The belated 2020 Tony Awards are coming this Sunday, but on CBS they will be an iffy deal.
CBS is running a two hour special from 9 to 11pm on the network, but they will only give three Tony Awards — to Best Play, Best Musical, and Best Revival of a Play.
Everything else will air on Paramount Plus, a subscription service, from 7 to 9pm. This means that Adrienne Warren and Aaron Tveit, who’ve been waiting a year and a half, will not be featured on the CBS Tony celebration special. (Warren is the star of “Tina: The Tina Turner Musical.” Tveit, from “Moulin Rouge,” is the only nominee in his category!)
Audra MacDonald, who’s won six Tony Awards, will host the Paramount Plus special. Leslie Odom, Jr., Tony winner for “Hamilton,” will host the two hour CBS special.
Stars to be featured on the CBS portion include Annaleigh Ashford, Kerry Butler, Kristin Chenoweth, André De Shields, Jake Gyllenhaal, Christopher Jackson, Idina Menzel, Ruthie Ann Miles, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Bebe Neuwirth, Kelli O’Hara, Ben Platt, Jeremy Pope, Chita Rivera, Daphne Rubin-Vega and BD Wong.
But none of the 2020 nominees will be seen or heard from on the CBS show, which kinda stinks. Even though the field of nominees was cut short by the pandemic, they deserved to be acknowledged like every other year. Of course, Warren is leaving “Tina: the Tina Turner Musical” later this fall, but it’s not very encouraging to send her off this way.
Broadway wants us all back, but is this way to do it?
