Audra McDonald & Leslie Odom Jr. to Split Hosting Duties for 74th Annual Tony Award TV Events

Broadway's biggest night now has its hosts. Tony winners Audra McDonald and Leslie Odom Jr. will join forces to host the 74th Annual Tony Awards in two separate television events on Sunday, September 26. Producers also announced the availability of a limited number of tickets for the public to purcase to the award show at the Winter Garden Theatre.

The bulk of the Tony Award presentation will happen at 7PM ET/4PM PT on a two-hour streaming presentation on the CBS app and Paramount+, which will be hosted by McDonald, a six-time Tony winner, two-time Grammy Award winner and Emmy Award winner. 

Odom, a Tony winner for Hamilton, will then take over hosting duties for The Tony Awards Present: Broadway’s Back! on CBS at 9PM ET/6PM PT. According to producers, this live concert event will feature "superstar Broadway entertainers and Tony Award winners reuniting onstage to perform beloved classics and celebrate the joy and magic of live theater." The categories of Best Play, Best Revival of a Play and Best Musical will be broadcast on the network. 

McDonald is the most decorated actor with six Tony wins in all four acting categories to her name and an additional three nominations, including a current one for Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune. She is also a co-founder of Black Theatre United, which recently released its New Deal for Broadway, which establishes industry-wide standards and reforms around equity, diversity, inclusion, accessibility and belonging with a focus on Black individuals in theater. in 2015 she received a National Medal of Arts from President Barack Obama and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people. She won Tony Awards for her performances in Carousel, Master Class, Ragtime, A Raisin in the Sun, Porgy and Bess and Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill, which also served as the vehicle for her Olivier-nominated 2017 West End debut. On television, McDonald won an Emmy Award for hosting of PBS’s Live From Lincoln Center. McDonald she can currently be seen as Liz Lawrence in The Good Fight on Paramount+, and she stars in Spectrum’s pandemic-themed drama The Bite. Her film credits include Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast and the Aretha Franklin biopic Respect.

Odom Jr. is a Tony winner, Grammy winner and Emmy nominee for his turn as Aaron Burr in Hamilton. He is a two-time Oscar nominee for his portrayal of Sam Cooke in One Night in Miami... Currently, he can be heard voicing the character of Owen Tillerman in Season 2 of the Apple TV+ animated musical-comedy series Central Park, and he will next star in David Chase’s Sopranos prequel Many Saints of Newark, which is set to be released in movie theaters on October 1.

A limited number of tickets to attend the Tony Awards will be available on September 13 at 3PM ET. For more information, visit TonyAwards.com.

Tony winner James Monroe Iglehart announced the nominees on October 15, 2020. Leading the nominations are the musicals Jagged Little Pill with 15, Moulin Rouge! with 14 and Slave Play with a record-breaking 12 nods—the most ever given to a play. Check out the full list of 2020 Tony nominations here. 

The Antoinette Perry "Tony" Award, founded by the American Theatre Wing in 1947, is bestowed annually on theater professionals for distinguished achievement on Broadway. The Tony is one of the most coveted awards in the entertainment industry.