And then on top of all this, the Drama Critics Circle Award since 1990, 19 Best Musical winners did not win the Drama Critic Circle award for best musical. 19 Tony winning musicals since 1990 in the last 35 years did not win the Drama Critics Circle for best musical. That's slightly over 50%. 15 Tony winning best plays did not win the Drama critics circle since 1990. And I'm including, by the way, sorry, I'm not. I am not including when the Tonys, when the Drama Critics Circle separated plays from like foreign and American because that's a. They did that a couple of times randomly and it makes no sense and it Fucks everything up. But yeah, this, I hopefully will tell you something a little bit about precursors. They're not real. What they can do is they can sometimes help give momentum, they can help shift narratives and maybe get people excited around certain performers. But again, I famously was on this podcast at the Drama League Awards and at the Drama desk awards in 2023, watching rooms full of people just go absolutely apeshit over Stephen McKinley Henderson. And me going, oh, that man is going to win his Tony. In a lot of ways, this is a legacy. Tony, he's been around forever. He's super well loved. He is the lead of a critically acclaimed, Pulitzer Prize winning play that's nominated for best play. And it's a way to acknowledge the show itself as well as him. It's gonna happen. But ultimately, Stephen McKinley Henderson was in a play that had closed. Sean Hayes was playing a real life person and he was an actor in a play. So all things pointed to Sean's win and I was just too blind at the time to see it. So that actually ties into all the other myths we were just talking about. The playing a real person, the legacy, the being in a closed show, and then of course, the precursors. So that is the. Sorry, that are those myths and trends. We have a couple left, not many, so don't worry about it. One really big one we're going to talk about in just minute a a second. But yeah, that's it for that. Let's do a quick break. Billy, I beg to differ with you.

Matt Koplik (77:44)

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Cynthia Erivo (78:36)

