Broadway’s biggest night took place with the opening act.
Laura Benanti and Tituss Burgess will host “Tony Awards: Act 1,” the official live pre-show leading up to the 79th Annual Tony Awards Ceremony, the American Theater Wing and the Broadway League have announced. This free streaming television broadcast will air on Pluto TV from 6:35pm to 8pm ET on Sunday, June 7th, and the duo will present the first round of competitive awards. Immediately after the pre-show, the main ceremony will be broadcast live nationwide.
Benanti is a Tony Award winner and five-time nominee whose work includes “Gypsy,” “Into the Woods,” “She Loves Me,” “My Fair Lady” and Steve Martin’s “Meteor Shower.” On screen, she currently plays Cindy opposite Jeremy Renner in Paramount+’s Mayor of Kingstown, and has co-starred with Jennifer Lawrence and Matthew Broderick in films such as No Hard Feelings. Her solo comedy show Laura Benanti: Nobody Cares, recorded by Audible, returns to London this summer ahead of a US tour.
Burgess, a six-time Emmy and SAG nominee, rose to prominence with his breakout role as Titus Andromedon on Netflix’s hit comedy, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Last year, he appeared in one of Broadway’s hottest comedies as Mary Todd Lincoln in a limited run of Cole Escola’s hilarious “Oh Mary!” His upcoming plans include a voice role at Warner Bros. “The Cat in the Hat,” set to hit theaters in November 2026, and Paramount+’s “The Elephant & Piggie Show!” opposite Ellie Kemper. He also debuted his musical version of The Preacher’s Wife at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater in 2024.
This year’s 79th Tony Award nominations were dominated by musicals “The Lost Boys” and “Schmigadoon!” Each received 12 nominations, followed by the critically acclaimed “Ragtime” revival with 11 nominations. Death of a Salesman, Arthur Miller’s radical reimagining of the corrosive effects of capitalism, was the best film with nine nominations.
Raj Kapoor, Sarah Levine Hall and Jack Sussman will serve as executive producers on this year’s show, with Kapoor and Levine Hall serving as co-showrunners. The ceremony was produced in association with Tony Award Productions, a joint venture of the American Theater Wing and the Broadway League.
The 79th Tony Awards will be hosted by music superstar Pink and will be broadcast live nationwide on CBS on June 7th and streamed on Paramount+ starting at 8pm ET.
