• Julia Louis-Dreyfus will make her Broadway debut in a revival of Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities
• Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Joe Keery, and Lily Rabe round out the cast
• The production opens October 18 at the Hudson Theatre for a 16-week limited run through January 17, 2027
• John Benjamin Hickey directs the revival of the play that was a 2012 Pulitzer Prize finalist
• Previews begin September 29

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has won eleven Emmys. She redefined what a sitcom lead could be across three different decades of television. And somehow, until now, she has never set foot on a Broadway stage as a performer.

That changes this fall. Louis-Dreyfus will make her Broadway debut in a revival of Jon Robin Baitz’s Other Desert Cities, joining a cast that includes Ed Harris, Allison Janney, Joe Keery, and Lily Rabe. The production opens October 18 at Broadway’s Hudson Theatre for a 16-week limited engagement, with previews starting September 29. It closes January 17, 2027.

John Benjamin Hickey, who made his Broadway directing debut with Plaza Suite starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick in 2022, is directing.

The Play

Other Desert Cities premiered off-Broadway in January 2011 before transferring to Broadway later that year. It was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for drama. The story is set on Christmas Eve in a sunlit Palm Springs home where a politically connected family is rocked when their daughter arrives with a memoir that threatens to expose a secret they’ve buried for years.

“I had, more or less, talked myself out of imagining Other Desert Cities back in New York,” playwright Baitz said in a statement. “But John Hickey is family to me, and I trust him completely. And with this company of actors a playwright dreams about, I thought that if there were still something alive in it, they would find it.”

He added: “What’s slightly unnerving is that nearly 20 years later, through all the fractures and divisions, the questions remain the same: how to live with who we are.”

The Cast

The ensemble is stacked. Harris brings decades of stage and screen gravity. Janney — herself a Tony winner — reunites with Louis-Dreyfus for what amounts to a prestige-TV-caliber lineup performing live eight times a week. Keery, best known as Steve Harrington in Stranger Things, continues his push into serious dramatic work. And Rabe, a three-time Tony nominee, rounds out a cast that could sell tickets on names alone.

For Louis-Dreyfus, 65, the move to Broadway feels less like a career pivot and more like the one box left to check. After Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and her historic run on Veep — plus recent film work including Tuesday and Marvel’s Thunderbolts* — the stage was, quite literally, the only place left to go.

The post Julia Louis-Dreyfus Is Finally Making Her Broadway Debut appeared first on Cream.

• Beaches: A New Musical will close May 24, more than three months ahead of its scheduled September 6 closing
• The show starring Jessica Vosk and Kelli Barrett received mostly negative reviews and was completely shut out of Tony nominations
• Seats were nearly half-empty in recent weeks, with average ticket prices 40% below the industry average
• Jessica Vosk had publicly addressed the Tony snub in a TikTok video earlier this month
• A national tour is planned for 2027, which was always part of the production’s strategy

The last day at this beach is May 24. Beaches: A New Musical — the Broadway adaptation of Iris Rainer Dart’s beloved 1985 novel and its iconic 1988 film — announced Tuesday that it will close this Sunday, ending its run at the Majestic Theatre more than three months before its scheduled September 6 closing date.

The show, starring Jessica Vosk as Cee Cee Bloom and Kelli Barrett as Bertie White, opened April 22 after previews began March 27. It will close having played just 28 previews and 38 regular performances. The combination of mixed-to-negative reviews, soft ticket sales, and a complete shutout from the Tony Award nominations proved too much to overcome.

During the week ending May 10, nearly half of all seats at the Majestic went unsold, with average ticket prices sitting at $72 — roughly 40 percent below the Broadway average. The most recent weekly gross came in at just $441,484, far below what it costs to run a musical of this scale.

A Rough Road From the Start

The production arrived on Broadway under unusual circumstances. The show’s original plan had been a pre-Broadway national tour, but when the Shubert Organization offered the Majestic during what has turned out to be one of the weakest seasons for new musicals in recent memory — only six new musicals opened this year, compared to 14 last season — producers seized the opportunity. The theory was that the thin competition would work in their favor and that a Broadway run would boost the touring production’s profile around the country.