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Creamy Chili McCrispy Strip Dip now at McDonald's does it ever feel like you're a marketing professional just speaking into the void? Well, with LinkedIn ads, you can know you're reaching the right decision makers. You can even target buyers by job title, industry, company seniority, skills. Wait, did I say job title yet? Get started today and see how you can avoid the void and reach the right buyers with LinkedIn ads. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started at LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply. And we're back. Okay, so we talked about. Oh, the Tonys love so and so. Oh, they will not award someone two years in a row. Oh, there are precursors. Oh, they love it when you play a real person. Oh, they love it when you nominate celebs because that means there'll be higher viewership for the actual awards ceremony. There's the road vote. What was it? Precursors. I talked about the trends of directors, correlating that with best musical, best play, best revival of musical, best revival of a play, best book. I talked about that. The legacy win. Here is a very big one that people like to talk about. Split voting. Oh, if two or more actors are nominated for the same show, they will split the vote, and that could allow someone else to win. If you listen to any Oscar podcast again, like I do, they talk about this as well. Split voting isn't real. Not completely. Have there been years where multiple nominees from one property are in a category and don't win? Yes. Does that necessarily mean that those people split the vote? No. It's possible that none of them were necessarily strong enough to win. Split voting. I'm not entirely sure where this myth started from. According to the book I'm reading, Oscar wars, the concept really kind of began from Bette Davis when she and Anne Baxter both were nominated for All About Eve and Judy Holliday won for Born Yesterday, which actually ties into another myth with the Tonys with leading actress, which we'll get to in a second. But the idea was that, oh, Bette Davis should have won. She should have been a sure thing. She was in the best picture winner. How did she not win? Oh, Anne Baxter really must have siphoned off too many votes and that allowed Judy Holliday to win. Win. I want you to think about this for a second. If you've seen All About Eve, and Anne Baxter is wonderful. She's giving a phenomenal performance. It's not a performance opposite Bette Davis where you would watch it and have a tough time deciding who you would vote for if you love that movie and you're like, huh, I can't really figure it out, I guess I'll vote for Anne Baxter. And then someone else is like, I guess I'll vote for Bette Davis. It's pretty clear who you're voting for. You're gonna vote for Bette Davis. It ultimately came down to while people loved the movie as a whole, there were other performances that were much more central and special to their properties, like a Judy Holiday and Born Yesterday. Plus the whole Star is Born narrative for her that people really gravitated towards. People say this all the time with the Tonys that there's a split vote. I am going to now talk you through all the times that there has been two or more candidates for the same category for the same show. And one of those candidates, one, I believe I have this. Did I do this for the entire Tonys or just for the last couple of years? I think I did. I think this is, this is just up until, I believe, 1980. Yeah, just, just, just up until 1980. So not including. This is not including the Gwen Verdon and Thelma Ritter in New Girl in Town and stuff like that. Idina Menzel wins for Wicked. Co nominated with Kristin Chenoweth. Faith Prince wins for Guys and Dolls. Co nominated with Josie De Guzman. Chita Rivera wins for the Rink. Co nominated with Liza Minnelli. Jennifer Holliday wins for Dreamgirls. Also nominated Sheryl Lee Ralph. There are other years where there were people nominated in the same category from the same show. Caitlin Kinnon and Beth Leavel for the Prom. Christine ebersolt and Patti LuPone for war paint. Nancy Opel and Jennifer Laura Thompson for Urinetown. Of those other women who did not win, Opal and Thompson were opposite Sutton Foster for Thoroughly Modern Millie. I don't think Nancy Opel and Jennifer Laura Thompson split the vote for that. I don't think Christine ebersole and Patti LuPone split the vote on Warpaint for Bette Midler to win for hello Dolly. Bette Midler was always going to win. People like to claim that Beth Leavel could have won for the prom and that possibly some split voting happened which allowed Stephanie J. Block to win. Listen, of the women in that category, Beth probably would have been my vote and I was thrilled that Caitlyn got nominated. But similar to Anne Baxter and Beth, Bette Davis, you don't watch the prom and have a hard time figuring out between Beth and Caitlin who you're going to vote for. I think even Caitlyn would tell you you're voting for Beth. So yeah, it's not really a split. Continuing on, J. Harrison G wins in Some Like It Hot over Christian borrell. Leslie Odom Jr. Wins for Hamilton opposite Lin Manuel Miranda. Billy Porter over Stark Sands and Kinky Boots. Douglas Hodge over Kelsey Grammer for La Cage of Fall. Norbert. Leo Butz over John Lithgow for Dirty Round Scoundrels. Nathan Lane over Matthew Broderick for the Producers. Jason Alexander over Somebody Else for Jerome Robbins. Broadway George Hearn over Jean Barry for La Cage aux Fall. Kevin Kline over George Rhodes for Pirates of Penzance. And there are far more men who were co nominated and didn't win. Jefferson Mays and Bryce Pinkham for Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder. Similar to Anne Baxter and Caitlin Kinnan. I am so glad that Bryce was nominated for