Cole Escola Wins 2025 Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Play for OH MARY!
They’ve made Mary Todd Lincoln proud! Cole Escola has won the 2025 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for their role in Oh, Mary! Escola beat out fellow nominees George Clooney for Good Night, and Good Luck, Jon Michael Hill for Purpose, Daniel Dae Kim for Yellow Face, Harry Lennix for Purpose, and Louis McCartney for Stranger Things: The First Shadow.
Escola wrote Oh, Mary! and is making their Broadway debut in the show. They previously won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performer in a Leading Role in a Musical for Oh, Mary!’s Off-Broadway run. They were named one of Vanity Fair’s 25 Best Performances of 2023 for their special “Our Home Out West” and the Best Sketch Comic of 2020 by the New York Times for their special “Help! I’m Stuck!” which they filmed during quarantine. Escola has also appeared on TV in Search Party, At Home With Amy Sedaris, Difficult People, Man Seeking Woman, and Ziwe — for which they were also a writer — and consulted on HBO’s Hacks. They were named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Oh, Mary!
Oh, Mary! is a dark comedy about a miserable, suffocated Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading up to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. Unrequited yearning, alcoholism, and suppressed desires abound in this 80-minute one-act play that finally examines the forgotten life and dreams of Mrs. Lincoln, through the lens of an idiot (playwright Escola).
The production opened last summer at the Lyceum Theatre after rave reviews downtown. Since opening, both Betty Gilpin and Tituss Burgess have played Mary, in addition to Escola. The production was nominated for five awards tonight including Best Direction for Sam Pinkleton and Best Performance by a Leading Actor for Escola.
