The 2025 Tony Awards had it all — Cynthia Erivo, Oprah, a “Hamilton” reunion, and a fair share of snubs and surprises to keep awards-season prognosticators on their toes. After making our winners predictions earlier this week, these are the biggest twists and turns of the night.
SURPRISE: Nicole Scherzinger triumphs in “Sunset Boulevard”
The Best Actress in a Musical award was always neck-and-neck, and people were starting to think that Nicole Scherzinger, an early frontrunner for her galvanizing performance in “Sunset Boulevard,” had lost the goodwill of voters after a social media gaffe involving a MAGA-adjacent baseball cap. By Tony night, the winner seemed like a real toss-up between Scherzinger and Tony fave Audra McDonald (“Gypsy”), with a slight edge given to McDonald. But Scherzinger triumphed after all, walking away with the trophy in what felt like the most competitive category of the season.
SNUB: “Gypsy” and Audra McDonald leave empty-handed
To judge by the voters surveyed this year, McDonald was thisclose to winning her seventh Tony for her devastating performance as Mama Rose in “Gypsy.” The revival itself was also a real contender for the award for Musical Revival, and the musical’s choreographer, Camille A. Brown, was a five-time nominee waiting to win her first award. But “Sunset Boulevard” carried the day, winning the top-tier awards for Musical Revival and Leading Actress in a Musical (Nicole Scherzinger), and the show’s other nominees also left disappointed.
SNUB: Little recognition for “Death Becomes Her”
The popular screen-to-stage transfer of cult comedy “Death Becomes Her” was one of three musicals to earn 10 Tony nominations apiece this year. But whereas “Maybe Happy Ending” took home six awards including Best Musical and “Buena Vista Social Club” scored four including Best Featured Actress for Natalie Venetia Belcon, “Death Becomes Her” walked away with just a single trophy for costume designer Paul Tazewell.
SURPRISE: Darren Criss scores for “Maybe Happy Ending”
We had thought the Best Actor in a musical trophy would go to Jonathan Groff, who had earned, among the voters we talked to, a lot of admiration for carrying the Bobby Darin bio-musical “Just in the Time” on his capable shoulders. But Groff’s close competition in the race was Darren Criss, the former “Glee” star who has become a regular presence on Broadway (“Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” “American Buffalo,” “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”). He ended up nabbing the honor for his charming, physically precise performance as a robot in the near-future romance “Maybe Happy Ending.”
SURPRISE: The Tony ceremony was front-loaded and action-packed
The Tonys didn’t give audiences much of a chance to get bored, packing the show with performances right out of the gate. Following the pre-telecast awards, the official ceremony kicked off with a starry win — Sarah Snook for her bravura solo turn in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” — before rousing numbers from “Death Becomes Her,” “Buena Vista Social Club,” and “Just in Time” (with Jonathan Groff), all in the first hour alone. One of the top two awards of the night, Best Play, was handed out by 9:30pm (to Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ play “Purpose”)
SNUB: “Dead Outlaw” gets stiffed
Back before the nominations were announced, the two frontrunners for the top musical award seemed to be popular and critical fave “Maybe Happy Ending” and “Dead Outlaw,” a show that earned critical accolades and its fair share of awards from an Off Broadway run last season. A darkly funny show about a bumbling wild-west ne’er-do-well whose corpse gets a surprisingly long afterlife, “Dead Outlaw” was nominated for seven Tonys including Best Musical. In the end, however, the critics’ darling didn’t score a single statuette.
SNUB: “Yellow Face” loses out to “Eureka Day”
There were two ways the Best Revival of a Play race could have gone, and we predicted the win would go to “Yellow Face,” David Henry Hwang’s play — about race, representation, and the theater industry — that felt just as timely, if not more, this season that it did back when the play first ran in New York in 2008. Instead, the award for revival went to “Eureka Day,” the crowd-pleasing comedy that let audiences find humor and humanity in a group of parents and teachers struggling to find consensus around a vaccine policy. (“Yellow Face” wasn’t left out in the cold, however; the show earned a Tony for theater stalwart Frances Jue, the production’s standout featured actor.)
SURPRISE: Who says the ads can’t be live, too?
Ads for Pure Leaf bottled teas were in heavy rotation throughout the show, but at about the one-hour mark, Pure Leaf got the attention of home viewers with a live advertisement, backstage at the Tonys, featuring best actor nominee Darren Criss. The gambit worked, because the ad stood out: The actor got to mention his show, “Maybe Happy Ending,” in a seemingly intimate behind-the-scenes moment, and Pure Leaf got a plug that was unusual enough to stop TV viewers from hitting the mute button. Later, Aaron Tveit showed up to talk up a sweepstakes from another Tony Awards sponsor, American Express.