Gentleman's Guide. He was wonderful in that show. Jefferson Mays is the role. It's not. It's not that he's better, it's just that what he's doing is more catnip for voters to vote for. But ultimately he lost to Neil Patrick Harris and Hedwig and the Angry Inch and that just wasn't. It was never going to go any other way. Danny Burstein and Ron Rains both lost for Follies. I think Danny Burstein could have won if that show had been running at the time. But he ultimately lost to Steve Kazee for Once, which was the best musical winner that year. Andrew Reynolds and Josh Gad both lost in Book of Mormon to Norbert Leo Butz. People attribute this to vote splitting, but Norbert had kind of swept all the awards leading up to this. And again, they're not necessarily precursors, but it shows you that people just didn't care. They were happy to vote for Norbert Leo Butz in what was really a featured role, but he's Norbert Leo Butz. Hank Azaria and Tim Curry both lost in Spamalot 2. Once again, Norbert Leo Butts for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. We also have Peter Friedman and Brian Stokes Mitchell losing in Ragtime to Alan Cumming. That I also don't think was vote splitting. Alan Cumming was a revelation in what was one of the hottest shows that season. Taryn Spann and Colin Wilkinson for Les Mis Colm Wilkinson losing is kind of crazy. But once again, Robert Lindsay was giving a Star Is Born performance that was already critically acclaimed and Olivier Award winning in London before it came to Broadway. More people who won and didn't vote split the vote. Alex Newell in Shucked over Kevin Cahoon. Andre de Shields with Patrick Page in Hadestown. Daveed Diggs over Jonathan Groff and Christopher Jackson for Hamilton. Gary beach over Roger Bart and Brad Oscar for the Producers. Christian Borrell over Brad Oscar for Something Rotten. Poor Brad. Oscar. He can't catch a break. Gregory Jabara over David Bologna for Billy Elliot. Michael Cerverus over Dennis o' Hara for Assassins. Dick Letessa over Cory Reynolds. Is that his name? Sorry. I see. Here's the comp. The co stars I'm actually doing off the top of my head in my own memory. I should have written down the co stars names as well. I just decided in the heat of the moment that I was going to say their names. And I completely forgot Dick Letessa's co star because it was Seaweed who was nominated. It wasn't Matthew Morrison, his co star in Hairspray, who he beat. Yeah, Cory Reynolds. Go me. I love my memory. Chuck Cooper beating Sam Harris for the Life hint in Battle. Beating what's his name, Willie Falk for Miss Saigon. We also have Bill McCutcheon in Anything Goes. I believe he's beating Anthony Held. Ron Richardson beating a couple of people for Big River Battle beating a couple of people for Tap Dance Kid. Cleavon Derricks beating Oba Babatunde for Dreamgirls. To say nothing of all the other people who were nominated in plenty of categories. Keisha Lewis beating Shoshana Bean for Hell's Kitchen. Patti Lupone beating Jennifer Simard for Company. I disagreed with that one at the time and I still said it to this day. Ali Stroker beating Mary Testa for Oklahoma. Lindsay Mendez beating Renee Fleming for Carousel. Jan Gracowski beating two co stars for nine. Jane. Chita Rivera and Mary Stuart Masterson. Karen Ziemba beating Deborah Yates for Contact. Andrea Martin beating Lani Kazan for My favorite Year. Daisy Egan beating Allison Fraser for the Secret Garden. Francis Rafael beating Judy Kuhn for Les Mis. Lilian Montevecchi beating Anita Morris and Karen Akers for nine. Debbie Gravett beating a couple of other women for Jerome Robbins Broadway, to say nothing of all the plays I could go on. But I'm gonna stop us now. Are you guys getting it? Splitting the vote isn't actually real. The year where it kind of felt like it might have been was 2015, when we had Emily Skeggs, Judy Kuhn and Sydney Lucas all nominated for Fun Home. And then Victoria Clarke for Gigi and Ruthie Ann Miles for the King and I. And Ruthie Ann Miles pulled What was considered a surprising win for the King and I. Now in retrospect, it's not that surprising. Ruthie Ann Miles had been in the theater community. I think this was only her second Broadway show, maybe third, but she'd been working in theater in New York for a while at that point had a major breakout with Here Lies Love, which still hadn't come to Broadway at that point. This was a major get for her. She had a wonderful turn as Lady Tian in a revival that was critically acclaimed, was absolutely going to win revival and had two moments in the show that we could point to as a featured actress where we went. I remembered what she did there and it stuck with me. One is something wonderful at the end of Act 1. At the top of Act 2 is Western people Funny, a song that many people considered super problematic for a very long time. And Ruthie's portrayal of that song made everyone click with it and understand exactly what that song has always supposed to be. And it all of a sudden worked super incredibly well and was, you know, a wonderful major support scene stealer without stealing total focus in that show. Her competition that people really thought could have happened were Kunzy for Fun Home and Sydney Lucas for Fun Home Hyunzey would have made a lot of sense. She was coming back to the Broadway stage after being gone for a while. She was at this point a four time Tony nominee. She was giving a heartbreaking performance and like other featured actresses in a musical before her, she had a major moment that we could point to which was days and days. Sydney Lucas arguably was probably more of a co lead with Beth Malone in that show but was deemed featured. She had Ring of Keys, which was like the theme of the show and a lot of people thought that it was down to Kunzee and Cindy Lucas and that