Predicting the nominations for the Tony Awards is a messy business and a fool’s errand – or at least a questionable use of time and space that theater journalists such as myself nevertheless engage in each year, which, of course, is followed by predicting the award winners themselves the following month.
The nominations will be announced on Thursday morning at 9 a.m. by Sarah Paulson (“Appropriate”) and Wendell Pierce (“Death of a Salesman”). The announcement can be viewed live from the Tony Awards YouTube page.
Each year, along with other writers, I try to predict the nominations of the major categories on GoldDerby.com: https://www.goldderby.com/my-predictions/matt-windman/tony-awards-nominations-2025-predictions/. Years ago, Gold Derby declared that I had the best record as a predictor of the Tony Awards, which somehow led to an argumentative back-and-forth with other writers that was covered in another newspaper: https://nypost.com/2008/06/25/evening-up-addams/. The recognition also led this newspaper to dress me up as Johnny Carson’s “Carnac the Magnificent.” I still have the photograph at home – it has not aged well.
Given that this was an unusually strong Broadway season, there will surely be shows, performers, and creative artists who deserve recognition but are nevertheless left out in the cold, perhaps among productions that were limited runs or closed months ago, though one suspects that these worthy productions (such as the revivals of “Once Upon a Mattress” and “Our Town”) will still receive at least some nominations.
“Maybe Happy Ending” and “Dead Outlaw,” the best new musicals of the season, will likely end up with a large number of nominations, along with “Operation Mincemeat,” “Death Becomes Her,” and “Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends.” The revivals of “Gypsy” and “Sunset Boulevard” should also rack up plenty of nominations.
In terms of new plays, look for Cole Escola’s smash hit farce “Oh, Mary” (in which Escola plays a foul-mouthed reinvention of Mary Todd Lincoln) to dominate the nominations, followed by Kimberly Belflower’s dark comedy “John Proctor is the Villain.” In play revivals, starry revivals such as “Othello” and “Glengarry Glen Ross” may lose out on nominations to lesser-known productions by nonprofits such as “Yellow Face,” “Eureka Day,” and “English.”
The category of Best Actress in a Musical is extremely competitive. I suspect that the five nominees will include Audra McDonald (“Gypsy”), Nicole Scherzinger (“Sunset Boulevard”), Helen J Shen (“Maybe Happy Ending”), Jasmine Amy Rogers (“Boop!”), and Sutton Foster (“Once Upon a Mattress”). The same could be said about Best Actor in a Musical, which I suspect will include the following nominees: Darren Criss (“Maybe Happy Ending”), Jonathan Groff (“Just in Time”), Tom Francis (“Sunset Boulevard”), Jeremy Jordan (“Floyd Collins”), and Andrew Durand (“Dead Outlaw”).
Shows that could be completely shut out of nominations include “Tammy Faye,” “A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical,” “Left on Tenth,” and “All In: Comedy About Love,” all of which have closed.
Last week, the Outer Critics Circle announced its annual nominations, which were led by “Death Becomes Her” and “Maybe Happy Ending.” The Drama Desk will announce its nominations on Wednesday, April 30. The Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations often differ from the Tony Awards because those organizations consider both Off-Broadway and Broadway productions. As a result, they will not consider “Oh, Mary!” and “Dead Outlaw” for nominations since they were eligible last year when they debuted Off-Broadway.
