Tonys Latest: Lauren Patten wins as musical featured actress

The Latest connected the Tony Awards (all times local):

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7:20 p.m.

Lauren Patten has edged retired her co-stars from “Jagged Little Pill” to triumph the grant for champion featured histrion successful a musical.

The amusement plumbs Alanis Morissette’s 1995 breakthrough medium to archer a fictional communicative of a household spiraling retired of control. Patten plays teenage lesbian Jo successful the amusement and gets to loop retired the opus “You Oughta Know.”

After opening successful New York, “Jagged Little Pill” producers person apologized to fans for changing Jo from gender-nonconforming to cisgender pistillate aft the amusement moved from Boston to Broadway.

Growing up successful Downers Grove, Illinois, Patten was drawn to the performing arts aboriginal on, and by property 4, had begun appearing successful commercials and assemblage theatre productions. Patten, who has been connected Broadway earlier successful “Fun Home,” has a recurring relation connected the CBS transgression play “Blue Bloods.”

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For the Tony, she bushed retired Kathryn Gallagher and Celia Rose Gooding from “Jagged Little Pill,” Robyn Hurder from “Moulin Rouge! The Musical” and Myra Lucretia Taylor of “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical.”

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MORE ON THE TONYS

— Tonys: Broadway hopes to razzle-dazzle its mode retired pandemic

— Tonywatch: Aaron Tveit rides a roller coaster of a year

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HERE’S WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING:

7:18 p.m.

Broadway favourite Danny Burstein has won his archetypal Tony Award aft 7 nominations.

The histrion won for champion histrion successful a featured relation successful a philharmonic for playing the ingratiating nightclub big Harold Zidler successful “Moulin Rouge! The Musical.”

He said helium shared the grant with his chap nominees and thanked his son. He besides acknowledgment the Broadway assemblage for supporting him erstwhile his woman died. “I emotion being an histrion connected Broadway.”

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Broadway audiences person cheered Burstein for his soulful showmanship successful specified musicals arsenic “South Pacific,” “Golden Boy,” “Follies,” “The Drowsy Chaperone,” “Cabaret” and “Fiddler connected the Roof.”

He made his Broadway debut successful 1992 successful “A Little Hotel connected the Side” and went connected to prima successful dramas similar “The Seagull” to philharmonic comedies similar “Women connected the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.”

Shortly aft the Broadway shutdown successful March 2020, helium was hospitalized with a near-fatal lawsuit of COVID-19. And successful that December, his woman of 20 years, Broadway starring woman Rebecca Luker, died from ALS.

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7:15 p.m.

Theater seasoned Lois Smith has won her archetypal Tony for “The Inheritance.”

She won for champion show by an histrion successful a featured relation successful a play. Smith antecedently earned nominations for “The Grapes of Wrath” successful 1990 and “Buried Child” successful 1996.

In “The Inheritance,” Smith plays a large featured relation that doesn’t look onstage until precocious successful the play’s two-show, seven-hour moving time. Matthew Lopez’s epic uses “Howards End” arsenic a starting constituent for a play that looks astatine cheery beingness successful the aboriginal 21st century.

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Smith has acted successful specified movies arsenic “East of Eden,” “Five Easy Pieces” and “Lady Bird.” TV audiences volition admit her from appearances connected “Route 66,” “ER” oregon “True Blood.” She made her Broadway debut successful 1952 successful “Time Out for Ginger.”

Other films credits see “Black Widow,” “Falling Down,” “Fried Green Tomatoes,” “Twister,” “How to Make an American Quilt,” “Dead Man Walking,” ”Minority Report,” “Marjorie Prime” and “Ladybird.”

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7:10 p.m.

David Alan Grier has won his archetypal Tony for “A Soldier’s Play.”

Grier played a stern Army sergeant successful Charles Fuller’s play, acceptable connected an Army basal successful Louisiana during World War II. A Black researcher has been called to find retired who murdered the achromatic sergeant of an all-Black company.

He thanked his director, Kenny Leon. “And to my different nominees: Tough bananas, I won.”

One of Grier’s earliest roles was successful a tiny portion successful the off-Broadway debut of “A Soldier’s Play” erstwhile helium was successful his 20s. He revisited the enactment erstwhile it was turned into a 1984 movie. This is his 3rd wound of the pome and it has yielded the Tony for champion show by an histrion successful a featured relation successful a play.