they ultimately split the vote, allowing Ruthie and Miles to get in. I think if there's ever been a year where vote splitting was a thing, this would be the year. I'm still not entirely convinced that it happened in the moment when that win happened. I was like, oh, vote splitting. But that was 10 years ago and I have changed since then. I think that voters are really, really hesitant to give competitive awards to children. They did it for the leading boys of Billy Elliot. The three of them could share. They took the Matilda girls out of competition. We don't really. I can't remember the last time we had a child nominee at the Tony Awards like a legit child. Sydney Lucas might be the last one in the last 10 years and could have Won. She was phenomenal. But I think people are a little more readily willing to vote for a child 20 years ago, 30 years ago, less so now and less so then. And I think Kunzie, beautiful as she was, wasn't quite a large enough role for people to get behind. They would vote for Michael Cerverus, who did win. But when it came to Kunz, he was like, I'm not sure if I can vote a sixth Tony to Fun Home for that performance, which was lovely. Not when Ruthie and Miles, who has more meat to work with and does such wonderful things, did her thing. I don't think that Ruthie had the same number of votes as K and Sydney Lucas combined and that Sydney Lucas and Queensy split it and Ruthie Ann Miles got out with like 35% of the vote. I think Ruthie Ann Miles probably had a larger percent than we're willing to admit. It just. It doesn't. It's not real. Guys, think about all the times where there were multiple nominees in a category. Can you tell me that you really thought that they had a shot last year? The two outsider boys? You really think they were going to be Daniel Radcliffe? The two Paradise Square guys beating Matt Doyle? Whether I liked his performance or not, Matt Doyle had the song and company and like. Tell me you're gonna vote for one of the Paradise Square guys. Just fucking tell me. Come on. Even they were just sort of thrilled to be nominated. My God. All the ain't too proud guys losing to Andre de Shields. I that's not vote splitting to me. Andrew Reynolds and Brandon Uranowitz losing in Falsettos to Gavin Creel for hello Dolly. I don't think that's vote splitting. Once again, Falsettos had closed, but that just wasn't gonna happen. Gavin Creel was due for a Tony and he was singing one of the big songs and the big old revival that we needed at the time. Max Von Essen and Brandon Uranowitz once again for American in Paris. Losing to Christian Borrell and Brad for Something Rotten. So we can't even claim vote splitting for that because Christian Borrell was co nominated with Brad. Oscar. So Porgy and Bess. That wasn't going to happen. That was always going to be Michael McGrath for nice work if youf Can Get It. The Scottsboro Boys. Boys. Colman Domingo and I can't remember the other guy, but they. They were not going to win. Scottsboro Boys had been long closed and sort of came as a blip. They're not the nominations that Scottsboro Boys got was incredible. That was a miracle. But yeah, they, at the time, everyone thought it was going to be Rory o' Malley winning for Book of Mormon and then ended up being John Larroquette for How to Succeed. But either way wasn't a vote split. Chris seber and Michael McGrath versus Spamalot losing to Dan Fogler for spelling bee. I don't think that came as a surprise to many people. We have others. We have, we have, we have Michael Baress, Michael Maharan and Lee Wilkoff all losing in Kiss Me Kate to Boyd Gaines for Contact. Again, I don't think that's vote splitting. Of those three, Michael Barez had the best shot. But I just think, you know, Contact was another equal hit alongside Kiss Me Kate and Boyd Gaines had a major acting part in that. So when we talk about vote splitting, really think about it. There have been so many times when two or more performers from the same show are nominated and somebody wins. Those nominations can show an over amount of love for production. But if none of those nominees win, it's because ultimately none of them stood out enough. It wasn't that they each stood out just too much for anyone to make up their mind. It was that none of them stood out so much to beat it. Another person to put into perspective this season. While I have my thoughts on Death becomes her. I don't know if voters themselves will watch Jennifer Smart and Megan Hilty and think that either one of them pops enough to beat out a woman from another musical where she is fully the center and popping off sis off that stage. Jasmine, Amy Rogers and Audra McDonald and Nicole Scherzinger. You just, I just don't think it's gonna happen. And that's sort of how people view those kind of categories. So yeah, vote splitting myth, it doesn't really happen. Think of all the times that it hasn't mattered. Speaking of rewarding, in the discord people talked about rewarding the ingenue. This is a myth that I also am guilty of spreading. And it is partially true. In the last 35 years, by rewarding the ingenue, we mean mostly in best Actress in a Musical, we talk about how the Tonys like to anoint a new star and a young woman who gets a blue chip that she gets to then cash and becomes one of our leading ladies. And this is true. This is ultimately true. It ultimately depends, I think, on how we view Young Lady. And also it also, this can work for actors and doesn't have to just be musicals. It can be in plays as well. But I thought about this and I looked at the Numbers, and since 1990, so for the last 35 years, we've had 12 different actresses win best actress in a musical who were under the age of 35. Six under the age of 30 meant most of these, with the exception, I think of Lea Salonga, most of these in the 21st century. Heather