Unpacking the 2025 Tony Nominations: Surprises, Standouts and Takeaways

The countdown to the Tony Awards is officially on! New musicals Buena Vista Social Club, Death Becomes Her and Maybe Happy Ending lead the pack with 10 each. Close behind with seven are Dead Outlaw, Sunset Boulevard, The Hills of California and John Proctor is the Villain. With 30 productions in the running, there’s plenty to dig into: breakout performances, returning favorites and a few unexpected turns. Here’s what stands out in this year’s field of nominees.

Late Openers Don’t Run the Board
Every season, April brings a mad rush of openings as producers aim to keep their shows top of mind for Tony nominators. This season was no exception, with 12 out of the 2024-25 season’s 42 productions opening in April. The strategy often pays off, especially in the Best Musical category: last year, four of the five nominees (The Outsiders, Suffs, Hell’s Kitchen and Illinoise) opened in April, with the fifth nominee, Water for Elephants, arriving just ahead of them in March.

This year, timing mattered less. Maybe Happy Ending and Death Becomes Her, both November openings, earned 10 nominations each, including Best Musical. Buena Vista Social Club (also with 10 nods) had a March opening, along with Operation Mincemeat. The only Best Musical contender to just make the eligibility cutoff was Dead Outlaw, a show that garnered much off-Broadway buzz, suggesting it would be a contender no matter when it arrived. It's also worth noting that Oh, Mary!, now up for Best Play, opened last July—barely after the 2024 Tony Awards had wrapped.

A Year for First-Timers
This season's acting nominations offered a warm welcome to a wave of newcomers. Four of them are Olivier Award winners, up for Tonys for the same performances: Nicole Scherzinger and Tom Francis for Sunset Boulevard, Jak Malone for Operation Mincemeat and Sarah Snook for The Picture of Dorian Gray. Louis McCartney, an Olivier nominee for Stranger Things: The First Shadow, joins them with a Tony nomination for his Broadway debut.

Also recognized: bold-name first-timers who created their own star vehicles. Both George Clooney and Cole Escola received nominations for leading roles in shows they also had a hand in writing: Clooney for Good Night, and Good Luck, and Escola for Oh, Mary! Meanwhile, Jasmine Amy Rogers picked up a nomination for playing the high-energy heroine of BOOP! and Bob Odenkirk earned Glengarry Glen Ross’ sole nomination (despite arriving fresh off an Oscar win, Kieran Culkin was not nominated). English stars Tala Ashe and Marjan Neshat were both acknowledged for their standout debut performances.

Several actors with previous Broadway credits picked up their first Tony nominations this year, including a trio of former child stars: Sadie Sink (Annie, 2012), Fina Strazza (Matilda, 2013) and Gracie Lawrence (Brighton Beach Memoirs, 2009). Others making their return to the spotlight include Daniel Dae Kim, Harry Lennix, Mia Farrow (whose Broadway debut came in 1979), Darren Criss, Andrew Durand, Glenn Davis, Francis Jue, Conrad Ricamora, Jeb Brown, Taylor Trensch, Natalie Venetia Belcon, Julia Knitel and Justina Machado. Welcome to the club! 

2024 Tony Winners Are Back for More
It's always exciting to see so many first-timers on the list of Tony nominees, but the returning winners deserve a shout-out of their own. The 2024 winners circle is particularly well represented: Jonathan Groff, who won his first Tony last year for his leading performance in Merrily We Roll Along, is back in the same category as Just in Time’s Bobby Darin. Danya Taymor, last year's winner for directing The Outsiders, is now nominated for her helming of the play John Proctor is the Villain. Kara Young, 2024's featured actress winner for Purlie Victorious, is once again nominated (her fourth consecutive nomination) in the same category for Purpose, written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, who is himself back in the mix after winning last year's Best Revival of a Play for Appropriate. Justin Peck, Tony-nominated co-choreographer of Buena Vista Social Club, won that category last year for Illinoise. One of his fellow nominees then—and again now—is Camille A. Brown, who was up for Hell’s Kitchen and returns to the category with Gypsy. The rematch is now officially underway. 

A Snub to Hollywood
A year ago, we were already anticipating a Broadway season powered by Hollywood celebrity. Robert Downey, Jr., hot off an Oscar win, was headed to the stage in McNEAL, we had Gen-Z icons Kit Connor and Rachel Zegler bringing a Romeo + Juliet for the TikTok era; and Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal were gearing up for their turn in Kenny Leon’s modernized Othello. But while Hollywood names filled Broadway stages, they're more sparsely represented among this year's Tony nominees. The biggest A-lister to break through is George Clooney, nominated for his performance as Edward R. Murrow in Good Night, and Good Luck, the play he co-wrote with Grant Heslov. Mia Farrow also scored one for the movie stars with her nomination for Jen Silverman’s The Roommate. But on the whole, it seems to be a year for homegrown talent.

It's Audra's Turn (Again) 
Audra McDonald is poised to make history—again. She currently holds the record for the most Tony Award wins, with six wins out of 10 nominations for her performances in Carousel, Master Class, Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun, Porgy and Bess and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. With this, her 11th nomination—for playing Momma Rose in Gypsy—she not only stands a chance of breaking her own record but also sets a new one as the most-Tony-nominated performer. (She was previously tied with Julie Harris and Chita Rivera.) Ethel Merman, Broadway’s original Momma Rose, was Tony-nominated for her performance but lost out to Mary Martin in The Sound of Music. Since then, Gypsy has been revived four times, with the role taken on by Angela Lansbury, Tyne Daly, Bernadette Peters and Patti LuPone. Lansbury, Daly and LuPone all won Tony Awards for their performances—not bad odds for McDonald to have on her side. 

A Season of Shutouts
Of the 42 new shows that opened on Broadway this season (topping last year's 39), 13 shows received no nominations at all: Tammy Faye, Left on Tenth, JOB, Redwood, Othello, Stephen Sondheim’s Old Friends, Elf, Once Upon a Mattress, The Last Five Years, All In: Comedy About Love, Cult of Love, McNEAL and Home. Seven others just scraped into the Tonys race this year: A Wonderful World: The Louis Armstrong Musical, Glengarry Glen Ross, Pirates! The Penzance Musical, Romeo + Juliet, Swept Away, The Roommate and Our Town. In such a packed season, even strong work was left off the list.