Ready, Set, Tony! Spotlight on the Acting Powerhouses Up for the Leading Actor in a Play Tony Award

When the Tony Awards telecast begins on Sunday, June 9, 40 nervous and excited actors will take their seats at Radio City Music Hall, hoping to win Broadway’s biggest prize. Throughout the season, Broadway.com has photographed and chatted with the stars at press events, opening nights and visits to our studio. In advance of the 73rd annual Tonys, we’re looking back at all of the season’s nominees. Here are the acting powerhouses nominated for Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play.

BRYAN CRANSTON | NETWORK
Bryan Cranston’s ascension to the peak of his profession—as evidenced by four Emmys, seven Emmy nominations, an Oscar nomination, and a 2014 Best Actor Tony for playing Lyndon Johnson in All the Way—began in his 40s, fueling a hunger for larger-than-life roles. His latest creation, unhinged anchorman Howard Beale in the Broadway premiere of Network, shares a few qualities with drug kingpin Walter White in Breaking Bad. "The characters I’m attracted to are damaged, because they have so many things to overcome," Cranston explained on Show People. In Howard’s case, "There was a sense of urgency and anger, and I wanted to get down to the deepest level to find out what triggered that anger." Cranston’s mastery of stage and screen comes in handy in director Ivo van Hove’s multimedia depiction of the character who famously screamed "I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!" For the actor, "It’s all about the story. When you read something that moves you, that says something socially or, like Network, makes people angry, that’s a good thing. When people leave the theater, if they continue to talk about what they experienced, you’ve done well."
 

PADDY CONSIDINE | THE FERRYMAN
Though his Broadway debut run in The Ferryman lasted less than five months, Paddy Considine made a strong impression on Tony nominators, earning a spot in the highly competitive Best Actor category. As patriarch Quinn Carney, Considine anchored Jez Butterworth’s sprawling drama of a Northern Ireland family, which boasts a cast of 21, plus a live baby, a bunny and a goose. From his first scene in the Carney farmhouse during a flirtatious game of Connect Four (with fellow Tony nominee Laura Donnelly) to the play’s shocking final moments more than three hours later, Considine personified the themes of family honor and the many ways that the past haunts the present. In addition to his work as an actor, the British-born Considine is an accomplished musician and filmmaker, most recently writing, directing and starring in the boxing-themed drama Journeyman opposite Jodie Whittaker of Doctor Who.
 

JEFF DANIELS | TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
From the moment Bartlett Sher signed on to direct Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation of To Kill a Mockingbird, both men had only one actor in mind to play Atticus Finch: Jeff Daniels. Sorkin had tested Daniels’ skill at delivering wordy scripts in his HBO drama The Newsroom (the actor won his first Emmy as anchorman Will McAvoy), and Sher trusted his ability to command the stage after a four-decades-long theatrical career and Tony nominations for God of Carnage and Blackbird. "Atticus is a lot like my dad," the Michigan-based actor said in a Citizens of Mockingbird video feature, recalling his father’s gentle reminders to do the right thing and treat everyone fairly. Daniels’ background as a musician prepared him for addressing Broadway audiences directly during the play’s trial scenes. “You stand as Atticus in front of the crowd, and you start talking to them as if they’re the jury,” he reflected on Show People. "You’ve got 1,400 people that aren’t moving. The familiarity I have doing that comes from those [concert] gigs." The result is a once-in-a-lifetime thrill: "It beats movies, beats TV. It doesn’t get better than this."
 

ADAM DRIVER | BURN THIS
When Adam Driver bursts into a 1980s-era downtown loft yelling, "Goddamn this f**kin’ place, how can anybody live in this shit city?" the Broadway revival of Lanford Wilson’s Burn This kicks into high gear. Driver leaves it all on the stage as Pale, the older brother of a recently deceased, closeted dancer, expressing grief in a torrent of finely crafted monologues that play like arias. It’s little wonder that the role is catnip for young actors (including original star John Malkovich), because it’s got everything—passion, ambition, chaos, comedy—and Driver conveys it all with raw power and emotional honesty. Broadway.com spotted this Marine-turned-Juilliard grad early, in a Fresh Face profile during his off-Broadway debut. Ten years and an Oscar nomination later (for BlacKkKlansman), plus three Emmy nods (for Girls), Driver is savoring the opportunity to play a flawed hero “desperate for a different life,” as he put it on opening night. "It’s basically four people in a room talking," he says of Burn This. "It’s character-driven; it’s not overridden by some idea. It’s about grief, but it’s also about process. And the writing is just poetry."
 

JEREMY POPE | CHOIR BOY
Dual Tony nominee Jeremy Pope began his dream Broadway season as the star tenor of an all-male prep school chorus in Tarell Alvin McCraney’s Choir Boy. The fact that his charismatic character, Pharus, is gay sets in motion an examination of what it means to become a man, in scenes punctuated by amazing a cappella performances of spirituals. "It’s not a [common] thing that you see a queer young black artist up there as a lead," Pope said in an episode of Front Row. Choir Boy "focuses on Pharus and the things he is striving for, and I just think that is so beautiful." Pope’s Broadway debut came almost six years after Choir Boy was first produced off-Broadway, but it was worth the wait—and critical acclaim helped catapult the young actor to a rare pair of same-season Tony nominations for the play and for his role as Eddie Kendricks in Ain’t Too Proud. "Pharus has taught me how to be strong and to be myself unapologetically," he said in a Fresh Face interview. "He is so courageous. He reminds me that, in all the things that I am: I am beautiful. I am created in love."
 

Photos: Bryan Cranston, Jeff Daniels and Jeremy Pope photos by Caitlin McNaney for Broadway.com; Paddy Considine photo by Joan Marcus; Adam Driver photo by Emilio Madrid-Kuser for Broadway.com | Design: Ryan Casey for Broadway.com