Headley, Sutton Foster, Malaya Joy Moon. So if we're thinking of 35 as sort of like the absolute ceiling of ingenue age these days, we've had 12. If we're thinking under 30, we've had six. So that's not a lot, but it is like a sprinkling. It's given, like every, you know, four years is what that's giving. We've had 15 actresses under the age of 35 when featured actress in a musical, five of them under 30. Audra McDonald was under 30 when she. When she won featured actress in a musical twice. Once for Carousel, once for Ragtime. So consider that we've had six actresses under the in 35 years be under the age of 35 to win featured actress in a play again. This has happened seven times, though, because Audra and MacDonald won two Tonys before the age of 35 and featured actress in a play. Think about that. I am 35 now. By the time Audra McDonald was my age, she had four Tony Awards. What a. What an icon. Okay, we've had five actresses win best actress in a play under the age of 40 in 35 years. That's not really ingenuity. But when we think about actress in a play, I feel like people think of, like, legends, legacy icons. But we've had five in the last 35 years who were under the age of 40. So you don't always have to be of legendary status to win that one. We've had seven actors win best actor in a musical who are under the age of 35 in the last 35 years. And we've had 10 actors win featured actor in a musical under the age of 35 in the last 35 years. So of all of these, you're actually more like. If you're under the age of 35, you're more likely to win featured actress in a musical. And if you're under the age of 30, you're more likely to win actress in a musical, not by a wide margin, but just more likely. I think we think about the ingenue and always just sort of every year. It's a case by case basis. Right. Sutton Foster winning for Thoroughly Modern Millie. She was under 30 years old, but she was the title role of what would go on to be the best musical winner, and it very much was a Star is born moment. The understudy's gone on. She's made good. This is a major showcase, and she nailed it. Same thing is true of Heather Headley and Aida. Once again, we're talking about a starring title role in the next big Disney musical, which, you know, was a big financial hit. Lion King was sort of her layup, and then Aida was the spike. I believe. Marissa Jarrett Winokur was. Was 30 when she went for hairspray. Maybe she was 31, but Malaya Joy Moon, I think she was 21 when she won for Hell's Kitchen. There is a narrative for the ingenue. It's not so consistent that people are. Yeah, Marissa Jarrett Oneaker was 30. It's not so consistent that it's a surefire bet that, like, oh, if you're the. If you're the new entre on the scene, you're gonna win. Because that doesn't always happen. Remember Michaela diamond being nominated for Parade and losing to Victoria Clark for Kimberly Akimbo? But it can always help. Narratives really matter, and excitement and energy around a piece really matters. So Idina winning for Wicked. Fun fact. Idina Menzel was 33 when she won for Wicked, so she was. She's one of my under 35 winners here, which is crazy to me. She wasn't necessarily an ingenue on the scene anymore. This was her third Broadway show and her second Tony nomination. But, you know, she wasn't really. This is not Christine Ebersolt winning her second Tony for Grey Gardens here. This is not over the hill. She's having a career resurgence early in life, and it's why she's maintained relevancy for so long or why it feels like it's so long. Because she started young and kind of kept getting a second wind in young phases of her life. Yeah. Trying to think. I think Malaya might be the youngest winner since Lea Salonga. And Patina Miller, I think, was 29 when she won for Pippin, which is crazy to me. She always just sort of perpetually looks 40. Let's see, 26. She was hunt 26. Oh, I take that back. Patina Miller was 28 when she went for Pippin. 28 years old. Fan fucking tastic. Yeah, we definitely have some major ingenues when it comes to this leading actress, new musical category. It is not a surefire bet, but it is. It's not. It's not nothing. I will say that. Okay, we have, I think two more that we need to cover and then we're done with this. Okay, so last two we're going to cover and then we'll wrap up these myths and trends for the Tony Awards to help you guys with your Tony voting pool. And both actually have to deal with plays mostly the question of is something important or is it just British? Best play has often gone to something that has an air of importance around it and if it's harder to find that importance in the play, it usually helps. If that play is an import from the West End, think God of Carnage. Think the History Boys. It of course helped that these plays opened on Broadway at a time when Ben Brantley was the chief theater critic and that man had a hard on for the British theater. I'm an Anglophile. That man puts me to shame. Now of course the History Boys does have a lot of meat on the bones. It is actually about something. But when you watch the History Boys at first it doesn't feel like a Death of a Salesman. It doesn't feel like a who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It just feels like a very charming, compelling play about education and memory and sexuality and promise and lack of promise and abuse and all these other things. But in a very digestible way, God of Carnage really just sort of feels like a hundred minute sitcom that is a wonderful showcase for its, you know, leading players. It also helped that those shows were big hits so there was a buzz around them and again imported from England. So that gave them street cred of importance even if you couldn't find it on first glance. As I said, best musical has been going to the smaller shows