P!NK to host the Tonys

Broadway’s biggest night just picked a host who has never done Broadway: P!NK will front the 79th Tony Awards at Radio City Music Hall on Sunday, June 7, with the ceremony airing live on CBS and streaming on Paramount+ from 8 to 11 p.m. Eastern time. (tonyawards.com) That is unusual because the Tony Awards usually lean on theater veterans, and last year’s ceremony was hosted by Cynthia Erivo, who came out of stage musicals before moving into film and television. (broadwaydirect.com) The choice makes more sense when you look at this Broadway season, which has been packed with marquee names from outside traditional theater, including Daniel Radcliffe, Jonathan Groff, John Lithgow, and Lea Michele drawing wider attention to New York stages. (deadline.com) The Tony Awards are not just a trophy show; they are the annual awards for Broadway productions, so the host has to carry three hours of live television while also selling the idea that theater is a national event, not just a Manhattan niche. (tonyawards.com) P!NK brings the part television producers care about most: live-performance experience. She is a three-time Grammy Award winner, and the Tony Awards announcement called her a “lifelong theater fan” with the kind of stage presence that can fill a room as large as Radio City Music Hall. (tonyawards.com) The calendar around her is already set. Broadway shows have until Sunday, April 26, to open and meet this season’s Tony eligibility cutoff, and nominations will be announced on Tuesday, May 5. (tonyawards.com) That cutoff date is the line between being judged this year or waiting another season, which is why late-April openings on Broadway often feel like movies trying to qualify before the Academy Awards deadline. (tonyawards.com) The ceremony is being produced by Raj Kapoor, Sarah Levine Hall, and Jack Sussman, with Kapoor and Levine Hall also serving as co-showrunners, so P!NK is stepping into a broadcast team that is already in place before nominations even land. (tonyawards.com) Her own reaction suggested this was not a long-telegraphed campaign. In the official announcement, P!NK called it “the honor of an entire lifetime” and said she wanted to celebrate “the hardest working people in showbiz.” (tonyawards.com) So the next month on Broadway now has two clocks running at once: one for shows racing to qualify by April 26, and one for the Tony telecast building toward June 7 with a host whose job is to make a theater awards show feel like an event big enough for pop audiences too. (tonyawards.com; deadline.com)