Nicole Scherzinger Wins the Tonys Awards’ Best Actress Showdown

As Oprah Winfrey wittily deadpanned before announcing the winner, the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a Musical category had “sparked conversations among theater fans.”

Well, ultimately there could be only one winning Broadway diva.

And so it was in the much-debated duel at the 78th Tony Awards that Nicole Scherzinger (Sunset Blvd.) prevailed over Audra McDonald (Gypsy)—with Sunset also beating Gypsy for Best Revival of a Musical. All this after weeks of impassioned brunch arguments, a fast-gone-nuclear Patti LuPone controversy, and still likely no consensus to be reached over who should have won until long after “theater fans” are dust.

“This is a testament that love always wins,” Scherzinger said in an emotional acceptance speech, blissfully unaware of the simultaneous, clashing eruption of cheers of delight and groans of despair at Tonys watch parties across the land. (Both women also performed full-blast performances on the night.)

Maybe Happy Ending—the story of two defunct helper robots—deservedly won Best Musical, and scooped five other top Tony Awards, including for its leading man Darren Criss and director Michael Arden, the largest haul of gongs of the night. (The exuberant Buena Vista Social Club came in second place with four.)

Cynthia Erivo performed hosting duties at this years Tony Awards. Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions

Before the ceremony on the red carpet, Oh, Mary! playwright and star Cole Escola made for a third diva of the evening. Dressed in a stunning, Wiederhoeft-designed homage to Bernadette Peters’ 1999 Tony Awards dress—at which she had accepted a Best Actress gong for Annie Get Your Gun—Escola won Best Actor in a Play for their role as cabaret-fevered Mary Todd Lincoln, thanking “Teebo from Grindr” in a rushed and emotional acceptance speech that Oh, Mary!’s Mary would have been proud of. Sam Pinkleton also won best direction of a play for the show.

Nicole Scherzinger and Oprah Winfrey Jenny Anderson/Getty Images for Tony Awards Pro

Jonathan Groff, star of Bobby Darin musical Just in Time, wasn’t going to let Escola win all the evening’s memes and headlines; performing during the show, he leapt onto the arms of Keanu Reeves’ seat, and gyrated above him.

Groff lost out to Maybe Happy Ending’s Criss for Best Leading Actor in a Musical; in his speech, Criss gave an emphatic shout out to co-star Helen J. Shen, who had been closed out of contention in the equivalent lead actress category.

One disappointment for Escola’s Oh, Mary! came when it was beaten by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ explosively brilliant, Pulitzer-winning family drama Purpose for Best Play. Succession’s Sarah Snook won—as expected—for Best Actress in a Play for her acclaimed, multi-character role in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Cole Escola poses after winning Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play award for "Oh, Mary!". Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions

The evening began with host Cynthia Erivo noting it had been Broadway’s most profitable year ever, before referencing the preceding lingering effects of the pandemic, claiming “Broadway is back.”

Statements calling out the actions of the Trump administrations were sparse and far from direct. Instead, there were typically heartfelt affirmations of theater’s power.

Kara Young, scoring her second consecutive Tony win for her role in Purpose, said, “In this world that [is] so divided, theatre is ... a safe, a sacred space that we have to honor and cherish, and it makes us united.” Young’s win meant she became the first Black actor in Broadway history to win awards in back-to-back Tonys.

Amal Clooney ,Bryan Cranston, George Clooney — Amal Clooney, Bryan Cranston, center, and George Clooney attend The 78th Annual Tony Awards. Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions

Francis Jue, accepting a Tony award for his role in Yellow Face, noted the “authoritarian times” of now, addressing those feeling targeted or under attack that “at its best this community sees you.”

Now across the Pond, Jak Malone repeated his U.K. Olivier Award win, winning a Tony for his Broadway debut role in crazy-true-story musical Operation Mincemeat—and singing the standout number of the entire Broadway season, “Dear Bill,” as the character Hester Leggatt. In a passionate speech, Malone said audiences who had “bought into” and believed in him-as-Hester were helping to detonate that “rotten old (gender) binary.”

“If there are any queer people watching tonight, Happy Pride,” said director Michael Arden, after winning best direction of a musical for Maybe Happy Ending, with an eyebrow-raise at the end of “tonight” (like durr, of course there was). His was an implicit instruction to express the potent weapon of joy in defiance of a relentlessly grim political and cultural moment.

Maybe Happy Ending, Tony Awards — Producer Jeffrey Richards accepts the Best Musical award for "Maybe Happy Ending". Getty Images for Tony Awards Productions

The evening ended with Erivo’s much louder, beautifully sung instruction to do the same, rewording the Dreamgirls belter, “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” to play out the ceremony. It was a final injection of Pride-month power for all those “theater fans” still—who are we kidding, forever—arguing over Nicole vs. Audra.

The 2025 Tony Awards: winners and nominees in full

Best Musical

Buena Vista Social Club

Dead Outlaw

Death Becomes Her

WINNER Maybe Happy Ending

Operation Mincemeat

Best Play

English

John Proctor Is the Villain

The Hills of California

Oh, Mary!