lately. They don't have to be important. You are actually at a disadvantage if you're British and you're a new musical. The only British import to win best musical in the last 29 years has been Billy Elliot. The only jukebox musicals to win in the last 30 years have been Moulin Rouge and Jersey Boys. Moulin Rouge won in a Covid gas leak year when it had no other options. Jersey Boys won because it was just too undeniable. We are not counting Contact, which is a dance piece. We're not counting Fosse, which is a review in terms of writing a new script based off of pre existing pop songs. It is Moulin Rouge and it is Jersey Boys. That's it. Which I think should help clear the way for some people about something like Buena Vista Social Club, whether whether Tonys are willing to award a jukebox musical, even if it is artistic, even if it is based on a true story. I will also say having a British air about them helps a great deal if you are a revival. We've had eight musical revivals since 1994, when Best Musical that had origins from either London or Australia, starting with Carousel and then going up through the King and I in 1996 and cabaret with Sam Mendes. And then we also have all Meniere Chocolate Factory revivals like the Color Purple, Merrily We Roll Along, La Cage aux Fall 9, the revival of nine, which originated at the Danmar Warehouse. We've had nine revivals of plays win the Tony for best revival that came from London, maybe 10. I'm not entirely sure if One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest started in London or not, or if it transferred there from here, but when it comes to British credence, it's not an overwhelming blanket for all the categories. That it has origins and ties to London, that it'll help them. For best musical, almost not at all play. Usually we've had a lot of British imports win best play, Lehman Trilogy, the Ferryman, technically speaking, the Inheritance. Even though it's an American writer, it did start in the West End. Rather, this production transferred from the West End warhorse, the History Boys, Leopoldstadt, even something like coast of Utopia, which had a new production here is a British import from Tom Stoppard. So yes, I would say if you are a British musical, that helps you a great if you're a British play, that helps you a great deal. If we're talking about importance, another thing to discuss with importance is the Pulitzer. The Pulitzer for best drama. There are some who think if a play wins the Pulitzer, that gives it the best shot for best play at the Tony Awards. And I thought about this and I was like, huh? How many times has that actually happened where the Pulitzer for best drama also won the Tony for best play? Now, there are things you have to think about here. The Pulitzer Prize for drama was first awarded in 1918 to Jesse Lynch Williams for why Marry with a Question Mark. The Tony Awards didn't start handing out prizes till 1947. So there are indeed 29 years where there is a Pulitzer winner and not a Tony winner. So we don't count those. But since 1947, there have been seven musicals that have won the Pulitzer that went on to win the Tony for best musical, three of them. In the last 35 years, we've had 18 plays win the Tony for best play as well as the Pulitzer for drama, seven of which were in the last 35. The seven of which were in the last thirty five years, five of which were in this century. So we've had in this century the Tony winner for best play that also was the Pulitzer winner for drama. Claiborne park was the last Pulitzer winner to win best play. That was, I think, 13 years ago. August, Osage county was 2007. Or was it 2008? It was 2007. No, it was 2008. My bad. Claiborne Park, August, Osage County, Doubt I Am My Own Wife and Proof. Those are the five Pulitzer winners for drama that have also won the Tony for best play. And those first four, Proof I Am My Own Wife, Doubt in August Osage county were between 2000 and 2008. So Claiborne park in 2012 is the last one. So you don't have to be a Pulitzer winner to win best play. And in fact, here are the winners that lost the Tony for best play. These shows won the Pulitzer for drama and then went on to lose the Tony for best play. Fat Ham, Cost of Living Sweat Between Riverside and Crazy Disgraced Rabbit Hole, Anna in the Tropics, Top Dog, Underdog. That's all just in this century. Going into the 90s, we have the Kentucky Cycle, the Piano Lesson going to the 80s, we have Glengarry Glen Ross, Night Mother, Crimes of the Heart, Tally's Folly, I think in the 70s we have the Gin Game and Seascape going even further back. A delicate balance that that matters less. And then here are some runners up for the Pulitzer for drama that won the Tony for either play or musical. The Humans, Fun, Home in the Heights, Take Me out the Goat or who is Sylvia Sideman, the Last Night of Ballyhoo and M. Butterfly. And then we have a couple of winners or runners up that did not get nominated for a Tony Award at all for best play, which is Free man of Color, the Bengal Tiger, the Baghdad Zoo, and Conversations with My Father. But those matter less. So the Pulitzer, I would argue, was probably more of an indicator for a nomination than anything else. It winning doesn't necessarily guarantee a Tony for best play. So with purpose, let's maybe not think that it's such a done deal, especially when they don't have a director nomination. Now, that doesn't mean they're out of the running, as we've heard earlier. If you're going to be a Tony winning piece and not have a directing nomination, you better be a play, an original play, because that's your best bet. But I Don't know if I think that this actually lines everything up in conjunction for purpose to win. This actually is giving me more faith that Omar might win. Omar has won. Sorry. Omari is the runner up at the Pulitzer, of