It didn’t pan out that way. The show arrived with a modest cast of 12, a spare set, and a 24-week limited engagement plan. Critics weren’t kind. Writing in The New York Times, Laura Collins-Hughes called it “like a corner-cutting rush job,” describing the result as “a pervasive, underwhelming blandness in a condescending production.” Tony nominators apparently agreed — the show didn’t receive a single nomination, in any category.

Vosk, who earned personal praise even as the show itself was panned, addressed the snub openly in a TikTok video earlier this month.

“It’s the first time I’ve sat with the possibility of even being nominated for anything Tony-wise, and it was really exciting,” she said. “And while I wish I could also be up there with all those incredible ladies, it’s been incredible to watch them all season and even be a part of the conversation.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=cRm4-l4V1IA%3Ffeature%3Doembed

In a statement announcing the closing, Vosk spoke to what the role has meant to her personally. “It has been my great joy to originate a role for the very first time on Broadway with Cee Cee Bloom, who I adore for her grit, her great humor and her huge heart,” she said. “To continue the legacy of a character first made famous by my idol Bette Midler is something I’m not sure I’ll ever fully process.”

The character of Cee Cee Bloom, of course, was immortalized by Midler in the 1988 film alongside Barbara Hershey — the movie that gave the world “Wind Beneath My Wings” and made generations of people sob into their popcorn. The stage musical has been in development for over a decade, with earlier productions at Signature Theatre in Arlington, Virginia in 2014, Drury Lane Theater in Illinois in 2015, and most recently at Theatre Calgary in 2024 — that Canadian production also starring Vosk and Barrett.

Where the Show Goes From Here

Producer Jennifer Maloney-Prezioso struck a defiant note in her statement. “Bringing a new musical to Broadway is always an enormous undertaking, and we are deeply proud of this company who created a production filled with heart, humanity, humor, and emotional truth,” she said. “Night after night, audiences have laughed, cried, called their friends on the way out of the theater, and connected deeply with this story of friendship and love. That impact is real, and it will stay with people long after the final curtain.”

The Broadway closing does not mean the end of the show. A national tour is set for 2027, though specific dates and cities haven’t been announced yet. That tour was always the endgame — Broadway, for all its prestige, was the gamble. Whether the show can find a more welcoming audience outside New York remains the open question.

For now, the Majestic goes dark on Sunday. Tickets for the final performances are still available for anyone who wants to say goodbye.

The post ‘Beaches’ Musical Closes Early After Tony Shutout appeared first on Cream.

• Just In Time has recouped its entire $12.5 million capitalization, becoming the first musical of the 2024-2025 season to turn a profit
• The Bobby Darin biomusical ran for over a year with Jonathan Groff in the lead, hitting a record $2M+ gross in his final week
• Only five other new musicals since the pandemic — MJ, Six, & Juliet, The Outsiders, and Kimberly Akimbo — have achieved the same milestone
• Jeremy Jordan currently stars as Darin after Groff was succeeded by Matthew Morrison
• A North American tour is set to launch in June 2027

Broadway’s Just In Time has done something that almost no show manages to do anymore: it made its money back. The Bobby Darin biographical jukebox musical announced that it has fully recouped its $12.5 million capitalization, making it the first new musical of the 2024-2025 Broadway season to reach profitability.

“The industry missed the boat on this one,” producer Tom Kirdahy said plainly. “But the audience didn’t.”

That’s a pointed remark — and a fair one. When Just In Time opened at the Circle in the Square Theatre in April 2025, plenty of industry insiders were skeptical. Bobby Darin, the singer-songwriter who rose to fame in the 1950s and ’60s with hits like “Mack the Knife,” “Beyond the Sea,” “Splish Splash” and “Dream Lover,” died in 1973 at just 37. The conventional wisdom was that he wasn’t famous enough anymore to sell tickets. The New York Times was lukewarm in its review, praising star Jonathan Groff while calling the show “a quasi-concert” with “narrative arthritis.” The production earned six Tony nominations but went home with zero awards — and wasn’t even nominated for Best Musical.