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Grier studied acting astatine Yale and has had a vocation connected signifier (“Dreamgirls”), connected TV (“In Living Color” and “DAG”) and movie (“Jumanji” and “Native Son”). He antecedently earned Tony nominations for “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess,” “The First” and “Race.”

For the Tony, Grier bushed Ato Blankson-Wood and James Cusati-Moyer from “Slave Play” and John Benjamin Hickey and Paul Hilton of “The Inheritance.”

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7:05 p.m.

The pandemic-delayed Tony Awards kicked disconnected Sunday with an energetic show of “You Can’t Stop The Beat” from the archetypal Broadway formed of “Hairspray!”

The optimistic fig was performed for masked and appreciative assemblage astatine a packed Winter Garden Theatre. Host Audra McDonald got a lasting ovation. “You can’t halt the beat. The bosom of New York City!” she said.

She called it little than a prom and much similar a homecoming and that it was fantastic to spot fractional everyone’s faces. She said Broadway had been knocked retired by COVID-19 for 560 nights. She besides hoped to spot actions that could marque it a much equitable place.

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David Alan Grier was the night’s archetypal winner, taking location the featured histrion successful a play Tony for “A Soldier’s Play.”

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6:35 p.m.

The reddish carpet for the Tony Awards is underway and stars are praising the instrumentality of unrecorded theater.

David Byrne, the Talking Heads frontman whose philharmonic “American Utopia” is among Sunday’s honorees, says he’s started going to shows arsenic a spectator and it’s “amazing feeling.

“The audiences are overjoyed,” Byrne says. “They’re blessed to spot the shows, but they’re blessed to conscionable spot 1 another, to beryllium successful the aforesaid country with different people. It’s truly exciting.”

Leslie Odom Jr., who became a household sanction playing Aaron Burr successful the archetypal “Hamilton” run, is hosting a peculiar tribute to Broadway that’s airing connected CBS Sunday night. He says he’s assured that radical volition admit theatre and its performers much present that the they’ve returned.

“I deliberation we’re going to instrumentality with a caller consciousness of gratitude,” Odom says.

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5 p.m.

“Jagged Little Pill” goes into the Tony Awards telecast connected the defensive, dogged by 2 controversies.

A erstwhile formed member, Nora Schell, a Black nonbinary histrion who made their Broadway debut successful the chorus successful 2019, posted a connection this week connected societal media describing repeated instances aboriginal successful the tally of the amusement successful which they were “intimidated, coerced, and forced by aggregate higher ups to enactment disconnected captious and indispensable country to region growths from my vagina that were making maine anemic.”

“Jagged Little Pill” producers — saying they are “deeply troubled” by the claims — person hired an autarkic researcher and the national Actors Equity Association said Sunday it was besides commissioning “a thorough, autarkic investigation” of the show’s workplace.

In different controversy, the show’s producers person apologized to fans for changing a quality from gender-nonconforming to cisgender pistillate aft the amusement moved from Boston to Broadway.

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3 a.m.

The Oscars, Grammys, Emmys and Golden Globes person each held their ceremonies during the pandemic. Now it’s clip for the Tony Awards, celebrating an creation signifier that truly needs the boost — unrecorded theater.

Sunday’s amusement has been expanded from its emblematic 3 hours to four, with Audra McDonald handing retired Tonys for the archetypal 2 hours and Leslie Odom Jr. hosting a “Broadway’s Back!” solemnisation for the 2nd half, including the awarding of the apical 3 trophies — champion play revival, champion play and champion musical.

The sobering philharmonic “Jagged Little Pill,” which plumbs Alanis Morissette’s 1995 breakthrough medium to archer a communicative of an American household spiraling retired of control, goes into the nighttime with a starring 15 Tony nominations.

Nipping connected its heels is “Moulin Rouge!,” a jukebox adaptation of Baz Luhrmann’s hyperactive 2001 movie astir the goings-on successful a turn-of-the-century Parisian nightclub that has 14 nods.

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“Slave Play,” Jeremy O. Harris’ ground-breaking, bracing enactment that mixes race, sex, taboo desires and class, earned a twelve nominations, making it the astir nominated play successful Tony history.

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