which we have quite a few runners up that have won the Tony. They have a best director nominee, which I think helps their chances. That director nominee won the drama League for direction of a play, which, as we said, the drama leagues don't always get it right. But they have had four winners now for best director of a play. They've been right about one, they've been wrong about two. This might be the time that they're right for best director and this could be the time that they're right about best play because they actually have a better track record for. I believe, yes, they have a better track record for best play winners than they do for best musical winners or best revival level play winners. So I think that actually, if anything, that gives me more confidence that Omar will win. Just in order to see how things are going to go, we have to look at our past. You know what I mean? And that's ultimately what this episode is about, is looking at the past to debunk middle, look through trends and figure out exactly what it is that's going on with these, with this ceremony. Because this is a year where there's not a lot of sure things. So we grasp at straws and try to figure it all out. And that's where we're at today for this episode. Guys, I hope you enjoyed it. I don't have much else to say other than I actually kind of really enjoyed this. This was an interesting statistic for me and. And I hope everyone listens to this on the Discord Channel and adds their own statistics that they've been finding. If you want to know how I did all this, how I figured out all of these stats research, I went on Wikipedia, I went on ibdb, I cross referenced. I looked up past winners of the Pulitzer, past winners of the Drama League. I cross referenced. I have my own Tony Awards coffee table book, which didn't really help, really, at all, but I did look through it a little bit. But sometimes I have people, and I don't mean, like listeners. I have, like, people friends in the industry who will ask me questions about Tony stats because they assume that I know. And sometimes I do, but other times I'm like, why don't you just look it up yourself? It'll take you five minutes to, like, scan through something. But people get lazy and they Just want to ask the freak, which is me, the Rain man of Broadway. If you guys have any questions, please join the Discord Channel. I will put the link in the description box. If that's not working, you can DM me attcoplick on Instagram. Usual spelling. If you like the podcast, please give us a nice 5 star rating or review. Every little bit helps. We're about to submit for the Broadway League to be an official member of the press. We're currently at 319 ratings and reviews on Apple podcasts. I would love to get that to a nice round number before the actual Tony awards. Whether that's 320 or 330, that's up to you. I don't remember what our number is on Spotify. I think it's like 1:30, something like that. We're almost at 300 members on the Discord Channel. I think we're currently at like 293members on the Discord Channel. It's growing all the time. It's so much fun. We've been having a lot of conversations about the Tony Awards, about Broadway, what's going on in the theater scene. A whole lot of discussions about the chess announcement, which is fun. And there was the announcement for art, the revival of art, which. Okay, we'll see how that goes. Talk about Montego Glover. People are promoting shows that they're working on, offering ticketing advice. I remember talking about how a bunch of members met up at Floyd Collins and that was really fun. So it's just a really great community and there's no judgment. People, you know, listen, we all can be a little snarky on there sometimes, but it's all in good faith. And if you have a question or you're confused about something, by all means, get on there and ask away. People are very kind on there. We've been really, we've been absolutely leading with respect and kindness and not shaming anybody for not knowing anything. We're all eager to learn because you may know something that somebody else doesn't. And it's always fun to offer someone information that you have. Right. So you always want to treat someone who doesn't know something with respect because your number is going to come where you don't know something and you're going to want them to treat you with respect. So that's where we're at. Okay, so I'm trying to think of a diva we're going to close out with before we go into our final predictions episode next week before the goddamn Tony Woods. I know, I did Barbara Harris and I did something else. I don't remember who I did for the London one. I could do Joe writing, but maybe not. Let's see. How about for a diva? We could do. I could do someone we've been speaking about on this episode. I could be doing. You know what? Okay, this is a bit of a. Okay, this is a bit of a deep cut, but I am going to close us out with Alex Kelly from the Royal National Theatre's production of Candide. Because after Barbara Cook, she's actually my favorite Cunegonde. Chenoweth is absolutely an army tank when it comes to singing Cunegonde. But Alex Kelly is very British and very funny and I really, really like it. So we're gonna close out with her because, I don't know, I like teaching y' all about these things. That's it for now. Once again, five star rating or review on the podcast. If you like it, I'd really appreciate it. Follow me on Instagram oplick. Usual spelling. Join the Discord Channel and I will see you guys in a week. Take it away, Alex. Bye. And yet, of course, these trinkets are endearing. I'm also glad that my sapphire is a star. I rather like a 20 carat earring if I'm not for your Elise, my dear loser. Enough, enough. I'll take their diamond necklace and show my noble staff by being gay and reckless ham.