None of that stopped audiences from showing up.

How Jonathan Groff Made It a Hot Ticket

Groff — a Broadway icon from Spring Awakening, Hamilton, and Merrily We Roll Along — originated the role of Darin, and his magnetism was undeniable. During his final week in late March, the show grossed more than $2 million. The best seats were going for $1,477 each. The average ticket price hit $362, compared to an industry average of $131 that same week. Those aren’t just good numbers. Those are phenomenon numbers.

Since Groff’s departure, grosses have naturally settled — he was succeeded first by Matthew Morrison of Glee fame, then by Jeremy Jordan, currently starring in the role. But the show has continued to sell out the venue, pulling in $838,055 for the week ending May 10. That’s not Groff-era territory, but it’s enough to keep the lights on and then some.

The theater itself is part of why this worked financially. Circle in the Square holds only 690 seats, which caps the box office ceiling — but it also kept production and running costs significantly lower than a typical Broadway house. The show runs with just 11 onstage actors and 11 musicians. Kirdahy was candid about the approach: “We exercised a lot of fiscal discipline along the way, to be really candid. The fact that we were in a small theater and have been able to make it work and keep it running tells us that we’re doing something right, and we fully intend on continuing to do so.”

That discipline paid off. The intimate, nightclub-style setup — the Circle in the Square was transformed into an immersive venue complete with a live band and an ensemble of 16 — turned out to be a feature, not a limitation. Audiences weren’t just watching a show. They were inside one.

A Long Road to Opening Night

The show’s origin story is worth knowing. Just In Time traces back to 2018, when it debuted as part of the Lyrics and Lyricists series at the 92nd Street Y in New York. Ted Chapin, who was running the series at the time, had seen an earlier Darin musical called Dream Lover, produced by John Frost in Australia. He thought a different approach could work better, and brought the idea to Groff — who reportedly agreed to come on board after watching Darin clips on YouTube.

Groff then brought in director Alex Timbers, who developed the show at 92Y and shepherded it all the way to Broadway. The book was written by Warren Leight and Isaac Oliver.

The Cast Has Kept Evolving

The show has seen a revolving door of notable talent beyond the lead. Sarah Hyland of Modern Family and Isa Briones of The Pitt were among the recognizable names who stepped into the role of singer Connie Francis. The production has clearly had no trouble drawing Broadway-caliber performers to the project.

Producers Tom Kirdahy, Robert Ahrens, and John Frost released a statement marking the milestone: “We are deeply grateful to everyone involved in the creation of Just In Time. From our first preview, we witnessed firsthand the electrifying audience response to our immersive Broadway show. Just In Time delivers joy to audiences nightly. Bobby Darin lived an extraordinary life and created magic every time he stepped on stage. It continues to be a privilege to tell his story as we enter our second year on Broadway.”

To put the achievement in context: since the pandemic, only a handful of new musicals have managed to recoup — MJ, Six, & Juliet, The Outsiders, and Kimberly Akimbo, which actually fell short on Broadway but crossed the finish line thanks to a successful tour. Just In Time joins that short list the old-fashioned way: by running, selling seats, and keeping costs in check.

A North American tour is already in the works, with some stops announced for summer 2027 and more to be added. Casting hasn’t been revealed yet. Given how the show has performed, the question of who gets to carry Bobby Darin’s story on the road is going to be one worth watching.

The post Broadway’s ‘Just In Time’ Recoups Its $12.5M Investment appeared first on Cream.

