Backstage Moments You Didn’t See on TV

After Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck took the Tony for best choreography for Buena Vista Social Club, the real-life couple fielded one very important question from Billboard: who’s the better dancer? True to any supportive partnership, romantic or creative, they both pointed at each other. “Justin does a lot of his choreography on me,” Delgado said. “I feel really comfortable doing his movements, and it’s my favorite choreography to do physically. I feel like I’m only as good as the movement. Being able to work together and build a show and tap into my Cuban roots has just felt like a new layer of how we create.”

After winning the Tony for best sound design of a musical for Buena Vista Social Club, Jonathan Deans spoke to Billboard about the challenge of designing sound for a full band who is often roaming around the stage, jamming with each other in a freeform fashion that you don’t often see in a Broadway musical. “They are given the freedom that they want and need. It’s having a conversation with musicians who grew up with this music – it’s in their soul and heart. Ask them to do something different and it’s not going to fly. And I would never ask that for them, because they need to connect with each other as a group of musicians,” he explains. “We work all that out with the sound team and the music team and what you hear is the result. I saw it yesterday and it was amazing to watch the audience and how they receive it. It’s lovely to see an audience really engage.”

In her acceptance speech for winning best performance by an actress in a featured role in a musical, Natalie Venetia Belcon shouted out Omara Portuondo, the 94-year-old Cuban legend she portrays in the musical about the real-life collective of Cuban singers and instrumentalists: “I hope you will see this; I hope you are proud of us.” Backstage, Billboard asked Belcon if Portuondo – who was present at the musical’s opening night – has given specific feedback. “They tell me that on Instagram she’s always doing – I don’t have social media, so I’ll just say what I think it is – the woo woo on Instagram,” Belcon said, laughing while giving the thumbs up sign. “I hear she really loves it.”

Given the minimalist staging of Sunset Blvd., Jack Knowles’ lighting is particularly pivotal to revealing the world and emotional arc of the musical. Shortly after his win for best lighting design of a musical, Knowles told Billboard what it was like working with Nicole Scherzinger. “There was one brilliant moment. We had just done ‘As If We Never Said Goodbye’ in the theater, we were talking about little details, and she came around and saw the front for the first time and grabbed my arm. I could almost feel her nail marks. She was so excited and so revived. She really breathes what’s surrounding her… as an actress she’s totally exposed out there singing, but she really laps up everything. She’s been so welcome to everything we asked her to do. Never complained. It’s really a joy. It’s been a dream.”

Though she had entered the press room to talk about winning best performance by an actress in a featured role in a play for Purpose, Kara Young put all questions on hold as the live video feed revealed that Purpose playwriter Branden Jacobs-Jenkins had just won best play. “Oh my God, yessss!” she shouted. When a journalist offered her his earpiece to listen to the speech (the TVs in the press room had no audio, so you had to listen to the show over a hand radio), she ran over and grabbed it (as well as the Pure Leaf tea he offered).

Speaking to the press after winning the Tony for best play, Purpose playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins paused a moment to watch who would win best performance by an actor in a leading role in a play. “Oh yay,” he said as Escola was announced for Oh, Mary!. “Cole is wild.”

Cole Escola and Sam Pinkleton, the star and director of Oh, Mary!, respectively, were freshly minted Tony winners as they entered the press room—but that didn’t change the fact that they’re both rabid theater nerds. After answering and/or deflecting a few questions with their razor-sharp wit, Escola paused everything to watch who would win the night’s most hotly contested category. When it was revealed that Nicole Scherzinger had won best performance by an actress in a leading role in a musical, Escola and Pinkleton had the same immediate response: “Wow.”

“The speculation is over,” Pinkleton said. “Four years,” Escola intoned. “Four more years.” As the room erupted in laughter, they admitted, “I don’t even know what that meant.”

After receiving a lifetime achievement Tony Award, the pioneering multi-hyphenate was in a reflective, emotional mood while taking questions—but that didn’t mean his wit was on hold. While talking about how far LGBTQ rights have come over the decades and the fight for recognition that precedes him, Fierstein mentioned seeing an old clip from The Virginia Graham Show online where she argued with an openly gay reverend in 1970. “Not a person in this room is old enough to know Virginia Graham,” Fierstein remarked as he surveyed the room, before resting his eyes on one woman. “Well, she is,” he quipped.

Paul Tazewell, who just three months ago won an Oscar for his work on Wicked, secured his second Tony win Sunday night for his work on the musical adaptation of Death Becomes Her. Talking to the press, Tazewell was composed and thoughtful but lit up like a kid when someone pointed to the video feed and told him, “Your costumes are performing” (the Death Becomes Her musical segment was on the video screens flanking him). “I saw a flash of red and was like, ahh!” Tazewell said. “But it wasn’t Cynthia.”

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, Sarah Snook delivers the kind of pulsating, thrilling and dangerous performance you can only get from live theater. It’s an achievement that was rightfully rewarded Sunday night with Snook, who plays 26 roles in Dorian Gray, getting the Tony for leading actress in a play. Asked about Cate Blanchett’s production company acquiring the film rights to Kip Williams’ theatrical adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s book, Snook admitted, “I have as much idea as you do about where that is.” As for any potential involvement in a film version on her end, she said, “It would be a dream come true. But who knows.”

After Sunset Blvd. took the Tony for best revival of a musical, Andrew Lloyd Wright and a group of the producers hit the press room. “I love writing musicals,” said Sir Lloyd Webber, who is currently working on one called The Illusionist. “I’ve got an idea for yet another one after this one.” When asked about a potential film adaptation of his Sunset Blvd. musical (which, of course, is based on Billy Wilder’s 1950 film in the first place), he said that while he’d love to see it, “There isn’t a great rush of people” looking to fund it. ALW did share Wilder’s initial reaction to his musical when it first premiered in the ‘90s: “’The problem with the theater is that everything is in long shot,’” he recalls the famously witty writer-director telling him. “I keep thinking, ‘What would Billy Wilder make of James’ [Jamie Lloyd’s] production?’ I think he’d absolutely have loved it.”