Matt Koplik (117:41)

Hello and welcome to the Cheese Wheel podcast, your new favorite podcast about hyper fixations gambled on a wheel. In this podcast, we are covering anything that we want to talk about, but the problem is we don't know what we're covering every week and it's something new every time. And I am joined by two of my co hosts. Andrew DeWolf.

Ariana Grande (118:00)

Hello. Hello. I'm happy to be here.

Matt Koplik (118:02)

And Liz Esten.

Cynthia Erivo (118:03)

Hello. Also very happy to be here.

Matt Koplik (118:05)

And this show is weekly and every time someone else brings something to the table that's a little Ben. We're gonna be covering anything and everything, including chaperones, new album, Spy Kids, and the film version of Waitress. We're gonna have a new episode every Friday and you're gonna see the vast arrays of interests we might have. Andrew, what might be one of your choices?

Ariana Grande (118:28)

Oh, I mean, I could pick something like, I don't know, famously bad movie Miami Connection, and we could have a good time watching something that I love that's kind of terrible. Or I could pick something incredibly good like Jacob's Ladder, which is my favorite movie of all time.

Matt Koplik (118:45)

Incredible. And Liz, what about you?

Ariana Grande (118:47)

I don't know. I'd go something like A Walk the Dewey Cox Story so I can talk about my favorite comedy since Jess didn't.

Cynthia Erivo (118:54)

Let me do it on the old podcast.

Matt Koplik (118:56)

Well, funny you bring that up. In case you're wondering what happened to Musicals with Cheese, we ended that show. But the show's still here and living on in season one. So if you want to go back and listen to our backlog, that's still here. But right now, we're just the Cheese wheel. Please keep on listening. We got a lot of fun stuff to come, and we hope that you like what we're doing.