• Death Becomes Her will play its final Broadway performance on June 28, 2026
• The musical ran 20 months and 650+ performances, selling 900,000 tickets total
• Despite 10 Tony nominations, it closes without recouping its $31.5 million investment
• A multi-year North American tour launches this September in Cleveland, Ohio

After 20 months, 650-plus performances, and 900,000 tickets sold, Death Becomes Her is taking its final bow on Broadway. The musical will close at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre on June 28, producers confirmed, ending a run that started with serious momentum but couldn’t quite sustain it through the spring.

The show, based on the beloved 1992 Robert Zemeckis film — itself a cult classic starring Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn — opened to positive reviews in November 2024 and quickly became one of the season’s strongest box office performers, regularly pulling in more than $1.2 million a week. But grosses began slipping in January, and by the week ending May 10, the show was bringing in just above $760,000. The writing, it seems, was on the wall.

What stings a little: the show is closing without recouping its widely reported $31.5 million capitalization. That’s a big number, even by Broadway standards, and the effects-heavy production never quite earned it back. It’s a frustratingly familiar story for big-budget Broadway musicals — Variety notes that only five shows to open since the pandemic (Just In Time, MJ, Six, & Juliet, and The Outsiders) have actually recouped during their Broadway runs.

A Season-Leading Show That Couldn’t Quite Seal the Deal

Death Becomes Her earned 10 Tony Award nominations this season — tied for the most of any show in 2024-2025 — but took home just one trophy, for best costume design. Both leads were nominated: Jennifer Simard and Megan Hilty, who originated the roles of Helen Sharp and Madeline Ashton (the parts played by Hawn and Streep in the film) and delivered performances that critics and audiences loved. Hilty departed the production in January; Betsy Wolfe stepped into the Madeline role and has been playing it since. The current cast also includes Christopher Sieber, Michelle Williams, Taurean Everett, and Josh Lamon.

The creative team — direction and choreography by Christopher Gattelli, a book by Marco Pennette, and an original score by Julia Mattison and Noel Carey — built something that clearly connected with audiences, even if the math didn’t work out in the end. The cast and creative team made more than 30 national TV appearances during the run, hitting everything from the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Today to Watch What Happens Live and CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live. They worked hard to keep the show visible.

“Bringing Death Becomes Her to Broadway has been an incredible joy, and we are immensely proud of every artist, musician, crew member, and individual who helped make this show what it is,” said Lowe Cunningham, SVP and Head of Creative & Strategy at Universal Theatrical Group. “Night after night, it has been a thrill to watch audiences come together to laugh, celebrate, and embrace the wildly entertaining spirit of this production. We are deeply proud of what this show has brought into the world, and we are excited for its life to continue as it tours across the U.S. and beyond in the years ahead.”

The Show Lives On — On the Road

Broadway may be closing, but Death Becomes Her isn’t done. A multi-year North American tour launches this September at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, Ohio, giving the show a chance to reach new audiences — and, potentially, finally recoup that investment on the road.

For the fans who never got to see it at the Lunt-Fontanne, that’s genuinely good news. And for anyone who did catch it in New York, June 28 is your last chance to say goodbye.

The post ‘Death Becomes Her’ Broadway Run Ends June 28 appeared first on Cream.

• A Broadway musical based on ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic’s catalog is officially in development, titled Dare to Be Stupid: The Weird Al Musical
• Tony Award-winner Alex Timbers (Moulin Rouge!) will direct, with the book written by Yankovic alongside Scott Brown and Anthony King (Beetlejuice)
• Tony Award-winning production company Seaview is producing the show
• The musical will draw from Yankovic’s four-decade catalog of parody hits including “Eat It,” “Amish Paradise,” and “White & Nerdy”
• A production timeline and full creative team are still to be announced

Broadway is about to get a whole lot weirder. Dare to Be Stupid: The Weird Al Musical, a stage musical built around the songs of five-time Grammy winner “Weird Al” Yankovic, is officially in development — and the team assembled to bring it to life is genuinely stacked.

