Broadway’s biggest night looked and sounded even bigger in person. Gold Derby was inside Manhattan’s storied Radio City Music Hall on Sunday night for the 2026 Tony Awards, which brought together the casts and creative teams behind the 30 productions that shaped the 2025-26 season.
From the moment the curtain rose on Pink’s star-studded opening performance, the levels of theater kid energy were cranked up to 11. And even though individuals in the room obviously had rooting interests in seeing certain shows take home Tonys, the collective feeling was one of pride in the shared community of artists and artisans that make up the big little world of Broadway.
Here’s some of the things that we saw — and viewers at home didn’t see — during the Tony Awards telecast.
Feline frisky
Radio City was packed to the rafters with Cats: The Jellicle Ball fans on Sunday night, and they had the actual fans to prove it. The 2026 Tony Awards reached a caterwauling crescendo when the cast of the ballroom-themed revival of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Broadway classic took the stage for a spirited performance of the opening number.
And the audience demonstrated their appreciation in classic ballroom fashion — by snapping and waving their handheld fans, which were generously provided by the Tony telecast producers ahead of time. In an instant, the cavernous Radio City auditorium transformed into a sea of clacking fans generating waves of love that swept through the room towards the stage.
During the commercial break that followed the performance, the barely winded cast took a victory lap through the aisles, high-pawing audience members as they went. The crowd was also treated to the remixed versions of stone-cold Lloyd Webber classics like “Any Dream Will Do” that play during The Jellicle Ball‘s intermission — remixes overseen by DJ Webz himself.
That love may not have ultimately translated into a Best Musical Revival win for The Jellicle Ball — Ragtime took that prize by a whisker — but the production did earn three Tonys, including Best Director for the team of Zhailon Levingston and Bill Rauch and Best Costume Design for Qween Jean, the first openly trans person to score a statuette. (Jean was also nominated for her work on Bess Wohl’s memory play Liberation, and raced up to join the team of that show onstage when it won Best Play.)
Perhaps more importantly, the show has given fresh life to a musical that seemed destined for the pet cemetery after a widely-derided 2019 feature film version, and continues to drive interest in Lloyd Webber’s back catalogue. Small wonder that musical theater had a Chesire grin on his face when we spotting him making his way to his seat before the telecast started. With Rachel Zegler’s Evita already Broadway-bound for next season, he knows his Tonys ball is going to continue.
Scott free
When the glitter dust settled, Joe Mantello’s searing new staging of Arthur Miller’s titanic theatrical drama Death of a Salesman was the biggest winner of the 2026 Tonys with a whopping six statuettes, including Best Director, Best Featured Actress for Laurie Metcalf, and Best Play Revival. Typically that latter prize is accepted by the revival’s producer… but not when that producer happens to be the still-divisive Scott Rudin, who hard launched his Broadway return this season with a pair of Tony contenders, Salesman and Little Bear Ridge Road.
Instead, Salesman star Nathan Lane — who lost the Best Actor in a Play category to Giant‘s John Lithgow in a nail-biting race earlier in the evening — spoke for the group, a switch-out that inspired no small amount of chatter in the seats around us. One audience member couldn’t stifle a laugh when Lane thanked “everyone associated with Death of a Salesman,” knowing full-well that “everyone” included the producer who must not be named. In fact, Rudin wasn’t directly thanked in any of the acceptance speeches given by Salesman‘s winners, including Mantello and Metcalfe, which reflects the trepidation the industry still has about his return after accusations of workplace harassment.
While Rudin was absent from Salesman section of the room, supporting players Ben Ahlers and Christopher Abbott were seated with their onstage parents, and Abbott was joined by his partner, Aubrey Plaza, making their red carpet debut after announcing their new status as expectant parents. Not long after the show’s Best Play Revival win, we spotted that trio huddled at the back of the Radio City auditorium — just down the way from Joe Turner’s Come and Gone star Cedric the Entertainer — no doubt gaming out their afterparty strategy.
Warp factor Rocky
Yes, that was Saturday Night Live‘s Bowen Yang doing his best “Time Warp” on the Tony stage during The Rocky Horror Show‘s fishnets-heavy production number. But viewers at home didn’t see Yang getting some rehearsal reps in before his live performance. During one of the commercial breaks, Sarah O’Gleby — who choreographed the opening number — gave the crowd a chance to brush up on how to properly jump to the left and step to the right. And we spotted Yang and his Las Culturistas pal Matt Rogers practicing their moves from their third row seats
For the record, O’Gleby was particularly impressed with the moves from another SNL veteran, Maya Rudolph. Maybe after she wraps her Oh, Mary! run, Rudolph can bop on over to Studio 54 and get her Rocky Horror on.
The show may need a bit of a boost coming out of the Tonys; Rocky Horror joined fellow musicals Chess, Titanique, and Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York) in getting entirely blanked by voters, who instead coalesced around the quartet of Ragtime, Schmigadoon!, The Jellicle Ball, and The Lost Boys. Of the winless shows, Chess has already announced a closing date — the last performance is June 21. While both Titanique and Rocky already pushed their final shows to the fall before the ceremony, the lack of statuettes could be felt in the summertime box office.
Lost and found
While the Ragtime duo of Caissie Levy and Joshua Henry shared lead acting honors for the acclaimed musical revival as expected, the featured acting races were also won by a double act — from a new musical, no less. Broadway veteran Shoshana Bean won the Best Featured Actress prize for her Lost Boys role while relative newcomer Ali Louis Bourzgui pulled off a surprise victory for Best Featured Actor as the leader of the titular vampire crew.
Bourzgui’s win drew gasps in the room, followed by deafening cheers, which only swelled as the 26-year-old actor delivered one of the night’s most memorable acceptance speeches, where he eschewed the usual thank you’s for an impassioned pean to the importance of vampire art. “People like to say that theater is a form of escape, but I’ve found more than ever in this place and time that theater is one of the last places that people can come to worship the power of true collective human presence,” he remarked to loud applause.
After their wins, Bean and Bourzgui joined their fellow Lost Boys for a barnburner of a production number that was literally fire courtesy of some onstage pyrotechnics. When the ceremony cut to a commercial break, the group took a moment for an onstage selfie as the crew readied for the next act.
Party down
After the Tonys, Gold Derby joined the procession to the official afterparty, where Schmigadoon! mastermind Cinco Paul was quickly swarmed with well-wishers for the show’s four Tony wins, including a Best Musical victory over The Lost Boys. Every Brilliant Thing star Daniel Radcliffe and his partner Erin Drake were also much in demand, shaking hands and posing for selfies as they made their way through the crowded room. Another power couple, Bug duo Carrie Coon and Tracy Letts, held court in their own corner of the event space, happily chatting with passers-by. Elsewhere, Joshua Henry raced by the dance floor with his Tony in hand, and the members of The Rescues — the very real band that wrote all the songs for The Lost Boys‘ vampire band — left their instruments at home to mix and mingle.
