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Cole Escola wins Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play award for Oh, Mary! at the 78th Tony Awards.
The nonbinary star nabbed the award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play for Oh, Mary!
Cole Escola became the first nonbinary person to win a Tony in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play category at last night’s Tony Award ceremony< for their work in the Oh, Mary! They are also now the third nonbinary actor to win a Tony, following Alex Newell and J. Harrison Ghee, who both took home the coveted statues in different categories at the 2023 ceremony.
At last night's awards ceremony, Escola was up against some heavy hitters — George Clooney, Daniel Dae Kim, Jon Michael Hill, Harry Lennix, and Louis McCartney. In the end, Escola took home the award, shortly after Sam Pinkleton, the show’s director, won for Best Direction of a Play. After Escola’s name was announced, they jumped out of their seat and sprinted to the stage in a gown that was inspired by Bernadette Peters when she won her Tony for Annie Get Your Gun in 1999.
As they took the stage, they hurriedly went through their long list of thank-yous and in typical Escola fashion, they managed to get in a couple of jokes. "I want to thank ... the most important people in my life, my friends who are here tonight, Jeffrey, Jen, Ben, everyone watching at home. Christian, Dakota, the whole gang, John, Claudia, oh, and T-Bone from Grindr and Amy Sedaris, who always reminds me how important she is to me," they said during their acceptance speech.
Oh, Mary! was also up for Best Play at last night’s award ceremony but lost to Purpose.
Escola's run as the drunken wannabe cabaret starlet Mary Todd Lincoln in Oh, Mary! is their Broadway debut. They premiered the show off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre before transferring to Broadway and later becoming one of the hottest tickets of the season. This comes after their short-lived career, which included creating viral videos on YouTube before landing roles on TV shows such as At Home With Amy Sedaris, Search Party, Big Mouth, and The Other Two.
Audiences can see Escola in Oh, Mary! until June 21, which is when they plan to end their encore run as everyone's favorite wannabe cabaret star. After them, Tituss Burgess will return to the role.
Moises Mendez II is a culture journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. He covers internet culture and entertainment including television, movies, music, and more. For the last two years, he was a Culture Reporter at TIME Magazine. Before that, he was a freelance journalist and his work has appeared in The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Fast Company, and more. Moises holds a master's degree in Arts and Culture journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
Moises Mendez II is a culture journalist based in Brooklyn, New York. He covers internet culture and entertainment including television, movies, music, and more. For the last two years, he was a Culture Reporter at TIME Magazine. Before that, he was a freelance journalist and his work has appeared in The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Fast Company, and more. Moises holds a master's degree in Arts and Culture journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.