Tony Award-winner Alex Timbers, the director behind the smash hit Moulin Rouge! The Musical, is set to direct. The book is being written by Tony-nominated duo Scott Brown and Anthony King — the team behind Gutenberg! The Musical! and the Broadway hit Beetlejuice — alongside Yankovic himself. Producing is Seaview, the Tony Award-winning powerhouse behind some of the most talked-about shows in recent memory.

The musical will pull from Yankovic’s unparalleled four-decade catalog — songs that have parodied, celebrated, and cheerfully outlasted virtually every genre and cultural moment of the modern era. Confirmed titles include “White & Nerdy” (his spin on Chamillionaire’s “Ridin'”), “Amish Paradise” (Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise”), “Eat It” (Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”), “Smells Like Nirvana” (Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”), and “Like a Surgeon” (Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”).

https://youtube.com/watch?v=N9qYF9DZPdw%3Ffeature%3Doembed

Yankovic, characteristically, could not be more on-brand about the whole thing. “Ever since I was a middle-aged man, I’ve always wanted to be a part of the New York theatre community,” he said in a statement. “Plus, the one thing people always say about Broadway is that it’s ‘severely lacking in Weird Al-based entertainment,’ and I think this musical should fix that problem immediately.”

A Dream Project for Everyone Involved

For Timbers, this one is personal. “I first fell in love with Al’s music with the release of ‘Dare to Be Stupid’ and have remained an avid fan ever since,” he said. “Now, it’s a dream come true to work with one of my comedy heroes bringing an original story set to his beloved songbook to the stage. What Al, Anthony, and Scott are creating is unexpected, subversive, meta, and hilarious — and I can’t wait for the world to experience it.”

Seaview CEO Greg Nobile was equally enthusiastic. “Dare to Be Stupid feels like the kind of musical that only comes around once in a while — wildly original, deeply funny, and powered by the unmistakable heart that has made ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic a singular voice in American culture,” he said. “Beneath the absurdity and the joy, is a show about creativity, individuality, and the freedom to be unapologetically yourself.”

The combination of Timbers’ theatrical spectacle instincts, Brown and King’s gift for absurdist comedy (anyone who’s seen Beetlejuice on Broadway knows exactly what that means), and Yankovic’s four decades of pop culture subversion feels like an almost unreasonably good fit. This is a jukebox musical, yes — but one built on songs that were already themselves a form of theatrical performance art.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=bqZVihpOACE%3Fsi%3DeXTPAJj_MU9NlSG3

A production timeline and the rest of the creative team are still to come. But given the names already attached, this one is going to be hard to ignore once it starts moving.

The post ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic Musical Is Heading to Broadway appeared first on Cream.

• Jennifer Harmon, known for playing antagonist Cathy Craig Lord on ABC’s One Life to Live, died Saturday, May 9, in New York City at age 82.
• Her family announced the death with no cause given.
• Harmon earned a Daytime Emmy nomination in 1978 — the first for any actress in that role on the show.
• She appeared in 21 Broadway productions across nearly five decades, understudying legends like Judi Dench, Stockard Channing, and Jessica Lange.
• Before One Life to Live, she starred in every episode of NBC’s How to Survive a Marriage, which helped launch the careers of F. Murray Abraham and Armand Assante.

Jennifer Harmon, the stage and screen actress who spent decades working on Broadway and brought one of daytime television’s most compelling antagonists to life on One Life to Live, has died. She was 82.

Harmon died Saturday, May 9, in New York City, her family announced. No cause of death was given. Her obituary provided no information about a burial service.

To soap fans of a certain era, Harmon was Cathy Craig Lord — the deliciously antagonistic foil to Erika Slezak’s beloved Viki Lord on Agnes Nixon’s One Life to Live. She joined the ABC daytime drama in 1976 as the fifth actress to take on the role, following Catherine Burns, Amy Levitt, Jane Alice Brandon, and Dorrie Kavanaugh, and made it her own across 113 episodes through 1978. (Robin Strasser, for what it’s worth, had been offered the part but turned it down — she went on to play Dorian Lord instead.) Harmon’s Cathy was the kind of villain viewers loved to hate, a fan favorite as the scheming counterpart to the show’s upstanding heroine. She even returned to the canvas in the early 1990s, this time playing an attorney representing Slezak’s Viki — years after Cathy had kidnapped Viki’s baby.

Her 1978 Daytime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Actress in a Daytime Drama Series was a milestone: not just the first nomination earned by any of the five actresses who played Cathy Craig, but the first time any actress had been nominated in that category for One Life to Live at all.

A Career Built on Soaps and the Stage

Before landing in Llanview, Harmon had already made her mark on daytime television in a big way. She starred in NBC’s How to Survive a Marriage for its entire 1974–75 run — all 335 episodes — playing Chris, a woman who divorced, remarried, and battled alcoholism. The show is remembered today partly for helping launch the careers of F. Murray Abraham and Armand Assante. After One Life to Live, she added brief stints on Guiding Light, Another World, and Loving to her soap résumé.

On primetime, she turned up in episodes of Dallas, St. Elsewhere, The Good Wife, Law & Order, Oz, and Rescue Me, among others. She also lent her voice to 21 productions for CBS Radio Mystery Theater.

But it was the stage where Harmon built the spine of her career. Born December 3, 1943, in Pasadena and raised in New Orleans, she attended the University of Mississippi and the University of Michigan before moving to New York and joining the APA-Phoenix Repertory Company. That path led her to her Broadway debut in 1965, in a revival of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s You Can’t Take It With You. Before the decade was out, she had returned to the Great White Way in revivals of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard and Ibsen’s The Wild Duck.

Over the next four-plus decades, she racked up 21 Broadway credits — an extraordinary body of work that spanned some of the most celebrated playwrights in the canon. She appeared in productions of works by Wendy Wasserstein (The Sisters Rosensweig, 1993), Lillian Hellman (The Little Foxes, 1997), Tennessee Williams (The Glass Menagerie, 2005), Edward Albee (Seascape, 2005), Neil Simon (The Dinner Party, 2000; Barefoot in the Park, 2006), and Terence Rattigan (The Deep Blue Sea, 1998), among many others. She performed in The School for Scandal nearly 30 years apart — in 1966 and again in a 1995 revival.

Her final Broadway credit came in 2011’s Other Desert Cities by Jon Robin Baitz, where she understudied Stockard Channing before later stepping into the role as a replacement.

That understudy work was a thread woven through her entire stage career. She stood by for Stockard Channing, Judi Dench, Jessica Lange, Blythe Danner, and Marian Seldes at various points — the kind of quiet, essential theatrical labor that keeps productions running and that only the most trusted, versatile performers get called to do.

Jennifer Harmon spent nearly 50 years making other people’s stories better — the villain audiences loved, the understudy who was always ready, the character actress who showed up in the best rooms. That’s a career.

The post Jennifer Harmon, Broadway and ‘One Life to Live’ Star, Dies at 82 appeared first on Cream.

• Lea Michele missed Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday performances of Chess after being shut out of the 2026 Tony nominations
• Sources say she has laryngitis that developed into bronchitis — but others note she was visibly devastated by the snub
• Her Chess co-stars Nicholas Christopher, Bryce Pinkham, and Hannah Cruz all received nominations
• Michele has never received a Tony nomination despite six Broadway appearances dating back to 1995
• A doctor has cleared her to return to the stage Friday

Lea Michele missed multiple performances of Chess this week, right on the heels of being shut out of the 2026 Tony Award nominations — and Broadway is talking.

The timing is hard to ignore. The nominations dropped Tuesday morning, May 5, and Michele was absent from the show that same night. According to Telecharge, she was also listed out for Wednesday and Thursday. Sources close to the production have slightly different takes on why.

“She gave another excuse,” one source tells Page Six. “Everyone knows she was upset. She was hysterical.”

But a Broadway insider pushes back on any diva narrative. “She was sick last weekend and probably should have taken off Saturday and Sunday,” the source says. “She really is not well.” They added: “I’m sure she is disappointed as everyone is for her, but she really was under the weather.” A third source puts it plainly — she has laryngitis that developed into bronchitis. Apparently she pushed through the weekend when she probably shouldn’t have, and the illness caught up with her. A doctor has since cleared her to take the stage Friday.

The Snub That Stung

Whatever the cause, the pain of the snub is real. Michele has been playing Florence Vassy in the Broadway revival of Chess to genuinely rave reviews — the kind that had industry insiders believing this might finally be her year. She’s appeared on Broadway six times since 1995, in productions including Les Misérables, Ragtime, Fiddler on the Roof, and Spring Awakening. She was passed over for a nomination for Spring Awakening back in 2007. And when she famously saved the Funny Girl revival in 2022, turning a troubled production into a genuine hot ticket, she wasn’t even eligible for a Tony because she’d replaced original star Beanie Feldstein rather than originating the role.

So Chess was supposed to be her shot. The clean shot she’d never had.

The show received five nominations in total — Best Actor in a Musical for Nicholas Christopher, Best Featured Actor for Bryce Pinkham, Best Featured Actress for Hannah Cruz, Best Orchestrations, and Best Lighting Design. Her co-stars got their flowers. She didn’t.

The New York Times’ Jesse Green put it bluntly in his snubs and surprises breakdown, writing that with a male co-star nominated and even supporting cast members recognized, “it’s hard not to see the omission as a deliberate rebuke.” Green also noted that Kristin Chenoweth was similarly ignored for The Queen of Versailles, raising the uncomfortable question of whether there’s a creeping resistance to Broadway’s biggest female personalities. “Are we seeing the start of a diva backlash?” he asked.

Michele herself hasn’t made a public statement. But she has been quietly resharing the Chess social media page’s congratulatory posts for each of her nominated co-stars — a gracious move that speaks volumes about what she’s choosing not to say.

She’s Not Alone in Getting Left Out

The 2026 Tony nominations were genuinely brutal for big names across the board. The entire cast of The Bear‘s theatrical foray — Jon Bernthal, Ayo Edebiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach in Dog Day Afternoon and Proof — was completely shut out. Adrien Brody, who won an Olivier Award for his West End run in The Fear of 13 and took home his second Oscar just last year, didn’t make the list either. Tessa Thompson, his co-star, was also passed over. The starry revival of Proof — directed by Hamilton‘s Thomas Kail and carrying the distinction of being the first theatrical project attached to Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground — received zero nominations despite its cast including Don Cheadle and Edebiri.

It was, as Variety noted, a season where box office heat and Hollywood wattage just didn’t convert into awards love.

The season itself was also notably slim — only 30 eligible productions compared to 42 the year before — which made the snubs sting even more. In a smaller field, there was more room for the recognized names. And yet.

For Michele, the consolation is that she’s still in the show. Ticket holders can catch her in Chess through June 21, when JoJo — yes, the “Leave (Get Out)” singer — takes over the role of Florence Vassy. If you’ve been waiting for your chance to see Michele on that stage, the window is still open.

She’s been doing this long enough to know the Tony voters don’t always get it right. And the audiences who’ve watched her perform Florence Vassy eight times a week clearly have.

The post Lea Michele Calls Out of ‘Chess’ After Tony Snub appeared first on Cream.

• Mariska Hargitay debuted a new chin-length bob haircut ahead of her Broadway debut in Every Brilliant Thing
• The look was crafted by celebrity hairstylist Adir Abergel, who confirmed it was inspired by her stage debut
• Hargitay takes over the solo show from Daniel Radcliffe — who just earned a Tony nomination for the role — starting May 26
• Ali Wentworth, the official Law & Order Instagram, and fans all went wild in the comments
• The run is scheduled for 40 performances at the Hudson Theatre through June 28

Mariska Hargitay is switching gears — and her hair is the first sign of it. The Law & Order: SVU star debuted a dramatic new bob haircut ahead of her Broadway debut, and the internet has not recovered.

The fresh chop was revealed in a May 3 Instagram post by her longtime celebrity hairstylist Adir Abergel, who didn’t leave anyone guessing about the inspiration. “NEW CUT FOR THE ONE AND ONLY @therealmariskahargitay BROADWAY DEBUT IN @brilliantbway,” he captioned the series of photos, which showed Hargitay’s new chin-length, loosely waved bob in full, glorious detail. The 62-year-old actress commented simply: “Switching gears.”

That’s one way to put it. The new cut is a real departure from the long, warm brunette waves fans of Olivia Benson have grown used to over the past decade-plus of SVU. But the reaction was immediate and overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Ali Wentworth quipped, “Love it. Now I’m doing it,” while the official Law & Order Instagram page delivered the line of the day: “It should be criminal to look this good!”

Fans in the comments were equally gone for it. “OBSESSED with the bob!!! It is so so good. How rude of Mariska to be able to pull off basically anything and look absolutely fabulous,” one person wrote. Others called her “the Queen of hair” and simply “beautiful.” One fan summed it up: “OMG!!! This is incredible on her.”

A Hair History Worth Revisiting

This isn’t Hargitay’s first rodeo with a shorter style. She rocked an edgy pixie in the ’90s, cycled through various cuts across SVU‘s first ten seasons, and has long been candid about her complicated relationship with some of those choices. Her character’s infamously spiky Season 3 look — which she has described as “a little porcupine-esque” in an interview with Allure — was actually an accident that happened “in the middle of an episode,” she revealed on The Kelly Clarkson Show.

The fallout was intense. Law & Order creator Dick Wolf “told me he was going to fire me,” Hargitay recalled to TV Insider. “I cried so hard, like, ‘You’re blaming me?’ It went on for two weeks; then he said, ‘There’s no crying in television,’ and we moved past it.” She has since made peace with most of her hair history. “Like any woman, Olivia is trying to find the hairstyle that fits her life,” she told TV Insider in 2018. “I stand behind all my hairdos, except maybe three.”

This bob, it’s safe to say, is not one of the three.

Abergel, for his part, is the kind of stylist who makes transformations like this look effortless. His client list reads like an awards show front row — Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Garner, Hailee Steinfeld. His relationship with Kristen Stewart is so close that she once let him take her nearly bald. “Whether we’re shaving your head one day, bleaching your roots before a premiere or notching into your hair with kitchen scissors,” he said in his acceptance speech at the WWD Style Awards in January, “you are an absolutely fearless artist and an icon.” He clearly brings that same energy to every chair.

What Hargitay Is Walking Into on Broadway

The bob isn’t just a style moment — it’s a signal that Hargitay is fully stepping into a new chapter. She makes her Broadway debut on May 26 in Every Brilliant Thing at the Hudson Theatre, taking over the lead role from Daniel Radcliffe, who just earned a Tony nomination for his run in the one-man show. Hargitay will perform 40 shows through June 28.

The play, which first debuted at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, follows a protagonist navigating a distant father, a suicidal mother, and his own deep sadness — and it involves significant audience participation, making every performance its own thing. It’s a far cry from the precinct.

Hargitay’s last stage appearance was in The Exonerated off-Broadway in the early 2000s, which makes this a long time coming. And she clearly felt the pull of this particular material deeply.

“I read Every Brilliant Thing and cried, rejoiced, laughed, cried some more, and loved it so much,” she said in a statement. “I’m always drawn to themes of healing and renewal, especially when the journey is rendered in all its complexity. It feels like an extraordinary gift to make my Broadway debut, the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, with a play that affirms life so emphatically. For me, the triumph of this beautiful piece of work is that through a deeply personal story, we experience the universal endeavor of keeping ourselves pointed towards light, compassion and hope.”

She also gave fans an early peek at the new look on April 26, in a video promoting the show — dancing at a photoshoot with confetti covering the floor. Which, honestly, is the only appropriate way to announce a Broadway debut and a bob at the same time.

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